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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
We live in The Age of Fitness. Hundreds of thousands of people run marathons and millions go jogging in local parks, work out in gyms, cycle, swim, or practice yoga. The vast majority are not engaged in competitive sport and are not trying to win any medals. They just want to get fit. Why this modern preoccupation with fitness? In this new book, Jürgen Martschukat traces the roots of our modern preoccupation with fitness back to the birth of modern societies in the eighteenth century, showing how the idea of fitness was interwoven with modernity's emphasis on perpetual optimization and renewal. But it is only in the period since the 1970s, he argues, that The Age of Fitness truly emerged, as part and parcel of our contemporary neoliberal era. Neoliberalism enjoins individuals to work on themselves, to cultivate themselves in body and mind. Fitness becomes a guiding principle of social life, an era-defining network of discourses and practices that shape individuals' actions and self-conceptions. The pursuit of fitness becomes a cultural repertoire that is deeply ingrained in our institutions and way of life. This wide-ranging book shows how deeply fitness is inscribed in modern societies, and how important fitness has become to success or failure, recognition or exclusion, in a society that sets great store by self-responsibility, performance, market, and competition. It will be of great value not only to those interested in sport and fitness, but also to anyone concerned with the conditions of success and failure in our societies today.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Age of Fitness
Notes
1. “Fit or Fat”? Fitness in Recent History and the Present Day
Cycling and self-tracking
Health, fitness, and fatness in neoliberal times
Eating “right” since the Me Decade
The “right amount” of exercise since the Me Decade
“Fit or fat?”
Notes
2. Fitness: Trajectories of a Concept Since the Eighteenth Century
“The eternal fitness of things”?
Fitness, Darwin, and the invention of inescapable competition
Fitness, difference, and political participation
Fitness in an era of crisis and war
Fitness and consumer culture
Notes
3. Working
“Corporate fitness,” or: getting fit for work – Part I
Industrial recreation and company sports in the history of capitalism
The new class of white-collar workers
“Corporate fitness,” or: Getting fit for work – Part II
Breathlessness as par for the course
Notes
4. Having Sex
“Performance plus” through the “phallus pill”
Hard at any age
The “impotence boom”
“Penis doping”
Electric belts, rejuvenating surgery, and the psychologization of sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Things that make a difference
How Viagra makes masculinity
Sex in the age of fitness
Notes
5. Fighting
Fitness heroes I
Citizen-soldiers and national heroes
Moments of transition to a post-heroic era?
Fitness heroes II
“Our future as a species”
Notes
6. Productive, Potent, and Ready to Fight?
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Age of Fitness
Begin Reading
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.
Advertisement for the Microsoft Smartwatch, 2014
Figure 2.
Cover of
The Atlantic
, May 2010
Figure 3.
Poster, DSB “Endurance” advertising campaign, 1975–1978
Chapter 2
Figure 4.
Frances Willard learns to ride a bike
Chapter 3
Figure 5.
A carpenter planing. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887, Wellcome Colle…
Chapter 5
Figure 6.
Civilian Conservation Corps workers, 1930s. Library of Congress, Prints & Photog…
Figure 7.
German politician and soon-to-be foreign minister Joschka Fischer (wearing 50), …
Figure 8.
Tough Mudder competitors in Gilford, NH, June 1, 2013; picture published by the …
Chapter 6
Figure 9.
Tess Holliday on the cover of
Cosmopolitan
(UK), October 2018
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THE AGE OF FITNESS
HOW THE BODY CAME TO SYMBOLIZE SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT
JÜRGEN MARTSCHUKAT
TRANSLATED BY ALEX SKINNER
polity
Originally published in German as Das Zeitalter der Fitness. Copyright © 2019 S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main
This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Front cover of Cosmopolitan (UK) reproduced with permission from Hearst Magazines UK© Ben Watts/Courtesy Hearst Magazines UK
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4565-0
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Martschukat, Jürgen, author. | Skinner, Alex, translator.Title: The age of fitness : how the body came to symbolize success and achievement / Jürgen Martschukat ; translated by Alex Skinner.Other titles: Zeitalter der Fitness. EnglishDescription: Medford : Polity Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Why the pursuit of fitness has become a central preoccupation of modern life”-- Provided by publisher.Identifiers: LCCN 2020033791 (print) | LCCN 2020033792 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509545636 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509545650 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Body image. | Physical fitness. | Success. | Performance.Classification: LCC BF697.5.B63 M37713 2021 (print) | LCC BF697.5.B63 (ebook) | DDC 306.4/613--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033791LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033792
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book took shape over many years and in the context of a number of research projects. Between 2012 and 2015, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation funded our project on “Das essende Subjekt” (“The Eating Subject”). I am as indebted to that institution as I am to the Volkswagen Foundation for generously funding the project on “Ernährung, Gesundheit und soziale Ordnung in der Moderne: Deutschland und die USA” (“Nutrition, Health, and Social Order in Modernity: Germany and the United States”) from 2015 to 2019, as part of the funding stream Schlüsselthemen für Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft (Key Issues for Science and Society). Without the research professorship that formed part of this key issues project in the summer semester of 2018, I would not have been able to complete this book.
