American Fitness: Gender, Wellness, and the New Body Politic

American Fitness:Gender, Wellness, and the New Body Politic Sarah Schrank (bio) Bill Hayes, Sweat: A History of Exercise. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. 246 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $28.00 Danielle Friedman, Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2022. xxiii +328 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $27.00 Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2022. 345 pp. Notes. $28.99 Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 424 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $29.00 Annie Weisman, creator. Physical. Apple TV+, Seasons 1 and 2. 2021–2022. Among the many challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic was the uncomfortably embodied nature of the experience. Millions of people got sick, millions died, millions felt physically trapped—unable to travel distances or even leave their homes—millions found it hard to get basic supplies, and millions discovered that, at some cost to waistline and bankbook, alcohol and food delivery services could smooth the pandemic's rougher edges. Millions also suffered great loneliness caused by physical isolation while others, conversely, suffered upticks in domestic violence as forced proximity stressed relationships to the breaking point.1 Surgical masks became rarified items, and wearing homemade masks became a political signifier. We might not be able to see each other's faces but we could read positionality through the body—is the mask covering their nose? Is their body six feet away from mine? In the United States, along with the closure of schools and workplaces, the 2020 shuttering of gyms, health clubs, yoga shalas, and dance studios brought [End Page 198] home the stark reality that familiar life had altered—possibly forever. Panic set in. Americans who incorporated exercise into their daily routines had to make changes very quickly. Those who could afford to invested in home gyms; there was a run on kettlebells almost immediately. Peloton, a company many of us had never heard of, became, practically overnight, a bourgeois household utility. The global adoption of Zoom meant that people could take live exercise classes of all types from the safety and convenience of their own homes. Some people started walking their dogs a lot more than their pets needed while others just threw in the towel. Who cares about BMI (body mass index) when the world feels like it's ending? As it turns out, we do care—often for conflicting and self-defeating reasons—and there is a bumper crop of new work to prove it. That it was all brought to press (or air) during the pandemic is a coincidence, as the projects had to be in production—or at least conceived—long before, but it is hard not to see the zeitgeist in it, too. Readers of Reviews in American History surely remember the almost daily editorials and op-eds in the New York Times and other news outlets on the effects of the pandemic on our bodies, minds, souls, and national conscience. One must not forget, too, the gruesome lynching of George Floyd whose dying words, "I can't breathe," tragically echoed the lament of novel coronavirus patients and brought a new generation of protesters into the streets. To even a casual observer, the coverage of physical, mental, spiritual, and institutional breakdowns demonstrated how one even thought about the pandemic was mediated by racial, class, and gender inequality: the health and fitness of Americans—or lack thereof—directly reflected that of the body politic. This is not the first time there has been a flurry of academic and popular interest in the history of the American body and its relationship to exercise. In response, partly, to the array of new fitness options—Jazzercise, aerobics, Nautilus—the 1980s saw new scholarship that contemplated why exercise—physical effort for the purpose of health and longevity—seemed to be so American. This was not to suggest that purposive exercise began in the United States—it did not—but there did seem to be something about the rigor, discipline...