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Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America
From Charles Atlas to Jane Fonda, the fitness movement has been a driving force in American culture for more than half a century. What started as a means of Cold War preparedness now sees 45 million Americans spend more than $20 billion a year on gym memberships, running shoes, and other fitness-related products.
In this first book on the modern history of exercise in America, Shelly McKenzie chronicles the governmental, scientific, commercial, and cultural forces that united—sometimes unintentionally—to make exercise an all-American habit. She tracks the development of a new industry that gentrified exercise and made the pursuit of fitness the hallmark of a middle-class lifestyle. Along the way she scrutinizes a number of widely held beliefs about Americans and their exercise routines, such as the link between diet and exercise and the importance of workplace fitness programs.
While Americans have always been keen on cultivating health and fitness, before the 1950s people who were preoccupied with their health or physique were often suspected of being homosexual or simply odd. As McKenzie reveals, it took a national panic about children’s health to galvanize the populace and launch President Eisenhower’s Council on Youth Fitness. She traces this newborn era through TV trailblazer Jack La Lanne’s popularization of fitness in the ’60s, the jogging craze of the ’70s, and the transformation of the fitness movement in the ’80s, when the emphasis shifted from the individual act of running to the shared health-club experience. She also considers the new popularity of yoga and Pilates, reflecting today’s emphasis on leanness and flexibility in body image.
In providing the first real cultural history of the fitness movement, McKenzie goes beyond simply recounting exercise trends to reveal what these choices say about the people who embrace them. Her examination also encompasses battles over food politics, nutrition problems like our current obesity epidemic, and people left behind by the fitness movement because they are too poor to afford gym memberships or basic equipment.
In a country where most of us claim to be regular exercisers, McKenzie’s study challenges us to look at why we exercise—or at least why we think we should—and shows how fitness has become a vitally important part of our American identity.
In this first book on the modern history of exercise in America, Shelly McKenzie chronicles the governmental, scientific, commercial, and cultural forces that united—sometimes unintentionally—to make exercise an all-American habit. She tracks the development of a new industry that gentrified exercise and made the pursuit of fitness the hallmark of a middle-class lifestyle. Along the way she scrutinizes a number of widely held beliefs about Americans and their exercise routines, such as the link between diet and exercise and the importance of workplace fitness programs.
While Americans have always been keen on cultivating health and fitness, before the 1950s people who were preoccupied with their health or physique were often suspected of being homosexual or simply odd. As McKenzie reveals, it took a national panic about children’s health to galvanize the populace and launch President Eisenhower’s Council on Youth Fitness. She traces this newborn era through TV trailblazer Jack La Lanne’s popularization of fitness in the ’60s, the jogging craze of the ’70s, and the transformation of the fitness movement in the ’80s, when the emphasis shifted from the individual act of running to the shared health-club experience. She also considers the new popularity of yoga and Pilates, reflecting today’s emphasis on leanness and flexibility in body image.
In providing the first real cultural history of the fitness movement, McKenzie goes beyond simply recounting exercise trends to reveal what these choices say about the people who embrace them. Her examination also encompasses battles over food politics, nutrition problems like our current obesity epidemic, and people left behind by the fitness movement because they are too poor to afford gym memberships or basic equipment.
In a country where most of us claim to be regular exercisers, McKenzie’s study challenges us to look at why we exercise—or at least why we think we should—and shows how fitness has become a vitally important part of our American identity.
254 pages, Hardcover
First published June 12, 2013
About the author
Shelly McKenzie
3 booksShelly McKenzie, an independent scholar, holds a Ph. D. from George Washington University, where she has taught writing and American studies.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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July 4, 2021Getting Physical explores the historical foundations of today’s fitness culture by unpacking its roots in the 1950s with the cultural and political/governmental rise of “exercise” and then tracking it through the 1980s gym culture. (I also enjoyed her chapter on jogging in the 1960s and 1970s.) She shows how fitness comes to be not just socially accepted but also moralized, at the same time that we managed to think of fitness as work rather than leisure, as enhancement and optimization rather than fun.
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June 26, 2026Fitness
April 13, 2014
I saw this at the library and wanted to see what the author had to say about "The Rise of Fitness Culture in America" per the subtitle. I am a gym rat and fitness seeker and this book puts the whole fitness movement in perspective as the movement has grown and changed over many decades. I am better able to put my own motivation is perspective and question my own reasons for wanting to be more fit.
February 24, 2015
pretty interesting look at fitness in american society within the recent past.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews