In America, Fitness is Political

Photo via Everett collection/Shutterstock

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America loves fitness. Despite the U.S.’s inferior health status compared to other developed countries, its wellness industry is valued at over $2 trillion. From commercial fitness to a multi-billion dollar supplement market, American wellness is an economic powerhouse. 

The wellness industry’s monetary value defines America’s approach to health. Unlike its European counterparts, which favor a holistic approach, American fitness is centered around individuality, self-improvement, and personal accountability. This mindset began with the origin of physical fitness in America around the mid-1920s. Modern definitions of fitness, such as weightlifting and gym memberships, were obsolete concepts until President Eisenhower introduced the Council on Youth Fitness. Established in 1956, the program aimed to address the disparities between American children and their healthier, fitter European peers. America’s infatuation with fitness would continue to grow in the following decades, specifically under John F. Kennedy’s administration. The president’s article “The Soft American” established a relationship between the government and physical health, directly linking America’s ability to defend itself during wartime with its fitness level. 

Fresh off a tumultuous, war-ridden start to the 20th century, Kennedy’s equating physical health with national security began America’s obsession with wellness. World Wars I and II resulted in a strong military influence on America’s health expectations. While this approach certainly set the tone for a more health-conscious America, the post-war context created a combined national perception of health standards and militarization. For example, Kennedy’s infamous 50-mile hike was traditionally performed by military personnel until he normalized public participation in the challenge. This linkage between the military and the public sphere grew amidst the Cold War, as many Americans became increasingly health-conscious out of fear that they were physically inferior to their Soviet counterparts. Government involvement continued to grow throughout the later years of the Cold War, with America’s newfound militarized fitness philosophy persisting into the 21st century. 

Nearly 34 years after the Cold War, the relationship between politics and wellness culture continues to linger. From a socioeconomic perspective, wellness is politicized by its affordability. According to Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, author of “Fit Nation” and contemporary historian at the New School, America’s free-market approach to wellness divides consumers into those who can and cannot afford the industry’s goods and services. This compartmentalizes the commercial side of health based on multiple factors including class and race, transforming wellness into a priced commodity rather than an integrated facet of daily life.

When the availability of the wellness lifestyle depends on affordability, its practice becomes individualized. These individualized approaches to wellness diminish the social aspect of fitness development, limiting wellness to physical capability and aesthetics and ultimately ignoring the importance of emotional health in wellness. The implications of this ignorance are prevalent in multiple modern cultural phenomena. 

Most prominent is the politicization of fitness within far-right online spaces dedicated to extreme forms of masculinity, often dubbed the manosphere. The manosphere differs from typical lifestyle content by limiting wellness and its physicality. Through this concept, the manosphere weaponizes fitness and opposes modern feminism, redefining self-improvement as a tool in the broader American culture wars. By appropriating wellness through health-based content, the manosphere persuades young men to positively associate physical fitness with far-right ideology. Similar to the wellness hysteria of the Cold War, the revival of fitness within the manosphere reflects a desire for control and superiority against left-wing progressivism. 

The manosphere’s extremism and fixation on physical fitness are advertised as a solution to the uncertainty of America’s political state. The content promoted within this online sphere equates physical strength and dominance—a superficial keynote of traditional masculinity—with promises of support from a community of like-minded individuals. In turn, it supplements what American wellness is missing: interpersonality and community. This sets the tone for hostility, hyper-masculinity, and aggressiveness to condition individuals to adopt surface-level solutions to pervasive cultural divides. American wellness is more than a health approach: it is a rhetorical device that sets standards and defines our cultural state. 

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This article was edited by Graham Thoresen and Emily Sauget.