This article is from WeChat official account:Youthology Youthology (ID: openyouthology001) , author: Lydiaaa, title picture from: Vision China
A few hundred meters from home to the supermarket, I received three flyers one after another, from nearby gyms, swimming pools, and yoga studios: “Miss Sister, summer is here, are you still up?”
Indeed, “weight loss” and “fitness” are the intermittent mantras of many girls, and they appear most frequently in summer. The flag of sports can stand from winter to summer. When it is never completed, we seem to have never been satisfied with our body.
Although more and more women are aware of the existence of “body shaming”(body shaming), they have begun to reflect on the “white thin young” The pursuit. However, in reality, women’s “body anxiety” does not disappear so easily. Every summer, the sense of urgency for weight loss and fitness may be a side reflection.
The female community has now become the main force in the fitness industry. In the fitness software Keep and the offline physical store Keepland, there are far more female users than men. In the traditional image of the male field-gym, in fact, the proportion of female users has accounted for about 70%. Online, most of the popular videos in the fitness area of station B are targeted at women.
Why are more and more women starting to exercise? What is the connection between fitness and body anxiety? Why “I know the truth”, but it is still difficult to escape “body anxiety”?
How do women walk into the gym?
In American history, women were not involved in fitness until the 1960s. At that time, women sweating profusely in public spaces were “not lady enough”, let alone exercising in public. And “exercise fitness is part of masculinity.” Women’s exercise was once considered unsafe and would damage fertility. At most, women do simple stretching exercises in pajamas at home.
“A Century of Women’s Fitness Style Evolution” video
Furthermore, at that time, “slimness” was the most important part of femininity. Middle-class women used all kinds of devices that now seem ridiculous to eliminate cellulite.
©Network
Later with the development of the women’s liberation movement, women also began to redefine the aesthetics of their bodies. In the 1980s, the well-known movie star Jane Fonda (Jane·Fond)’s aerobics videos were all the rage and became a landmark event in the history of women’s fitness. It promotes the trend of women’s sports, and shows the beauty of muscles and lines.
Jane Fonda Aerobics Album Cover ©flicker
Women’s entry into the fitness field has a liberating side. Fitness is originally an activity to enhance masculinity, but in the traditional male gaze, “quiet”, “small” and “fragile” are the characteristics of women. When women start to exercise, they break through these constraints to a certain extent. Through exercise, women can take the initiative to grasp and shape their bodies, which in itself is a kind of empowerment.
Nowadays, there are more and more powerful female figures appearing in the public eye, and they are respected and recognized by people. There are many female fitness bloggers/kols on social media. They love sports, sweat and dark skin. Such images are also loved and followed by many people. Everyone no longer buys the aesthetics of “white, thin and young”, and related figure marketing has frequently overturned, such as the “comic waist” challenge initiated by Yang Mi some time ago-in order to highlight the soft and thin waist of women, they made a kind of harmful to the body. The action caused a lot of controversy.
©Network
Contemporary women also pay more attention to their own subjectivity when they exercise. From the posts of fitness groups and social media, we can see that women use “physical health” and “becoming a better self” as reasons to motivate themselves to exercise.
©Network
The more you get fit, the more “anxious your body is”?
However, after getting rid of the gaze of others, can women no longer worry about their bodies and exercise freely? Maybe it’s not that simple.
Realistic situations are always contradictory. On the one hand, we can realize that “slimness” should not be the only criterion. Some extreme ways to lose weight may even bring harm to the body, and be wary of humiliating fat girls. (body shaming); but on the other hand, when we look at the fat on our body, we still find it hard to deal with it. Although the indexes are normal, Still put “weight loss” on the lips, and want to be thinner and thinner.
According to the “China Fitness Trend Survey 2020” jointly released by the Shanghai Institute of Physical Education and the ACSM of the American College of Sports Medicine, weight loss exercise ranks first on the trend list, and weight loss is still a rigid demand in the fitness market. And on social media, content such as “xx days thin xx catties” and “slimming challenges” emerge in endlessly, and various fitness bloggers, sports platforms and offline gyms will also launch a large number of “fat burning training”, “slimming training camps” and other projects. .
In addition to reducing fat, “shaping” is another big demand of bodybuilders. Many women do not necessarily care about physical indicators, but hope to obtain a better posture and more “temperament” through fitness, which has gradually formed a new “good body””Standards. With the emergence of a group of fitness bloggers and Xiaohongshu fitness kols, the standards for a good figure are getting higher and higher, and fitness has become “involved.”
A good figure in the social media era is no longer thin or slim in general, but is composed of countless “perfect parts” combinations: including but not limited to swan necks, right-angled shoulders, Butterfly back, waistcoat line, peach hips, female group legs…from head to toe, every body part and even every muscle has a perfect standard, and is given an image and easy-to-spread name. With the spread of more and more nouns, we are becoming more and more anxious.
©DT Finance
At the same time, although women’s fitness aims to break through the stereotype of “white, thin and young”, so that women can also have the beauty of muscle and strength, we can still see the gender difference in some popular fitness teaching videos. .
For example, the “trapezius muscle” is an advantage for men to have trapezius muscle and a thick back, which can only be obtained through hard training; and for women, it looks like a “trapezius”, ” “Trapezius” is the object that needs to be eliminated through training. There is also the term “women’s team legs”, which not only means that the legs are thin, but also that they cannot have large obvious muscles. In many stovepipe sports videos, it is important to do some exercises to avoid muscle legs. What is even more exaggerated is that for the purpose of slender calves, some people even perform “calf muscle blockade” plastic surgery that may be harmful to health when it is not necessary for health.
