A few days ago class discussion touched on a topic that has always been sensitive to me: exercise.
Modern culture if full of ads and products for getting fit, working out, and losing excess weight, all which will lead to a better and more beautiful you. The more you work your body out, the better the results and the better life you will have, or so says all the diet and exercise literature that I have read.
But is this true?
Every magazine I pass in the grocery store offers at least one full spread of exercises that will transform your body for all to see while low-fat, fat-free and zero calorie food and drink are everywhere. In society’s drive to be “healthy” are we really just pushing ourselves beyond the scope of what we are actually supposed to look and feel like?
Throughout history women’s bodies have been viewed from a skewed lens; as chattel, as something that must be covered lest it seduce man, as dangerous, and now as something that must be shaped to fit a standard. That standard being a skinny, tall, large-breasted but without curves, form. The religion of Exercise has only given credence to this standard, with the abundance of gyms and fitness classes there is no reason not to have a “perfect” body, no reason not to count every calorie and run a mile for every slice of pizza eaten.
Are these expectations even possible to meet?
I recently saw an ad for a gym that read, “It’s not Fitness. It’s Life.” This ad made me angry, from a larger societal standpoint and as a woman I should not have to view exercise, or “fitness” as a lifestyle. Some days I may choose to take a walk, go to a yoga class or run and other days I may not do much at all in the realm of exercise. I’m not advocating for laziness or avoidance of physical activity, I believe an active lifestyle is healthy and beneficial in many ways, it’s the overabundance and extremes that are almost forced down our throats that frustrates me. You aren’t running every day? Le gasp. How about abs and shoulders, when will those become bikini body toned? Have some ‘extra’ poundage? There’s a pill/drink/diet/exercise for that.
Learning to love my body is hard being surrounded by the mantra of fitness=life, when for the majority of women fitness is really an impossible standard instead of just being a healthy BMI.
Fitness is not life; life is friends, family, beautiful days, meeting new people and moving because it makes your body feel good and not because you want to maintain an impossible and ridiculous standard.
Thoughts/Disagreements?
Unruly Bodies 
every girl likes beauty. i think some people want to loose weight and keep their body look good because they will feel more confident. i understand that.But, i dont understand why some people rather suffer hunger just because they dont want to eat too much while they are on diet. One of my friend, she is fat, she told me that ” i prefer being fat rather than suffering hunger”.I like what she told me. I think we should love our body more.
I really loved and enjoyed your post, I could not agree more with you. As someone who has a father and brother obsessed with working out, specifically a workout program called P90X, I hear you! I seriously think that the X is in P90X just to stand for extreme, it would not surprise me. This whole “extremeness” of exercise and fitness has now been normalized and if you aren’t a player, you are thought to be lazy. My dad and brother have always teased me about my lack of enthusiasm when it comes to fitness, thinking that this would encourage me to workout with them. They were wrong. It pushed me in the opposite direction mainly because I am a stubborn person. I went the other way and went around telling people that I did not believe in working out and that as long as you eat relatively healthy, your body is the way it is supposed to be. Now I have come to love yoga and talking walks outside, the treadmill has never been a friend of mine. Although I am still not a fan be being extreme, I am a fan of doing things purely because they make me feel good or they are fun, not because someone is telling me I should do them.
I am a pretty thin woman and have been since adolescence. While I love the adrenaline rush I get from running once in a while, I actually AVOID excessive excersise because I don’t want to lose weight. This has led me to be a bit concerned about the condition of my “cardio” as when I do engage in strenous activity I get worn out and winded pretty quickly. But I don’t want to turn what little I have in the way of curves to muscle. I feel that being skinnier or or muscular would make me less sexually attractive. This is an issue in and of itself.
What I find interesting about gyms, their equipment, and their advertising is the removal of the body from a natural environment into a mechanical one. Yoga is one thing, some consider it an art or cultural practice. But are bodies really meant for eliptical machines? If we lived in a pre-industrial, hands-on agricultural, or even a gunter-gatherer society, wouldn’t we get enough exercise out of survival? I consider the gym a bourgeois institution, the product of a society built on the attainment of a middle class lifestyle, a sedentary job, satiation with foods or medicines that are also heavily advertised, and having to drive rather than walk everywhere. So I think the exercise “lifestyle” is a product of the capitalist “lifestyle”. This has removed our bodies from a nature in which we would have to move, work, and survive similarly to the way that animals do. We rarely see overweight deer or wolves. And we don’t see them worrying about their quad muscles.
I think it is important if we surrounded exercise around being the healthiest possible you instead of loosing weight to be thinner. I think that losing weight is one advantage but it is no the one that should be placed in the lime light. Exercising releases endorphins and endorphins make us happy. I do know but for me I rather fell better about my self by being healthy then advertisement telling me I have to be a double zero in order to be happy.
I feel like the fitness lifestyle has emerged, in part, as a response to the waif and “unhealthy” portrayal of women and other lifestyles in the past. Historical analysis regarding nutrition has been increasing in popularity in recent years. As younger generations grow up in a culture that is constantly pushing fitness and health as a lifestyle, there will be backlash, as alway, and popular culture will shift again.