Try to go a day without seeing fitness content on Instagram Stories, especially from those who participate in dynamic lifestyles. Think glistening, activewear-clad individuals on the SkiErg machine, Strava maps overlaid on running footage, and mirror selfies taken while casually perched on the Reformer. They are inevitable. You also see the fine dining meals at 7pm, the view from behind the DJ booth at 2am, followed by the morning run at 7am. Apparently it is not just the fitness junkie who cares about creatine, but also the multifaceted creative director who is on the seeding list of Gentle Monster and who collects vintage Dries [Van Noten]. As we engage in activities from spin classes and hot yoga to bouldering and pickleball, fitness often presents itself as a trendy accessory to be seen, rather than the pursuit of wellness.

Fitness is not a new concept. Activities like Jazzercise from the 1970s and Zumba from the aughts (which have now significantly plummeted in popularity) posit that the functional benefits they claim to imbue with consistent practice almost become secondary to the social-and aesthetic-led interests they provide. “There are just fewer people interested in spinning now,” I once heard a friend say. Suppose the cardio-related benefits and boost of serotonin remain after every 45-minute session, why is there a phenomenon of phasing out when fitness has always been a game of consistency and discipline?

What had once been an unglamorous part of the routine, or almost anti-fashion, working out became front and centre with the proliferation of the athleisure phenomenon in the 2010s. Leggings were presented as “real pants”, designer wedge sneakers, and scuba-ready neoprene became mainstays in fashion. A global pandemic then heightened the general emphasis on health and wellness, solidifying fitness as more than just a tucked-away, after-hours kind of activity. Hollywood, too, began presenting bodies in ways that were more fitness-forward than ever before. As Jeremy Allen White’s physique gets seared into the public conscience the same way Chris Evans once did, wearing his Under Armour compression shirt as Captain America — chefs to superheroes and villains alike have taken on extremely fit appearances, even if brawn alone is not central to their character arcs. Even the Jonathan Anderson-designed costumes for Challengers (2024) turned tennis into a high- octane sport that combined drama and sexual tension.

 

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If thinness were heralded as the prime ideal of the late 1990s and early 2000s, then does the fitness-obsessed present we now live in serve as a resurgence of our body obsession? Rather than frowning over blatant fatphobia, the fitness trend we immerse ourselves in becomes coded language that has undercurrents of championing skinniness, updated with extra muscle mass for a touch of toneness. Here is why the concept of “Pilates body” becomes a mirage in a desert for some, where the allure of being able to look a certain way through weekly 50-minute sessions sounds extremely enticing, when the reality is: any body type can ease into a long spine and scorpion pose with sufficient practice. It is just more marketable to bank on the halo effect. In Laura Pitcher’s article for Dazed, she wrote about a subject who trained incessantly as a way to control his body image and feel in control of his own life, skipping out on social activities and vacations that did not cater to his fitness lifestyle. While the health benefits are undeniable, she claims that overexercising “made us boring” in ways that the gym was used for mood modifications and emotional avoidance. “It becomes an issue when the pursuit of fitness comes at the cost of other equally important factors, like socialising,” she wrote. When world tennis champion Serena Williams was announced as the spokesperson of a GLP-1 company, the same drug behind the name brand Ozempic, there was public outcry. It led to some wondering: if someone who has had record-breaking feats, which undoubtedly present her as someone who is objectively fit, had felt the need to be thin, then what kind of weight does fitness carry in terms of our priorities? Though she admitted to training about five hours a day on The Today Show, Williams saw the extra weight as an opponent that she needed to tackle. Chosen for the exact reason that she “did not seem like the person who needed GLP-1”, the act that was once a personal choice, if not for a multi-year ambassadorship, further expounded the idea that underneath notions of wellness still lay the deep-rooted societal rejection of fatness.

Imagine my shock at my first personal training session after I told the trainer my goal was to lose weight, only to be casually told: “Well, go on a calorie deficit. That’s mostly a diet thing”. Given the onslaught of shiny, chiselled bodies that were constantly shown mid-workout, I had come to believe fitness was all it took to achieve said appearance. To be clear, I was happy committing three hours a week to being bossed around with dumbbells and perfecting my form on the squat rack if that meant not having to give up on the hotpot meals and midnight ramen. Upon this revelation, I realised this was not the answer I had hoped for, but the mindset that was necessary for me to sustain the then-newfound fitness journey. I still trained hard to be stronger, but I shifted my mindset, breaking up the Pavlovian response of equating exercising to weight loss. Whatever the trending sports activity was, it became a way to spend time with friends, or feeling like I was part of the culture as I made circles with my feet while suspended by straps in mid-air — what extra calories I burnt were bonus.