While working on the manuscript I received valuable feedback from numerous colleagues and friends. The North American History colloquium at the University of Erfurt and various seminars, from Charlottesville in Virginia to Dunedin in New Zealand, were a great source of inspiration. Through a William Evans Fellowship in the spring of 2017, the University of Otago enabled me to carry out research at its School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, which in turn allowed me to discuss the project intensively and advance it greatly. My thanks go to Doug Booth for his tremendous support, his wonderful hospitality, and his input at various workshops and over numerous coffees. My thanks also go to Stefanie Büttner, Katharina Dahl, Paula Dahl, Tristan Dohnt, Norbert Finzsch, Laura-Elena Keck, Tae-Jun Kim, Olaf von dem Knesebeck, Nina Mackert, Irene Martschukat, Maren Möhring, Stefan Offermann, Tanja Robnik, Olaf Stieglitz, Heiko Stoff, Paula-Irene Villa and Simon Wendt, who read various parts and versions of the text and discussed them with me. Paula Dahl, Nina Mackert and Irene Martschukat even worked their way through the entire manuscript; Maria Matthes and Viviann Wilmot assisted me with the research and the final editing, and Alex Skinner created an elegant translation. Without your help this project would have gotten nowhere.
Last but not least, my special thanks to Alex, Andy, Bille, Dirk, Flo, Harry, Jörg, Matthias, Paddy, Reemt, Sebastian, Silke and all the other boys and girls from Team Altona for their company across thousands of kilometers in and around Hamburg and throughout Europe.
INTRODUCTION: THE AGE OF FITNESS
We live in the age of fitness. Tens of thousands of people run marathons and compete in all-comers cycle races, while millions go for an evening jog in the park or work out in gyms, where they lift weights and use machines of various kinds or practice yoga; active vacations of all kinds are more popular than ever. In 1970, this was barely conceivable. Hiking vacations were for retirees and windsurfing had just been invented. The Berlin Marathon still lay in the future. Few adults had a bicycle, while gyms were few and far between. Since then, however, fitness has boomed. Let’s consider the scale of the fitness market. In Germany alone, active people (and those who want to appear active, or at least aspire to be active) spent over 50 billion euros on fitness-related items in 2015: running shoes and sportswear, weights and carbon fiber bicycles, energy drinks and diet foods. Equally popular are fitness classes and activity vacations, fitness magazines and books, apps and gadgets. Fitness stars such as Kayla Itsines – to mention one of many examples – have millions of followers on Instagram; images of toned bodies are hugely popular on social media.1
What those engaged in “getting fit” generally have in common is that they are active, but rarely organize themselves in clubs or associations. They do not participate in a specific league, and they are almost never out to win a competition. Yet they all want to improve themselves somehow. They do not engage in the kind of organized competitive sport that spread from the United Kingdom to other modernizing societies from the mid-nineteenth century.2 Those who undertake fitness training are not looking to win a medal. Instead, what this practice aims to achieve is a fit body. This body, in turn, stands for an array of partially overlapping forces, abilities and ideals, which point far beyond the doing of sport. These encompass one’s health and performance in everyday life and at work, productivity and the ability to cope with challenging situations, potency, a slim figure and a pleasing appearance according to the prevalent standards of beauty. Also important in this context is “doing the right thing,” “doing something good” for oneself, and getting the “best” out of oneself, as well as gaining recognition for it. At times, the sheer joy of movement and activity also comes into play. These various driving forces are not mutually exclusive.
The pursuit of fitness3 is part of a culture and society that concurrently laments increasingly fat bodies. In the twenty-first century, fatness is even referred to as an epidemic, and health problems such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease are a perennial topic of concern. Particularly in Western societies, but now also worldwide, the consistent message is that the lack of physical activity has assumed “frightening proportions.”4 A so-called sedentary lifestyle and an unhealthy, high-calorie diet are viewed as the main causes of increasing fatness. On the one hand, then, there is a culture of fitness, while on the other there is anxiety over the lack of exercise and burgeoning fatness. What may seem contradictory at first sight turns out to be part of a single social formation, centered on the self-responsible, committed and productive individual. Both sides of this coin (the culture of fitness and the fear of fat) revolve around the successful self, which proves its success by mastering its own body. In (post)modern societies, lack of fitness amounts to a flashing red light.
