Lily Forrester and Zoomcatchers are at it again!

Join us as we mystify the ordinary!

Exploring the nature of the least likely fallout from the Vietnam War, Lily is joined by guests Shelly and Mindy to unpack the complex relations underlying the group fitness industry.

This episode navigates its complicated webs of power, from gender dynamics to parasocial relationships, starting at its roots and into the present day.

Lily defines concepts such as cultural relativism and structural anthropology as they apply to modern-day group fitness.

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#anthropology #zoomcatchers

Hello and welcome back to Life and Anth!

If you weren't with us last week, then welcome to the show.

I'm your host, Lily Forrester,

and I'm here to take you through the world of anthropology through fun mini studies.

We do this to address one of the biggest issues in the discipline.

It's exclusive cycle of academic reproduction.

We want to get you involved so that, together,

we can create a more equitable world of anthropologists

and drive the future of the field.

If you remember the concepts we learned last week,

you'll have a jumpstart on this week's topic, but if not, no worries.

In our case study of the relationship between Wellesley

College and the town of Wellesley,

we discuss the importance of a person's positionality or

how their specific experiences

and inherent traits affect their relationship with the subject,

as well as the emic and etic perspectives,

or the insider's vs outsider's perspective.

These concepts will remain relevant throughout our discussion today.

And guys, this is a fun one!

Welcome to Touchy Subjects.

Let's get into it!

To start today's discussion, I'm gonna take you back in time

to the tail end of the 1960s.

Here in the US the golden era of the early decade erupted in

flames as the country became

more and more deeply entrenched in the Vietnam War and a war on

poverty raged on our home soil.

Despite the prevalence of the draft, members of the Air Force

were predominantly volunteers,

occupying what many agreed to be the most prestigious branch of the military.

The exact demographic information of the US Air Force Academy in the

late 1960s is difficult to find,

but to offer a bit of perspective, the Academy's class of 2025,

according to their own published information, was made up of 13%

first generation college students,

less than half of the national average, and less than 6% of students

who spoke another language at home.

This undoubtedly represents a structural privilege among the students

attending the Air Force Academy.

And while these statistics are unreliable for the time period in question,

it is unlikely that they differ drastically in comparison.

At this point, you may be wondering why we've dwelled

so long on the Air Force and the Vietnam War, and who goes where.

How does it all tie in?

Well, here's what's interesting.

For nearly each well off volunteer who entered the Vietnam War in the Air Force,

left behind was often a young wife.

I won't crack down on gender relations just yet, expect

them later, but this falls

on the heels of second wave feminism when women's desire for social equality,

as well as the pervasive beauty standard at the time coalesced

to bring women in America into the world of fitness.

Thus was born group aerobics, the brainchild of Dr.

Kenneth Cooper, Air Force physician, made popular among paying

Air Force wives by dancer, Jackie Sorenson, who offered

quickly duplicated classes

that guaranteed a slim physique for when their men returned from war.

Group fitness in the US has evolved in several iterations since its roots.

From jazzercise to spin and now to yoga and Pilates, group fitness

has grown into an over 30 billion industry in America alone,

and has created a strong reputation of its culture,

represented often in movies and TV.

If you heard episode one, you'll recall that a relevant piece of my positionality

is my employment at a spin studio.

As I guide you through this case study of the structures of power

within a group fitness space,

be sure to factor in my internal biases, as well as your own.

Once again, I brought along some pseudo interlocutors to offer their expertise.

First up is Shelly.

I'm Shelly Tallarino, and I'm now 55.

I moved to Los Angeles from Seattle and started going to community college.

I took some electives and I started doing weight training

and taking just more and more classes and getting really interested in

the human body and how it works.

And so then got, certified in personal training and started doing boot camps

and private classes and working in gyms.

It's, kind of like therapy in a way.

Shelly is based in LA and operates regularly as both

an instructor and a client.

Next up is Mindy.

So my name is Mindy.

I'm okay giving my last name.

It's Beach.

I got into group fitness teaching about 20 years ago.

I started with hot yoga.

I got a great little studio and fell in love with it.

Mindy and Shelly each have instructed both strength

building and yoga classes,

but while their clients share a similar interest in fitness, they're

situated in vastly different settings,

both geographically and culturally.

Moving out to Western Loudoun,

we are primarily surrounded by people that look like me,

white, upper middle class.

