There’s nothing healthy about beachbody fitness
How would you feel if your 11-year-old daughter signed up for “bikini body” fitness classes? It’s that time of year, after all, when we’re being told to get “beachready” (another cretinous term) – and much as you’d like to keep her in that burkini until her midthirties, she’s going to be a little lady soon. A little lady with body image issues, if the Ripley Academy in Derbyshire – which caused outrage this week after advertising the class – has anything to do with it.
Actually, that’s more than a little unfair. Once the furore blew up, in the way that only a news story involving schoolgirls and anything to do with sex in the age of social media can, it was quickly made clear that the school’s principal, Carey Ayres, had been unaware of the wording used on posters advertising the after-school class.
The school has since apologised and assured its parents that “we would never condone any class, or afterschool activity, that may put pressure on any young person in terms of their own body image”. No harm, no foul. But it was the words of a concerned parent that stayed with me: “This is sexualising the fitness class.” To which – if I were in the habit of calling people “honey” – I would say: “Honey, that ship has sailed.”
Why? Because what is deeply unacceptable for girls of 11 to 18 remains unacceptable for grown women. And 36 years after the world fitness craze exploded at the start of the Eighties, the sexualisation of female exercise continues – only in a far more insidious fashion. We all look back with indulgence at Jane Fonda’s first fitness video, released in 1982 – to be enjoyed by men and women in very different ways.
Likewise, Cindy Crawford’s early Noughties offering – in which the panting supermodel gets twisted into knots on a Manhattan rooftop by a sadomasochistic trainer – may have been criticised for having a far more beneficial effect on the male anatomy than the female, but was basically passed off as light entertainment.
Now, despite well-meaning campaigns like “This Girl Can”, which is aimed to get women and girls moving any way they can without fear of judgment – and a conscious effort on behalf of parts of the fitness industry to promote health, strength and power over bikini-body idealism, physical exercise is still being sold to women with the promise of sexual appeal.
“Picture yourself rockin’ that LBD!” the Spandex-clad she-bot I pay 20 bucks to torture me in LA likes to holler. Fifty minutes into an hour-long spin class, and even the stragglers at the back pick up the pace here: that’s the power of visualisation. But instead of surging towards the image of myself in that little black dress, I slow down – and glance at the men. “Aren’t you going to get these guys to picture themselves in a pair of thigh-skimming XXS Vilebrequins?” I wonder. But the she-bot never does. Because whereas women have got to really sweat it out – sculpt, tauten and lengthen those limbs – in order find or keep a mate, men will get the girl whatever they look like. That’s the implication, isn’t it?
It should be laughable, and it would be if the sexualisation of fitness didn’t put off precisely the women who need to get moving most. “It’s the idea of having to put on all that revealing gear,” one of my closest friends – anxious to lose her baby weight – complained.
And when you look at the cutaway, mesh and fishnet creations being touted as yoga or exercise gear – and worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian as daywear to demonstrate sexual desirability – it’s no wonder many women can’t get past that first stumbling block. Who wants to be doing burpees in something you’d buy from Ann Summers? Not me.
Which is why, despite having been a fitness freak for 20 years, I’ve always refused to invest in the faddish accoutrements the industry tries to bully us all into buying, just as I’ve always refused to invest in the notion that running, swimming or spinning will make me any prettier, sexier or bikini-body readier. I’ll settle for it making me feel good.