To gain a deep understanding of our age of fitness, this book delves into history. To illuminate the present through the past means comprehending history as a space “in which the present has been formed.”5 We have to draw on history if we aspire to grasp our own present, identify its problems and paradigms, and engage critically in its most contentious debates.
This entails linking the topic of fitness with the project of the free, self-responsible individual and their history. As this book reveals, historicizing fitness demonstrates that lived self-responsibility and its consolidation as an ideal have constituted a project for more than two centuries. Writing a history of fitness also means exploring the genealogy of competition and performance, and assessing their importance to modern societies, to their organization and to the societal participation of different types of person. Another key question concerns body shape and health and the relationship between the two. Above all, though, a history of fitness is a history of the body as social history: a history of values and norms, epistemic and discursive orders, representations and figurations, technologies and bodily practices. A history of the body of this kind shows how people are placed in a particular relationship to society through their bodies and how they participate in their own emplacement.6
My observations focus on recent history, since the 1970s. The last half-century may be considered the age of fitness, and it is no accident that this coincides with the age of neoliberalism. Rather than a generalizing call to arms, here neoliberalism denotes an epoch that has modeled itself on the market, interprets every situation as a competitive struggle and enjoins people to make productive use of their freedom. Neoliberalism thus describes a certain way of thinking about society and subjects, understanding their behavior and classifying it as appropriate or inappropriate. The individual is supposed to work on themself, have life under control, get fit, ensure their own productive capacity and embody these things in the truest sense of the word. This requirement has achieved unprecedented importance under neoliberalism.7 Fitness is everywhere. Fitness, as philosopher Michel Foucault might have put it, is a “dispositif” or apparatus – an era-defining network of discourses and practices, institutions and things, buildings and infrastructure, administrative measures, political programs, and much more besides.8
But I also reach further back into history in order to understand our age of fitness. At times the tracks we need to follow extend back to the eighteenth century, for example when it comes to the idea of liberty and self-determination, or the disciplining of the soldierly body. Yet it was not just the soldier but also the new republican citizen that was required to be disciplined and upright, rather than glutted, degenerate, and physically torpid like the nobility, or stooped and battered like the third estate.9 In a history of fitness, the middle of the nineteenth century also demands our attention. This is the period when Darwinism, the “survival of the fittest,” and the conception of inevitable, natural competition took the stage. And it was in the decades around 1900 that modern societies first experienced a fitness hype. At the same time, they were plagued by a crisis that was experienced, in part, as a crisis of the body. When it comes to the history of fitness over the last few decades, in many ways the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries presaged future trends more than the cult of the body in fascism and Nazism. Historians have often highlighted the 1950s and 1960s in this regard as well. After years of crisis and war, many people on both sides of the Atlantic once again indulged in the pleasures of consumption. Yet this immediately led to anxieties about its harmful effects on the body, health and performance.
The history of fitness related in this book is a critical one. This means that it pays attention to the ambivalences of fitness. It brings out how societies are governed through fitness – understood as the freedom to work on the body and the successful self. This means doing more than just admiring fitness and more than praising freedom as a fundamental human right and opportunity. In fact, freedom is bound up with the demand, made of all of us, to use our freedom productively and in the best possible way; and fitness perfectly embodies this facet of freedom. People’s success or failure in this respect establishes differences, engenders exclusion and legitimizes privileges.10 The coexistence of, and simultaneous antagonism between, fitness and fatness, their meanings and associations, reveal the manifold tensions inherent in governing through freedom and fitness. Fitness and fatness – often perceived as non-fitness – have a significant impact on whether a person is recognized as a productive member of society, on who may be considered a subject and who may not.11
In the course of this book, I will routinely locate fitness in “modernity,” describing fitness as its hallmark and regulatory ideal. Modern societies have declared perpetual optimization and renewal one of their core precepts and achievements, and fitness posits the constant optimization of body and self. In line with this, as they have developed over time, modernity and fitness have been closely interlinked. The origins of both lie in the late eighteenth century and both experienced a boom in the decades around 1900. Toward the end of the twentieth century, meanwhile, both modernity and fitness began to change or come to a head in key respects. This applies, for example, to the paradigm of the body’s malleability. In postmodernity, working on one’s body has even gained in importance and, as sociologist Paula-Irene Villa writes, “Bodywork is always and inevitably work on the social self.”12
Similar may be said of my references to the “West” as the main setting for the following history of fitness. What I have in mind here is a critical perspective on a community of values, norms, and principles, which include the productive use of freedom, the optimization of the self, and constant progress.13 Hence, the following chapters focus on the US and Europe, especially Germany, and on the similarities and differences that typify the relationship between freedom, bodies, and social order on each side of the Atlantic. The US is in fact the society most dedicated to the idea of freedom as norm and practice.