And that is who typically I believe in my experience of two decades of this,

that is primarily the population of people that are attending group fitness classes.

They have SoulCycle out here, and that has a lot of

different, that's like male, female.

But you know what Lily, it's mostly white.

And I think a lot of that has to do with the cost of classes.

They're expensive.

There's this one workout, that started like before the pandemic.

It started in New York.

It's called The Class.

You could even look it up.

It's really interesting.

And, there's one here now on Main Street and it's kind of

set up like a yoga studio.

The music is amazing.

The acoustics are better.

It's really expensive.

I think it's at least $30 just for 55 minutes and you're on your, on a yoga mat,

but you, it's just dancing like and doing, you know, like just different movements

and breathing and that's pretty much all white women.

This way, unfortunately, in Western Loudoun are really drawn to CrossFit.

I think CrossFitters tend to be pretty Republican out here in Western Loudon.

It's the mindset.

These two settings create two different world views, two different

moral codes and sets of rules.

An event that might be considered acceptable in one classroom

might not in the other.

Herein lies the controversial concept of cultural relativism,

which states that there is no way to determine right and wrong

because there are infinite iterations of culture within a space.

There's the culture of yoga, of course, but within that, there's the

culture created in Shelly's class and

the culture created in Mindy's class, and a set of explicit and implicit rules

that clients adhere to when they enter.

Because of the human incapacity to reduce all variables from each overlapping

set of social structures to a single standard, determining a

universal moral code is impossible.

As I said, this concept of cultural relativism is highly

contested and philosophers tend

to take a stringent stance against it.

To simplify this complex concept, as anthropologists,

how we can apply this in listening is to understand the perspectives

of each of our interlocutors in the context of their own classes'

cultures, rather than trying to compare merit.

Now, power and privilege, our favorite subject in anthropology,

and a unique angle we take today in our study.

The other day while scrolling through my feed,

I came across a video of a personal trainer who demonstrated his

practices with his female clients.

He labeled the first one single, placed his hands on her hips and

his pelvis on her body while she hinged forward into a deadlift.

The second he labeled in a relationship and he took half a step back as

she completed the same motion.

The third he labeled married and he stepped several yards back.

This video, one in a million of its kind, acted as the

impetus for our first inquiry.

How does power display itself through touch in the recreational fitness space?

I have found myself less and less inclined to put hands on people.

I do, I think that correct form is very important because

you could hurt yourself or if you're, you know, like not, squatting

properly or your knees going in,

or if you like jumped certain way, you could hurt your body.

In the US the group fitness industry has generally moved away from

physical contact as a mode of correction, likely for liability reasons.

Physical touch, though a very helpful tool for form correction in fitness,

can exacerbate existent power imbalances and is prevalent much

beyond this industry as well.

It's important to note that physical touch used properly within the

space is not sexually driven,

but that physical touch is a power granted only to those

most privileged within a space.

In this case, the instructor holds the highest position of power

within the bounds of the room,

and therefore is the only actor permitted to make contact.

Interesting, also, is the visible demonstration of power as form correction

is often carried out as the instructor moves through the

room from client to client.

They're typically the only person not bound to a specific spot.

granted freedom of movement.

Here we must deconstruct a complicated web of power relations.

The video I referenced involves a male trainer and female clients,

in which the trainer exhibits two forms of power, the structural

power of his male identity,

as well as his fluid power within the space.

Our interlocutors exhibit, only the latter.

This can be complicated as group fitness classes are culturally gendered female.

And though we are working with two female instructors today, gender

operates on structures of power.

This is what is known as a structuralist argument.

Structuralism has generally fallen out of favor within the discipline,

but is a useful exercise in this case.

It suggests that society and cultures are nothing more than a series of structures

into which specific actors fall.

Relevant in this example is the structure of the patriarchy.

This school of thought argues that men themselves are not the patriarchy,

but that the patriarchy is simply a structure of power which interacts

with other structures of power,

and men, women and everyone in between fall into specific roles because of it.

Structuralism breaks nearly every relationship down into an

analysis of power and privilege

though the field has evolved since its prime, which we'll

discuss in future episodes.

In my anthropological opinion, though, there are still several relevant

applications of structuralism.

This one included.

I've stopped touching people years ago because, quite frankly,

about 15 or 16 years ago, I was blurring the lines myself.

The experience that Mindy describes is a reflection on

how these structures of power can play out when they're altered within a space.

