Karin Andersson
Dept. of Sport Sciences, Malmö University
“Exercise is good for you”, “we need to be health conscious”, and “eat less sugar.” These and similar statements have become truisms, that is, ideas that we accept as being true without hesitating. It follows that there are dominant ideas on what constitutes health and how health should be achieved. These ideas accumulate to hegemonic understandings of health that have become deep seated in society. Although leading a health-conscious lifestyle may have many positive effects both for individuals and states, health has also become attached to morality, which potentially contributes to exclusionary practices where individuals are diagnosed based on their perceived healthiness.
In response to the increasing interest in personal health, fitness studios have become one of the most popular venues to tend to one’s health. Still, exercise is more than just movement. The fitness industry fuels consumption and an accompanying fitness culture that has social, political, and economical bearing. Alongside globalization, international and hybrid fitness communities have emerged. One example is Les Mills International (LMI) a New-Zealand-based community that is active in more than 100 countries and reach approximately six million exercisers weekly with their pre-choreographed group fitness classes.
For this article, which concludes my dissertation project, I interviewed 22 LMI group fitness instructors who were actively teaching LMI classes in Austria. The interviews were analyzed using a Foucauldian genealogical approach to explore how a hegemonic health consciousness creates a discursive space for the respondents to choose health and position themselves in relation to health risks. The analysis deconstructs the respondent’s consensus on health to learn about the power relations that govern their professional practices. The results show that eliminating risks to health is an imperative to the instructors, which is traced back to a dichotomy between ‘disciplined training’ and ‘fun training’, where fun training is seen as feminine and risky. Moreover, in a postfeminist manner, all instructors are expected to choose health since inequalities have allegedly been eliminated. Lastly, instructors manifest their health literacy through skeptical consumerism – choosing health for the sacrifice of fun or finding fun in the fatigue.
Copyright @ Karin Andersson 2024