©Network
For some female bodybuilders, muscles can be present, but they must grow where they are: abdominal muscles are best, tight arms are also needed, but muscles in the back and calves are avoided. , Otherwise it will look too strong. The subtext still violates “femininity”.
Actually, there is no problem with fitness or the pursuit of partial shaping. It’s just that the standard for a good figure in the fitness narrative is still single, but it has changed from “white and thin” to something more ” “Healthy”, “fitness” vest line, swan arm. The “perfect body” is still homogenous: it must be slender and well-proportioned, with beautiful muscle lines, young, energetic, and healthy… We have jumped into another set of new standards and body disciplines , On the contrary, the more fitness, the more anxiety.
Fitness is of course an independent choice, and there is also a part of women’s self-empowerment, but we still need to be wary of whether this “free choice” is affected by another single set of aesthetic standards and consumerist propaganda. Bondage, this bondage is even more invisible. Especially when fitness has become a way of life and even a manifestation of consumption: wearing the latest sportswear, eating cheap fat-reducing meals, using fascia guns and other fat-reducing artifacts…Like those bloggers, financially independent , Glamorous and beautiful, “self-discipline and free”.
Can we not be anxious?
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But, can such “self-discipline” really bring freedom and get rid of “body anxiety”?
Although there are large-size supermodels appearing in underwear advertisements, advocating the diversity of beauty, but nowadays, all kinds of celebrity body marketing are frequently posted on social media such as popular searches, Xiaohongshu and other social media, and the enviable perfect body is still very single Situation, “confidence isThe declaration of “is perfect” always seems a little vague and difficult to practice. For an individual, it takes not only courage, but also a new understanding and care for our body, to fight against a single aesthetic system on its own.
In a sense, body anxiety reflects people’s contemporary one-sided understanding of the body. We inadvertently simplified the body to a “body”, only cares about how it looks, not what it feels.
This is no wonder, because in contemporary life we focus on mental work and often ignore the existence of the body. The body is used instrumentally, but the sensibility of the body is very limited.
An important technique in meditation training is “body scanning”, which is a method of consciously checking the sensations of various parts of the body, paying attention to the current state of the body, and re-awakening our perception of the body. In body scanning, we need to focus on every part of the body, from the top of the head, between the eyebrows, to the shoulders, hands and feet, facial features… Give enough attention to all parts of the body, and truly listen to the feelings of the body. After such training, we will also realize how often we neglect our body and know very little about how it feels.
“Body scanning” is an extremely simple way to establish the relationship and dialogue between us and the body. When we can give more attention to the body, the body is no longer just a tool to satisfy our actions. It is more perceptible.
Exercise itself is also a way to return to the body, but many of today’s fitness is more like a body management than exercise. In fitness, people and the body produce a very utilitarian Relations: Carve every muscle of the body through various trainings. In order to achieve the best shaping effect, you must strictly control your diet, be careful about how many grams of food you need to eat, before or after fitness, and when Can eat, when can I not eat…Finally, I used a gym selfie to show my hard-earned body.
In this process, the body is calculated, rehearsed and displayed highly rationally. As a result, the movement lost its fun and playfulness and became a “ascetic”.
In fact, we can also have more ways to exercise to fully mobilize the body and feel nature. For example, walking, measuring every inch of land with both feet, expanding the boundaries of the senses and understanding another life in the inaccessible places that have not yet been captured by the public comment. Dance is also a very good way. It is not just a performance on the stage. Dancing is our body’s instinct. It is also a language for expressing emotions with the body, just like Wim Wenders’s filming of German modern dance master Pina Bausch. The documentary “Pina”, between square inches, the dancer’s bodyDemonstrating a kind of divinity that is enough to shock the soul.
©documentary “Pina”
In more kinds of sports, we may be able to discover other aspects of the body, rebuild the relationship with the body, and give the body recognition and affirmation in the sense of accomplishment of sports. Instead of just caring about the dimension of the body, falling into the anxiety of pursuing perfection, blindly denying your body.
Expanding the imagination of the body and the environment is a good way to solve anxiety. Before a richer life experience, the matter of figure may become less important. Jumping out of the “perfect body” rendered by the media and businesses, we can regain the autonomy of the body and the sense of freedom.
Reference article:
[1] “American Women’s Fitness Chronicle”, Refining GymSquare, 2019
[2] “A Century of Women’s Fitness Style Evolution”, dubbed by Youtu Fujii subtitles, 2016
[3] “Gym, a large-scale middle-class shaking M site”, inSight, 2019
[4] “Women’s Fitness “Her” Economy”, Real Numbers, 2019
[5] “Super Gorilla founder Keqi: We have never deliberately built socialization”, Interface News, 2019
[7] “On the National Fitness Day, CBNData and Keep released the “National Sports Health Trend Report>”, CBNData, 2020
[8] “The perfect body, how to understand the anxiety it brings? “, Beijing News Book Review Weekly, 2016
[9] “The 2020 global fitness trend is released, what is the gap between China and the global average? “, Refining GymSquare, 2019
[10] “In 2021, the standard for perfect body changes again”, DT Finance, 2021
[11] “Retrieving Femininity: The Conflict Complex Between Women and Sports”, Jiang Ying, 2016
This article is from WeChat official account:Youthology (ID: openyouthology001), Author: Lydiaaa