Though women do not as frequently feel entitled to utilize the power of touch,

when their positions of power are altered, perhaps by the assigned title

"instructor", that powerful tendency to touch is altered in parallel.

Yeah.

One of my instructors still does, she'll ask permission.

I do always ask,

do you mind if I touch you?

And most everybody's okay with that.

Yeah.

I think correcting the form is really important.

Remember cultural relativism?

This is especially prevalent in discussion of consent within the fitness space.

Anthropologist, Dominika Czarnecka completed an ethnography on the role of

touch and Pilates in Warsaw, Poland, during which an instructor told her,

"this management of other people's bodies is much easier than in Western countries

because of social acceptance.

And then when you have an instructor that was brought up in a different

culture, where you need consent for everything, for taking someone's hand,

for nodding the head or something, well, then it's a bit different."

So here we see that consent with regards to physical touch in the

fitness space is culturally relative.

What is true of a class in the US may not be true of a class in Poland.

Czarnecka's interlocutor also mentioned that should a client

prefer not to be touched,

they have the right to elect to attend class with a different instructor.

This ability to choose represents the fluidity of

power that is bound to a space.

The instructor only has power within the four walls

of their classroom and presides only over those presently in attendance.

Let's shift gears and talk a little bit about the unique relationship between

instructor and client our second inquiry today.

I have personally engaged with several instructors,

many of whom I consider good friends.

I have also witnessed months of interactions between

client and instructor,

so I have extensive exposure to the subject.

In my view, the relationship between client and instructor veers closer to

friendship than it does authority and subordinate, which may be more relevant

to the organized sports space, but it is not without its complications.

I'll go to now people's homes and work out with them, and I know

all about them, their life story,

their parents, their kids, their, you know, like problems.

And so it's kind of like a bartender or a hairdresser also.

Like they just open up and talk to me.

And now that I'm older, a lot of my clients are, that I'm working with are

elderly clients and I think that they enjoy just getting

physical and I still do push them.

I know what they can and cannot do, but I think they also enjoy,

somebody coming over and just talking to them.

And I'm a pretty positive, upbeat person, and so I think that that helps too.

I would say what I've noticed, especially when I was a bit younger,

this is gonna sound very strange, but idolizing is not the right word.

I do think people tend to hold maybe a group fitness

teacher that they really like.

A lot of times people will confuse that with putting someone on a

pedestal that shouldn't be there.

A fitness class generally runs from about 45 minutes to an hour and a half,

during which time, the instructor is expected to be the only speaker,

the only person facing their clients, who operate a bit like an audience.

During this time, they may celebrate the successes in the class, make jokes,

tell stories, and even directly address individuals throughout.

It is this micro celebrity that creates the groundwork

for a parasocial relationship,

in which clients begin to know their instructors and desire for

their instructors to know them too.

This concept of parasocial relationships has become increasingly relevant through

the rise of social media influencers, but was particularly pervasive on

YouTube at its height in the mid-2010s.

A similarity between these two platforms, a group fitness

class and the YouTube channel

is the ability of one party to speak and the inability of the other to respond.

In my experience, I have not witnessed the abuse of power

in a parasocial relationship in the fitness space, but that does not mean

that such power cannot be abused.

In the video I referenced early on, a man leave anonymous, left a comment saying,

"single is why I love teaching class" as if to say the ability to touch

women is a primary joy of his job.

And that ability, that entitlement to enact that power

is granted through the structures of power present within that space.

Recreational fitness is just a small example I picked to

represent these concepts.

There is not a single space or a single culture in the world that

is immune to structures of power,

and it is essential to examine each one and how they interact.

These concepts have existed on much larger scales with much more damaging effects

across the globe throughout all of time.

So I must stress that this is not a denouncement.

Recreational fitness is one of my very favorite activities.

To recap today, we covered the concepts of cultural relativism and

its controversial stance on moral code, structuralist, anthropology, and the

modern parasocial relationship as they apply to the recreational fitness space.

If you didn't get all of it this time around, no worries.

There are so many applications of this and we are sure to touch on all of it again.

Anthropology is in many ways a big circle.

If you liked this episode, please leave us a review.

We're super excited to build this project out and we wanna hear from you.

and if you have suggestions for topics to cover,

drop us a comment on our YouTube channel and we'll get right to work.

Stay tuned for more episodes to come, and by all means,

go ruin some parties with your new found knowledge.