Fitness, then, operates via the body, but it is by no means limited to it. So, this book is about much more than “just” the training of the body. The first chapter foregrounds our present and recent past, bringing out the significance of the body and body shape. My focus is on those practices and policies that are directly related to the body and that are obsessively pursued in our contemporary societies. The key terms here are exercise and eating right. Chapter 2 sketches the history of the fitness concept, from the eighteenth century to the 1970s. It shows how the idea of dynamism and the notion that we can achieve anything we aspire to have increasingly permeated modern societies, and it reveals how the notion of fitness, as we know it today, emerged. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 go even further beyond fitness as bodily practice. They scrutinize three fields of tremendous importance to the individual’s recognition as a productive member of society and as a subject. Chapter 3 deals with the relationship between fitness and work, and thus revolves around the importance of bodies and productivity. Turning to the relationship between fitness and sex, chapter 4 considers reproductivity and potency. The fifth chapter discusses the relationship between fitness and the ready ability to deal with challenges and achieve our goals through sustained effort, probing how fitness and heroic visions intermesh. For a long time, these visions were of a martial cast. For some time, however, and increasingly, they have been taking inspiration from the struggles of everyday life.
Each chapter in this book forms a coherent whole and may be read individually. But only reading the entire book will convey how deeply fitness is inscribed in modern societies, and how critical fitness is to success or failure, recognition or exclusion, in a society that sets such great store by self-responsibility, performance, market, and competition.
Notes
1.
On “sport as an economic factor,” see
Informationen aus dem Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft
#12/2018, June 7, 2018,
https://www.iwd.de/archiv/2018/
; see also the Instagram account of Kayla Itsines,
https://www.instagram.com/kayla_itsines/?hl=en
.
2.
Gruneau,
Sport & Modernity
; Eisenberg,
“English Sports” und deutsche
Bürger
; Eisenberg, “Die Entdeckung des Sports.”
3.
In using the phrase “pursuit of fitness,” I borrow from the American Declaration of Independence, which refers to the “pursuit of happiness”; see esp. chapter 2 and Martschukat, “The Pursuit of Fitness.”
4.
See, for example, Werner Bartens, “Krankhaft sesshaft. Der Bewegungsmangel hat weltweit erschreckende Ausmaße angenommen,”
SZ
, September 6, 2018, 14; on Germany, see Froböse et al.,
Der DKV-Report 2018
; Guthold et al., “Worldwide Trends in Insufficient Physical Activity.”
5.
Editorial,
Geschichte der Gegenwart
.
6.
See esp. Netzwerk Körper (ed.),
What Can a Body Do?
See also many of the articles in
Body Politics: Zeitschrift für Körpergeschichte
,
http://bodypolitics.de/de/uber-die-zeitschrift/
; Lorenz,
Leibhaftige Vergangenheit
, was pioneering in its day.
7.
Brown,
Undoing the Demos
, 15–50; Rödder,
21.0
, 54–5. In those parts of the book where I write about fitness, the economy, and the world of work, I also use the term “flexible capitalism” to refer to the last 50 years because it more accurately captures the specific historical shifts and challenges involved; Lessenich,
Die Neuerfindung des Sozialen
, 9–19.
8.
Foucault, “Confessions of the Flesh”; Ganahl, “Ist Foucaults dispositif ein Akteur-Netzwerk?”; van Dyk, “Was die Welt zusammenhält.”
9.
Alkemeyer,
Zeichen, Körper und Bewegung
, 212; Mayer,
Wissenschaft vom Gehen
.
10.
Krasmann, “Regieren über Freiheit”; Rose,
Powers of Freedom
.
11.
Honneth,
Anerkennung
, 182–234; Butler,
Psychic Life of Power
.
12.
Gumbrecht, “Modern, Modernität, Moderne”; Dipper, “Moderne, Version: 2.0”; Gruneau,
Sport & Modernity
, 1–14; Villa, “Einleitung – Wider die Rede vom Äußerlichen,” 8.
13.
Hall, “The West and the Rest.”
1“FIT OR FAT”? FITNESS IN RECENT HISTORY AND THE PRESENT DAY
Cycling and self-tracking
Anyone who practices cycling – whether the average Joe on their Sunday morning bike ride or a pro ascending the Alpe d’Huez – almost certainly has a little computer on their handlebars. This measures speed, distance traveled and altitude attained, but also, depending on the device, one’s pulse rate, cadence, and power output in watts. The number of calories (supposedly) burned is also shown. The goal is obvious: the bike computer is an aid to self-observation. It is intended to provide information about the cyclist’s performance level and help optimize their activity, perfect their body, and enhance their potential. The symbiosis of body and technology, fundamental to cycling in any case, has reached a new level.1
As far as the targeted improvement of one’s performance is concerned, however, such a device has a shortcoming. It registers very precisely what is happening on the bike (only the physical performance, of course, not the joy of movement, let alone the pleasure derived from the landscape). But it records nothing of one’s life outside exercise. The device is unaware of how much exercise I get overall, how much beer I drink, whether I eat a lot of fatty meat and potato chips, and whether I get enough quality sleep. To observe and evaluate these things requires a different technology. If a smartphone is equipped with a corresponding app and supplemented by some gadgets, then one’s behavior can be tracked, measured, and evaluated 24 hours a day. This is known as fitness tracking or self-tracking. One can also use a smartwatch or a fitness wristband to do this. Measuring and recording one’s actions thus permeates everyday life, even when one is fast asleep – and all in the name of performance.
