Dr. Pirkko Markula is co-editor of a new book about women's experiences of exercise; she says there's great emphasis on exercising to look thin, toned and young, to the detriment of women's overall well-being.
A new book gives voice to women's experiences of exercise, and examines the fitness industry and media's role in helping or hindering in their pursuit of fitness and well-being.
From boot camp to step aerobics, yoga to martial arts, women have been pummelled by the fitness industry and messages in the media to exercise in pursuit of the pervasive fit, feminine ideal: to look young, thin and toned. At these times of the alleged "obesity epidemic" women are further urged to diet and exercise to lose weight. In these messages health has been equated with "looking thin" and women of all ages and every shape have become obsessed with looking younger, losing weight, looking toned, and above all, not getting fat. Yet though the thin and toned ideal body is impossible for all but a handful to achieve, it persists in Westernized culture.
A new book, Women and Exercise: The Body, Health and Consumerism edited by Eileen Kennedy and Pirkko Markula, a socio-cultural scholar at the University of Alberta, sheds light on the complex relationships between women and exercise. Through the book women from many walks and stages of life speak about their experiences with exercise in research studies conducted by an international cohort of feminist scholars from North American, European and Scandinavian countries.
It's a timely publication considering Statistics Canada's alarming findings from its recently published Canadian Health Measures Survey, showing that women exercise less than men, and only 14 per cent of Canadians accumulate the minimum of 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise. Nevertheless, promoting exercise only as a means to weight loss might not always be healthy. Markula says that women's experiences as exercisers may well lend to their shying from exercise because the ideal look is so difficult to attain. In addition, "Women are told that they should exercise to look good, feel good - and to be healthy," she says. "The emphasis on 'healthy looks' can also lead to fat phobia where the desire to be thin outweighs all other benefits of exercise."
For example, in a UK study in the book, the author looks at how women in a fitness club understand fatness and obesity to find that both clients and instructors emphasized losing weight and changing their body shapes. Being fat was seen as "the worst thing in the world."
Young women expressed the same "fat phobia" says Markula, pointing to a study of school girls aged nine to 16 years, about exercise and "being healthy." According to the study's authors, "there was the assumption that those who were overweight were irresponsibly inactive and lazy." Girls were concerned about the stigma of being overweight, even of dying from it.
In a chapter on older women, researchers found them still influenced by the need to be thin and to look good. "Women felt that being thin would help them in terms of youthfulness," says Markula. On the other hand, Muslim women and women of African and East Asian descent were less likely to be swayed by, or comply with, Western health promotion messages - much to the frustration of their Caucasian instructor - to change their diets to lose weight than Western women were, as it conflicted with their religious and ethnic identities.
The book also casts a critical eye on the fitness industry, with one chapter from Swedish researchers looking at the fad of pole-dancing for fitness - where "ordinary women" are encouraged to "strut their stuff" with sexy moves in an activity normally associated with strip clubs.
Markula, herself a certified Pilates instructor, and whose chapter looks at women's experiences of a Pilates class, says the trend toward "mindfulness" in exercise where activities engage both the mind and the body, such as Pilates and yoga has taken strong root. While these activities can offer women a holistic, deeply inward-looking activity where they are engaged and "present" in every movement of the body, they can also easily become used as a means for "looking good and feeling good."
Is the fitness industry working to increase women's health? Many of authors in this book point to the negative aspect of women's exercise programs: the fitness media, participants, and the instructors alike appear to promote the singular thin and toned ideal which few can actually achieve. Even mindful fitness classes are harnessed to serve the same goal. "Within this industry fat is feared, obesity condemned," says Markula, "while women are caught in continual, never-ending surveillance of their permanently imperfect bodies. In such an environment, many women feel inadequate and flawed instead of empowered with body confidence. Exercise, when promoted as a means for achieving healthy looks, can promote ill health instead of health." Despite this negative potential, not all fitness industry practices are bad. As an instructor, Markula still believes that exercise can be very beneficial and in her practice she emphasizes other exercise goals instead of the "healthy-looking body."
It is important, says Markula, "that exercising women become more aware of the potentially harmful exercise practices. This book provides one possibility for this by sharing other women's lived experiences with their exercising bodies."
She adds, "I hope that, as a result, women can become more informed fitness consumers who can expect a greater variety of fitness services to serve diverse needs of diverse groups of women. The fitness industry can, then, evolve into a better informed and healthier practice that can be fun, rewarding and enjoyable."
The book was published by Routledge and is available from www.routledge.com.