duriangoth:

beyonslayed:

heavyweightheart:

really tho a lot of fitness culture is an intersection of the worst of late capitalist “masculinity”: pseudo-intellectualism, paranoia, objectification of the body, deference to authority rather than intuition or internal cues, intolerance of illness or weakness (universal human experiences), xtreme self-monitoring, delusions of grandeur, and on and on. it creates a front for pushing and falsely advertising useless products based on those elements, as well as (u know i can’t not say it!) operating as a means of social control

Twenty-First Century Victorians

Current exercise trends, like hot yoga, spin, and CrossFit, all
demonstrate a commitment to self-denial and self-discipline, values much
praised by the Victorians. Marathon running has become the ultimate
signifier: competitors can post photos on social media to prove to everyone that they have tortured their bodies in a highly virtuous — and not at all kinky — fashion.

This seeps over into everyday activities as well. Trader Joe’s and
Whole Foods are filled with people dressed in workout gear with no sweat
in sight. This clothing marks its wearers as the type of people who
care for their bodies, even when they aren’t exercising. Yoga pants and
running shoes display virtue just as clearly as the nineteenth-century wives’ corseted dresses did.

Being fit now indexes class, saturating both fitness and food
culture. As calories have become cheaper, obesity has changed from being
a sign of wealth to a sign of moral failure. Today, being unhealthy
functions as a hallmark of the poor’s cupidity the same way
working-class sexual mores were viewed in the nineteenth century.

Both lines of thinking assert that the lower classes cannot control
themselves, so they deserve exactly what they have and nothing more. No
need, then, for higher wages or subsidized health care. After all, the poor will just waste it on cigarettes and cheeseburgers.

i feel like it’s also important to note that the cultural capital of ‘athletic’ bodies—which reflect wealth, leisure, and taste—is rooted in the flow of capital in Western countries. the effect of this is directly visible on working class bodies. shifts away from manufacturing and increased automation mean increasingly larger segments of the population lead sedentary lifestyles. 

the essay, ‘auto body’, does a fantastic job of tracing the development of fitness culture and linking it to flows of capital: from its “shady” origins in Muscle Beach, demolished because working-class bodies congregating in public was dangerous; to the privatisation of fitness within iron gyms, like Gold’s; to the rise of Nautilus machines and commercial gyms embraced by employers both as preventative health measure and means of increasing the productivity of the aforementioned sedentary workers; and finally, to the CrossFit ‘boxes’ that profit from the nostalgia for an ‘organic’ community and ‘primal’ bodies that counteract the alienation of commercial gyms. CrossFits workouts shape a lean body that appear prepared for physical labour that no longer exists, especially for its relatively wealthy clientele. On this last point:

Culturally, Crossfit harnesses a nostalgia for a simpler past, and combines it with the romanticization of the natural in order to craft a comprehensible view of the present that embraces precarity by being prepared for everything. This is not simply a pre-lapsarian fantasy, though. The idyllic and savage “primal” is coupled with modern science in an attempt to recreate a born-again human that specializes in the unspecialized. As lean management forces all employees to be flexible in their working hours and expertise, Crossfit demands the same from their consumers. Crossfit is the figurative and literal lean production of the body. To avoid precarity, one must embrace precarity. Do a little of everything, and then do more of it. The fragmented sense of progress in lifting a heavier weight or beating an old WOD time creates a fleeting autonomy in a managed subject. Through Crossfit, despair and uncertainty are replaced by trust in the primal, one simulated shoveling exercise at a time.

CrossFit’s workouts shape a lean body which appears to be prepared for physical labour. said physical labour, however, is becoming less necessary in production with the rise of automation, especially so for its relatively wealthy clientele (at least when the essay was written in 2016). it’s no coincidence that CrossFit ‘boxes’ inhabit old production sites in urban centres:

As capital flows back into the city once again, old auto clearing houses and factories are prime locations for Crossfit boxes, and the loft condos that house many of their customers. Crossfit promises a physique that matches the aesthetic of new city wealth. The body as repository for the ghost signs of production reflects the social relations of labor and leisure presented by the economy. You can get strong, but not too big. The workouts are quantifiable and scalable, but never boring. Companion to the rise of beards, tattoos, “work” boots, and lumbersexuality, Crossfit sculpts a body that appears to have labored. Reminding us that physical labor was done at one point, the shell of industry now has a core of chiseled abdominal muscles. Crossfit reverses the traditional relation of labor to the body in that the bodies appearing to have labored the most now reflect the highest material conditions of leisure. Similar to the way that new technology introduced into the production process is embedded with the value of past labor, the Crossfit body is also imbued with the surplus value of past generations. In Scientific Management, Taylor remarked, “In the past man has been first; in the future the system must be first.” Today is the future, and the Crossfit box offers a concise summary of our post-industrial predicament. “People walk through the door and say, ‘Hey, where are all the machines?’” To which Crossfit boldly replies: “We’re the machines!”

fitness culture, in other words, is inextricable from late capitalism.