In Germany, about a third of the population is said to record data on movement, eating, sleeping, and bodily trends in one way or another. In the United States the figure is claimed to be almost 70 percent, though the numbers vary widely, depending on who one asks and what, exactly, one is talking about.2 In 2007, the Quantified Self (QS) movement was launched in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it has now spread throughout the Western world. Its adherents not only measure their bodily, behavioral, and environmental parameters. They also submit to psychological tests, genome sequencing and much more besides. The goal, as stated on the website of the German QS-Community, is to “reflect upon ourselves and understand what allows us to make better, more informed decisions.”3 Many self-trackers share their knowledge and data on the Internet with a community of like-minded people who are both their associates and competitors. Health insurance providers on both sides of the Atlantic are now offering discounts to those willing to practice self-tracking and fitness tracking or to submit the data generated. They have developed relevant apps or provide the necessary technology. According to the insurance companies, this makes it possible to identify the risk of illness earlier and more effectively.4
This raises sensitive social and political issues concerning electronic patient records and “big data” in the healthcare system. But my concern here is with a quite different matter, namely self-tracking as a paradigmatic practice of a culture and society that revolves around free individuals, competition, market, and performance as its essential principles. The QS movement itself underscores that its activities are oriented toward “every sphere of life.” Hence, its concept of fitness goes far beyond sports and physical workouts as such. Certainly, in the first instance self-trackers are out to determine their relationship with their own bodies. Yet at the same time, their actions and the data generated make it possible to establish relationships between the body, the individual, their society, and the environment in which they live. In a society based on its members’ autonomy and efficiency, self-tracking can even be considered a practice of engaged citizenship. Citizenship, then, is more than a legal concept. It encompasses the question of who is recognized as a productive member of society, why, and who may make certain claims on this basis. If working on your own fitness is a key criterion for this recognition, then the cyclist of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is the prototype of the good citizen.5
Health, fitness, and fatness in neoliberal times
Fitness, then, is more than just the prerequisite for success in sport. In the twenty-first century, a broad consensus exists on this point, regardless of whether we ask health authorities, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, or kinesiologist Karen Volkwein.6 Volkwein, for example, defines fitness as “health stabilized through training.”7 At first sight, this definition may appear clear and simple. Upon closer inspection, however, it reveals the tremendous scope and complexity as well as the multiple implications of fitness. First, and quite obviously, fitness is closely bound up with health, and in the recent history of Western societies health means more than the absence of infirmity or disease. Health, as the World Health Organization (WHO) already stated upon its establishment in 1948, is a state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing. This implies that the healthy individual has the means and capacity to meet challenges and live a good, productive life. It also makes health a symbol of success and a precondition for recognition. Second, Volkwein’s definition of fitness indicates that health may be stabilized through training or neglected and thrown out of kilter by its absence. This makes health and quality of life – not entirely but to a considerable extent – the individual’s own responsibility. They must actively manage themself and their life, taking the appropriate preventive measures. Practices of prevention, in fact, amount to a “crucial cultural technology of modernity.” Since the 1950s, “prevention” has become a key principle in medicine and society, one that, according to sociologist Ulrich Bröckling, requires the individual to act “as an autonomous and competent agent vis-à-vis their own life.”8 Third, while health may be stabilized through training, it can never be entirely stable. So, health can never be achieved, at least not definitively. Health is a point that can never be reached, and the older one gets, the further one moves away from it. Those who stop exercising and working on their own fitness are neglecting their health. Health is fleeting. It requires permanent work on oneself and signifies constant action. The logic of fitness is very powerful, even though we all know that illnesses can occur despite constant self-care.9
Hence, health is a highly normative concept, one that molds our notions of a good and a bad lifestyle.10 This is even more true of fitness, as it functions explicitly as a hinge between lifestyle and health. Companies like Jawbone and Microsoft enjoin potential buyers of their fitness bracelets to “Know Yourself. Live Better,” and even to “be a better human” (see figure 1). These promptings also come across as promises.11 Fitness is a regulatory and normative ideal of liberal, modern societies. It not only describes how you are, but what you ought to be – and how you can become what you ought to be.12
