First, a confession: as far as physical fitness goes, my interest has at best been lacklustre. I was suspicious of the perceived sadistic intentions of PE teachers, and when, as a teenager, I accompanied my mum to a yoga class, I humiliated her by dissolving into tearful laughter during the chanting. I did, once, see the inside of a gym, but the experience did not leave a favourable impression. The ubiquity of the wall-to-wall mirrors gave the whole thing a masturbatory edge, I felt, and the “session” ended in disaster when I fell off the treadmill. I left, a fag in one hand and a Mars bar in the other, never to darken its doorway again.
So it is not for me to lecture you on your couch potato-ness. As far as antipathy to movement of any kind is concerned, I am one of you. But we are, nonetheless, in the grip of an obesity crisis, with statistics published this week revealing not only that 26% of adults are clinically obese, but 20% of children are too. The NHS’s body mass index survey also shows that a couple of primary schoolchildren weighed in at more than 20 stone. The parents of any child with an unhealthy BMI have been written to, though the letters have reportedly been toned down as last year they were too upsetting. This year they are “non-judgmental and positively phrased”.
It is against this backdrop that a new trend has been germinating: that of “fitspiration”. Born online, fitspiration seems to be a backlash against two things – the obesity crises in the United States and Britain, and the frightening internet subcultures of “thinspiration” and “pro-ana”. These websites collect images of extremely thin women, often juxtaposing them with mantras such as Kate Moss’s infamous “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, and memes such as “Reasons to lose weight” (example: “so I’ll look good from every angle”). They fetishise the “thigh gap” – a space present even when both feet are placed together – an unrealistic body ideal. To achieve a thigh gap you must either have a particular kind of skeleton or be very thin, and some teenagers who access these websites are starving themselves to get one. Tumblr and Instagram have banned hashtags related to the thinspo epidemic, and Twitter is under pressure to do so too.
In contrast, fitspiration operates under such mantras as “strong is the new skinny” and “fit not thin”. Its focus on images of athletic women have led some to hail it as a positive step, and it has now been transposed offline, with the model Daisy Lowe fronting a newspaper campaign. I can see why it’s interpreted as a breath of fresh air. If thinspiration is “weakness” (of the emaciated brittle body, but not the mind – it takes a terrifying kind of fixated resolve to subject your body to starvation), then it makes sense that fitspiration has set itself up as “strength”. Thinspo’s waifs take up scant space, while the toned but lithe muscles of fitspo dominate the image. Some see this strength as empowering. When looking at Lowe, I feel it myself. She looks sensational; in control.
And yet I also question whether this is a good thing for women, and I exclude men from this because it is predominantly women who are supposed to take inspiration from such images. The impetus to compare is natural for all of us, but it is also seen as particularly female – we are encouraged to compete with one another. A recent article about male teenage bodybuilders reported many of them cite impressing girls as a reason for bulking up. Women, meanwhile, have internalised their self-loathing, nourishing it with images of “superior” beings. Mining that hatred for personal gain, even if that personal gain is ultimately for the good, is disturbing.
Physical fitness is important in a country where we eat on average an obscene 3,450 calories a day. I am lazy, yes, but the promotion of exercise is still vital. I have always been suspicious of those elements of the fat acceptance movement that fly in the face of medical consensus, by arguing that health is independent of body weight. I see their lobbying as akin to a group of eating disorder sufferers arguing that their methods are healthy. The health letters sent to parents, with their references to cancer and heart disease, should not have been toned down. I see obesity – where it is not the result of an underlying health condition – as disordered eating. It has dangerous consequences.
This is why I doubt that fitspo will be the thing to solve this crisis. Not only can it inflict an unattainable body type, but it uses the same methods as thinspiration to push you to desire it. Looking at a beautiful, thin woman is unlikely to make most people feel better, because it encourages you to compare your hopeless self with her. It does not tackle what is so often the underlying cause of obesity – unhappiness. That extra biscuit or four to make the day just that bit brighter. The inertia following the late-night binge. The cycle of guilt and chips and hopelessness and envy. The void that wants filling.
Exercise can fill that void, for some. We know it boosts serotonin. But the act of looking and comparing doesn’t. It feeds off it. Like thinspo, it comes from a dark place.
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