Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion: Physical Competence, Women's Fitness, And Feminism (Essay‪)‬

[1] The experience of fitness by women in our culture is ideologically inflected by assumptions about gender and biology, with the frequent result that many women are active primarily for extrinsic motives--to satisfy our own and others' ideas about feminine attractiveness--rather than intrinsic ones such as a heightened sense of self-efficacy or competence. A variety of factors acting throughout women's lives--early training in "femininity," the pressure of finding time for activity amongst our other responsibilities, the marketing manipulations of the fitness industry in the form of gyms and "wellness" magazines--all act to limit women's experience of a fully developed sense of their own physical ability. Feminist critique can sometimes inadvertently contribute to these limitations: analysis focuses on the mechanisms of oppression operating within our culture, and advocates individual and collective resistance by women, but stops short of offering many pragmatic solutions. That is the goal of this essay, to move from the theoretical to the applied, and to argue that sometimes-overlooked practices can play a valuable role in promoting women's emancipation through the development of their physical competence. [2] From personal experience as both consumer and scholar of our culture's fitness industry, I have found that many women in both categories are very ambivalent about the relevance of physical activities which involve competition, aggression, and risk (for this analysis, I use the term "women" as the fitness industry typically does, to represent a subset of women that is mostly white, middle-class, and heterosexual). In the broadest terms, women might avoid these activities out of concern that they are not compatible with cultural expectations of femininity; a more specific concern for feminism is the appropriateness of women adopting skills and characteristics culturally constructed as masculine. The objection is that to become more engaged in physical activities--more competitive, more aggressive--is to reinforce the privileged status of masculine behaviors associated with violence and oppression, and to confirm the patriarchally-defined relationship between social and physical power. In this paper I will offer the counter-argument, that the development of the physical, athletic body and the cultivation of a sense of physical power and competence, can be vital components of women's full equality in our culture. Crucially though, women must be wary of elements of consumer culture, in the form of the fitness industry, which seem to offer us opportunities to develop body and mind together, but which tend more to reinforce the gendered anxiety and self-consciousness which lead us to self-impose limits on what we can do. At the end of the paper, I will argue the importance of seeking out activities that exceed the limits of the fitness culture, offering us more potential to achieve physical competence, and hence a greater sense of our own effectiveness and agency in society.