What we have to do, then, is interrogate how fitness operates, while laying bare the processes of inclusion and exclusion it facilitates.13 Who is considered fit, and who is not? What happens when some are considered fit and others are not? People are governed by fitness, and this is especially true of liberal societies, which are particularly vociferous in demanding citizens’ voluntary engagement.14 For the autonomous and self-responsible individual is central to liberal societies. And self-responsibility means ensuring one’s commitment and efficiency in every sphere of life. Those who manage themselves demonstrate their ability to take responsibility for society. Anyone wishing to be viewed as a successful individual and good member of society must be productive, reproductive, and ready to tackle challenges. One has to be hardworking, attractive, and strong. Here fitness plays a regulatory and normative role, though not necessarily through external enforcement in the form of prescription and punishment. Fitness creates zones of marginality and exclusion. This is its regulatory and normative effect. Those who fail to conform to the ideal at play here, who are considered ill or physically impaired, or who are, apparently, neglecting to work on themselves enough to become and stay fit, are marginalized or excluded. The power of fitness, the nature of its requirements, and the emphasis placed on them, have varied over the course of history.15
Figure 1 Advertisement for the Microsoft Smartwatch, 2014
Few things more clearly bring out the power of fitness, its linkage with physicality, and the political dimension of this entire complex than the collective fear of body fat. In recent decades, the fear of fat has taken hold of Western societies more than ever before. At first glance, fitness and fatness seem to be polar opposites, yet they are mutually constitutive. Together, they bring order to a culture and society that privileges the efficient, self-directed individual. For the members of such a society, it is obviously unsettling to hear and read every week, from one source or another, that, for example, “Germany is getting fat,” that Germans are less and less active and are becoming “fatter and fatter.”16 There is always a handy scientific study to quote from when the press or the political sphere declares that around half of all Germans are overweight and about one-fifth obese. More than twothirds of Americans are said to be overweight and almost 40 percent obese, especially in rural areas. Depending on state and demographic group, the obesity rate rises to 55 percent, the key elements being social status, level of poverty and, interwoven with these factors, race and gender. In other words, poor black women in Mississippi are among the fattest of the fat. The particularly fat are considered to have failed to meet the demands of a liberal society. Moreover, fatness is viewed as pathological. It is therefore referred to, using medical terminology, as obesity. Since the late twentieth century, fatness has even been called an epidemic. It is not spread by a virus, but has infected large numbers of people due to certain living conditions and circumstances. The US government officially adopted this medical terminology in 2001 and literally declared war on obesity the same year. The WHO, meanwhile, has for some time been referring to “globesity” to highlight the increasingly global scale of this phenomenon.17
I do not intend (and am not qualified) to evaluate the health effects of too much or too little body fat here. The various statements made on this topic are, in any case, highly controversial, while for years the seemingly straightforward relationship between body fat and health has become increasingly contested. For example, the Body Mass Index (BMI) has ceased to be a widely recognized indicator of body fat. Many commentators doubt that the BMI is an effective predictor of disorders and mortality rates. Recent studies have in fact shown that at least a certain amount of body fat is beneficial to one’s health. What is more, some research findings are more likely to be published and receive more attention than others, and those who do not subscribe to the prevalent fatphobia seem to experience a certain publication bias.18 The social demonization of fatness continues virtually unabated. Here the deceptive power of the visible seems to be at work. People feel they can see with their own eyes that fat cannot possibly be a good thing, but makes one sluggish and immobile.19
My concern here is not with what is truly healthy or unhealthy, but with the power and persistence of the discourse on fatness and fitness and its social effects. The discourse on fatness is deeply political in many ways. First there is the classic political level. In 2007, the German government adopted the “Fit Not Fat Action Plan,” and launched a campaign known as “IN FORM. Germany’s Initiative for Healthy Eating and More Exercise” in 2008. Initiatives of this kind have been instigated since the 1970s. Fit Not Fat and IN FORM are intended to embed the “healthy lifestyle as a social value” by 2020, improve Germans’ eating habits and increase their physical activity. But it is not laws or punishment that are to pave the way for these changes. Instead, the goal is to appropriately shape the overall framework within which people make decisions and take action, providing them with all sorts of incentives. Government agencies and representatives should be good role models, provide knowledge and information, and motivate people to eat better and exercise more. Germans can continue to decide freely whether to eat fries or salad, whether to stay at home and be couch potatoes or go for a bike ride. But the decision-making architecture should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate a healthy choice. This kind of politics is called “nudging,” a form of governance that seeks to prod or steer citizens to make voluntary decisions that are viewed as “better” and “healthier.” Certainly, from this perspective, free individuals in free societies should make their decisions freely. But at the same time, they should make decisions that are conducive to their own productivity and, therefore, to that of the community. “Prevention,” as the first sentence of the Fit Not Fat action plan emphasizes, “is an investment in the future.”20
