Fit Nation
The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
How is it that Americans are more obsessed with exercise than ever, and yet also unhealthier? Fit Nation explains how we got here and imagines how we might create a more inclusive, stronger future.
If a shared American creed still exists, it’s a belief that exercise is integral to a life well lived. A century ago, working out was the activity of a strange subculture, but today, it’s almost impossible to avoid exhortations to exercise: Walk 5K to cure cancer! Awaken your inner sex kitten at pole-dancing class! Sweat like (or even with) a celebrity in spin class! Exercise is everywhere.
Yet the United States is hardly a “fit nation.” Only 20 percent of Americans work out consistently, over half of gym members don’t even use the facilities they pay for, and fewer than 30 percent of high school students get an hour of exercise a day. So how did fitness become both inescapable and inaccessible?
Spanning more than a century of American history, Fit Nation answers these questions and more through original interviews, archival research, and a rich cultural narrative. As a leading political and intellectual historian and a certified fitness instructor, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is uniquely qualified to confront the complex and far-reaching implications of how our contemporary exercise culture took shape. She explores the work of working out not just as consumers have experienced it, but as it was created by performers, physical educators, trainers, instructors, and many others.
For Petrzela, fitness is a social justice issue. She argues that the fight for a more equitable exercise culture will be won only by revolutionizing fitness culture at its core, making it truly inclusive for all bodies in a way it has never been. Examining venues from the stage of the World’s Fair and Muscle Beach to fat farms, feminist health clinics, radical and evangelical college campuses, yoga retreats, gleaming health clubs, school gymnasiums, and many more, Fit Nation is a revealing history that shows fitness to be not just a matter of physical health but of what it means to be an American.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The pursuit of fitness... has simultaneously become a universal ideal and a stark dividing line" that reinforces class and racial divisions, according to this comprehensive account from New School history professor Petrzela (Classroom Wars). Documenting how the idea of "fit bodies" evolved from the 19th century, when a "fat" shape indicated affluence and well-being; to the early 20th century, when "feats of strength" were relegated to the circus; to the present, when exercise is "universally" considered essential to health and beauty, Petrzela notes the influence of exercise pioneers (Jack LaLanne; Jim Fixx), celebrity culture, and legal reforms (in particular the passage of Title IX). Key developments include President Eisenhower's call for "soft Americans" to become stronger and more disciplined as a matter of national security, John F. Kennedy's more relaxed attitude toward exercise as recreation, and the rise of gyms, televised exercise programs, and jogging in the 1970s and '80s. Some of Petrzela's most eye-opening insights involve the evolution of women's fitness from Jazzercise and other programs that promoted feminine beauty to the rise of women athletes as role models. Throughout, Petrzela critiques the fitness industry's lack of attention to poor, working-class, and nonwhite communities, and marshals a wealth of information into a coherent narrative. This is a valuable survey of what exercise means in America.