Michelle Obama received a great deal of public attention as First Lady of the United States, and it reached its apogee through her campaign against fat. Her “Let’s Move” program was aimed primarily at African American children, the goal being to motivate them to exercise more and eat better. Obama privileged information, incentives, the cooperation of school cafeterias and industry, and her own status as role model. She grew vegetables in the White House garden, cooked with children, skipped, danced, lifted weights, and did push-ups as she made her way through the American media landscape. Of course, the First Lady was aware that a program like “Let’s Move” cannot succeed by issuing directives and that fitness cannot be enforced politically. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg failed spectacularly when he tried to ban the sale of soft drinks by “food service establishments” in cups of more than 16 ounces in 2014 (a similar fate befell the German Greens in 2013 with their “Veggieday”). The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ruled against Bloomberg’s “Soda Ban” because the New York City Board of Health lacked the authority to issue such a prohibition. The public and political battle, however, focused not on the powers of institutions, but on civil liberties. The opponents of the Soda Ban assailed the “nanny state” and its alleged fantasies of omnipotence. Michelle Obama, meanwhile, was aware of the tremendous importance of freedom of choice and decision as a political principle, a precept that has shaped the United States since its birth, attaining unprecedented heights since the 1970s. Obama thus eschewed a ban-oriented approach. Instead, she sought to mold the architecture of decision making in such a way as “to make the healthy choice the easy choice,” as she herself put it. Nonetheless, Republicans accused her of state interventionism, highlighting the dogged nature of American battles over freedom of choice and decision.21
But the political dimension of the discourse on fitness and fatness goes far beyond the classic sphere of politics. It is about more than the actions of lawmakers and members of government, action plans, controversial statutory prohibitions, or sugar and fat taxes.22 A culture and society that draws its strength and success from the productive capacity of individuals and the population as a whole may be described, with Michel Foucault, as biopolitical.23 The “birth of biopolitics” took place in the nineteenth century, a process I describe in more detail in the next chapter. Here I give the reader advance notice that a biopolitical order has its sights set on the population and its potential, and it defines and positions people and groups through their bodies and bodily form. Such an order regulates their access to resources and social participation and thus influences the recognition they may experience as productive members of society. Body shape becomes a sign of the ability to make responsible decisions, to function in a free, competitive society and to aid its development. Hence, body shape decides who gets to be a homo politicus. Fatness is believed to reveal a lack of these abilities. Just as self-trackers are the prototypical embodiment of the biopolitical fitness society, and supposedly even demonstrate the desire to be and the attempt “to become a better human” (as producers of smartwatches want to make us believe), fatness seems to stand for a dearth of decision-making ability, productive capacity, and motivation.24
The crisis scenarios ramifying out from the alleged epidemic of obesity, then, bear witness to more than an individual problem. En masse, as the cover of the May 2010 issue of The Atlantic shows so clearly, fat bodies seem to signal a crisis of liberal society, its functioning and principles (see figure 2). The corpulent Statue of Liberty carries an unambiguous message. The survival of the social order, which is based on freedom and builds on the pursuit of happiness, on autonomous action and motivation, is at risk from body fat. In fact, this social order appears to be facing imminent collapse. Slimness, agility, fitness: in an age of neoliberalism and flexible capitalism, these terms are used more than ever to describe ideal individuals and their bodies. Such terms also serve to characterize the performance of society, economy, and state. Lean bodies for a lean state, fit (typically freelance) employees for fit companies and their “lean production.”25
Figure 2 Cover of The Atlantic, May 2010
“Neoliberalism” denotes a form of society and government that is always and everywhere aligned with the model of the market. This sociopolitical system construes people, in every situation, as market actors subject to competitive conditions. Moreover, neoliberalism, as political scientist Wendy Brown writes, is “a distinctive mode of reason, of the production of subjects, a ‘conduct of conduct’ [Foucault], and a scheme of valuation.” The actions of subjects must be geared toward investing in themselves in order – always and everywhere – to increase their own “portfolio value.” The goal is for these investments and one’s work on oneself to yield visible results. Such evident success enables individuals to be recognized as productive members of society. Consequently, in neoliberalism the relationship between individual and society is measured in a new way. Recognition as a citizen is not just a matter of rights. Nor is it linked solely with the individual’s concern for the public good. Such recognition arises from the individual’s success as an investor in themself and from the maximization of their human capital. It is thus the most effective investor that best meets the requirements of a good member of society: only a homo oeconomicus can attain the status of homo politicus.26
The political heft of fitness in neoliberalism is neatly captured by the concept of “biological citizenship.” Sociologist Nikolas Rose emphasizes just how much, in liberal societies, concern for one’s body and health, the maximization of one’s vitality and potential, has become a kind of universal duty.27 Rose is particularly interested in the social and political implications of genetic engineering and stem cell research. According to Rose, it has become a requirement for good citizens to track suspected health issues down to the basic programming of the body, examine options for correction, and adapt their lifestyle accordingly.28
The concept of “biological citizenship” sharpens our awareness of the relationship between bodies, freedom, fitness, civic duties, and recognition. Liberal societies have in fact never done without biologically construed distinctions.29 For example, upon its founding, the American Republic declared liberty for all its core political principle, yet at the same time it long tied the degree of individual liberty and social recognition to “race,” “gender,” and “sexuality,” that is, to categories conceived in biological terms. And it was long asserted that only white men have the fundamental capacity to get fit and make meaningful decisions about their own bodies and lives. Feminists have fought against this idea since the nineteenth century (by composing an ode to cycling as a personal and political practice, for example).30 But it was only from the 1960s onward that the various civil rights movements prompted American society to shift away from the idea of fixed, biological categories. Although these categories persist in some measure to this day, they have certainly been shaken to their foundations. Belief in the malleability of societies, people, and bodies, meanwhile, has grown.31
This development, however, has changed what we might understand by “biological citizenship.” The shaping and optimization of one’s body, its capabilities and potential, that is, investment in one’s fitness, is now crucially important. Hence, distinctions made through the body are no longer necessarily distinctions between black and white or between male and female (though they still exist and are still very powerful). A culture and society in which fitness is a regulatory ideal distinguishes between “fit” and “unfit” bodies. In other words, there are people who can credibly show that they invest in themselves, work on themselves, and know how to tap their own potential. And then there are the others, who cannot demonstrate these attributes.32 The determination and ability to optimize the self are of great importance to the degree of one’s social and civil recognition, and the fundamental capacity for success or failure in this endeavor appears to show in the body and its form. Fat bodies have become the constitutive, contrasting counterpart to the fit, “capable” body and to the successful person in general. Fat is considered a sign of laziness, ineptitude, ignorance, and lack of discipline, of “wrong,” unhealthy behavior. The fat Statue of Liberty, then, stands for the failure of individuals, as well as the crisis of the nation and the liberal-democratic system.33
The roots of our age of fitness lie in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the ideas of liberalism, competition, and Darwinism were gaining traction. These concepts staked out a field that was the prerequisite for the emergence of fitness as principle and practice, and thus a sphere in which fatness could be grasped as a problem.34 I will explain this in more detail in the next chapter. For now, though, I will stay with the recent past, because a closer look at history since the 1970s helps us better comprehend the vehemence of the discourse of fitness in our immediate present.
Eating “right” since the Me Decade
In the age of fitness, eating right is one of society’s obsessions. The issue of what the “right” food might be leads us directly to the tensions between consumer society and the achievement-oriented society (Leistungsgesellschaft). Soon after World War II, during its “economic miracle” phase, Germany succumbed to a feeding frenzy. After years of deprivation, Germans could finally afford to splash out a little. Food was once again available in greater abundance, even if the average German family was still on a tight budget. In postwar America, consumption became the core activity of good citizens. Food was not the only element in the consumer republic of the 1950s, but it was a highly important one. It was increasingly manufactured industrially and – especially in the United States – consumed in a “progressive” and “modern” way, for example as a defrosted and heated-up TV dinner, or on the go at the first McDonald’s branches. The 1950s were the golden age of the food industry. It grew massively and its actions went largely unquestioned. Americans praised themselves as the best-fed people the world had ever seen. Soon, experts were talking about the end of hunger in America. Yet this applied chiefly to the growing white middle class. Critical press and TV reports, meanwhile, showed the emaciated bodies of African American children in the South, particularly Mississippi. Half the population was evidently starving in the country’s poorest and blackest state. In 1967, a TV documentary called Hunger in America (CBS) shocked the nation.35
In reality, then, the good news that Americans were the “best-fed people in world history” applied only to part of the population. In addition, since the 1950s, doubts had been raised as to whether these allegedly well-nourished people were also the fittest. Some questioned whether consumption, and if so, how much consumption, makes one sick and thus impedes one’s performance. The consequences of too much fatty and sweet food, too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, and too little exercise were subject to medical research and public debate. The main focus was on the heart attack, and soon experts had identified a correlation between weight or body fat and mortality. By the early 1950s, the press was already asserting that obesity was probably the greatest threat to human life in America. In a photo essay, LIFE magazine described excess weight as a plague.
Slowly but surely, corpulence was interpreted as dangerous, and ever less as a sign of success and wellbeing. The endangerment of middle-aged, white, middle-class men emerged as the dominant trope: men who worked too much, neglected themselves and, as it was expressed at the time, put their health and their lives on the line as they strove to provide for their families and contribute to society.36
