January 14, 2013 • 36 mins
When did people start exercising for their health? How were women were responsible for the rise of public gyms and health spas? Listen in to learn more about Jack Lalanne, the Cold War and the Modern Fitness Movement in the United States.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And since it is January, one
better time than to talk about Jim's working out exercising.
(00:27):
Because the one thing I feel like I've mentioned this
before uh in the podcast that a I take yoga
regularly and be the worst time to take yoga at
my studio is in January, because Heavens to Betsy, it
is flooded with people. Yeah. I noticed that when I
lived in Augusta, I was a member of the y
like the whole time I lived there, because I liked it.
(00:49):
It was a low key gym. It wasn't like meatheads
all the time or whatever. Um. And I noticed that
every year, like in January, I would come in and
not be able to get a freaking machine yeah at all.
And I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll just
wait until February and come back. And it's great that
people want to exercise. One of those common New Year's resolutions,
of course, is to get in shape loose some weight,
(01:11):
and so people tend to go through these early January
fitness crazes by Valentine's Day. Who knows if we're still
exercising regularly or not. But I was wondering what I
was thinking about, like the fact that we have to
that we go to other buildings outside of our home
to exercise, and we pay rent essentially in spaces to exercise.
(01:35):
I wanted to know when did Americans in particular start
doing this? When did we start having to work out?
Because wouldn't that be nice? Don't you remember like when
I whenever I go vintage clothing shopping, I'm amazed by,
like how how tiny so many of the women's clothes are,
and how none of them were going to the gym. Yeah,
(01:58):
what was what was going on on? I guess they
were walking. They were walking a lot more in places. Yeah,
christ and I were just talking about how when I
was in England for a couple of months over a
summer one year, even though I was eating nothing but
like fish and chips and drinking beer, I walked everywhere
every day all the time, and so I actually lost
weight and my legs looked fabulous. Uh yeah, And if
(02:22):
we go way way back in time, I thought this
was pretty funny. We found a timeline of exercise and
Fitness from a couple of exercise scientists at the University
of New Mexico, and they mark the point where things
really start going down for humans at ten thousand, eight
thousand BC, during the Neolithic agricultural revolution. So we were
(02:44):
we've been screwed from the get go. Once we started
or once we stopped being hunter gatherer nomads, we we
were just totally screwed. Yeah, they said that agricultural developments
meant that we had a more sudentary lifestyle. And to that,
I say, like, are you kidding me? Like people were
still walking, right, they still had to like run from
saber tooth tigers, right, perhaps, yeah, And then moving up
(03:07):
on the timeline, I mean there are a lot of
um not you know, like exercise tips. There aren't ancient
Jane fond of videos but which there are chiseled in
little leotard. But I mean there are ancient attitudes and
in cultures about physical activity and how it benefited the
body and the spirit. You know, Confucious encouraged physical activity.
(03:28):
Yoga was developed by Hindu priests. And then we get
up to ancient Greece, which is really what a lot
of people site when they talk about the history of exercise,
Gymnasium's bodybuilding, wrestling, all that stuff, because the ancient Greeks
and Romans really had an appreciation for a beautiful body
and considered fitness and health to be just as important
as mental health and uh fun etymology tidbit here, Gymnasium
(03:54):
comes from the Greek root jymnose, which means naked, because
as we know, a lot of male Greeks in the
ancient world appreciated nude working out, which seems dangerous if
you're a guy. I'm just saying things swinging around. I mean,
what happens when yeah, you know what, We'll just leave
(04:14):
it there. Yeah, well we will. But there is also
an ancient Greek saying of exercise for the body, you
have music for the soul. I can get on board
with that ancient Greeks. And then moving way forward to
the Renaissance. I know we're taking leaps and bounds through history,
but we have another thing. We have a lot to
(04:35):
talk about. But during the Renaissance, for instance, there was
this resurgence of appreciation for you know, ancient Greek culture
and the high minds of the day linked fitness, physical
fitness to intelligence, which is a good thing. I mean
like that, that is true. There's a major like brain
body connection. Absolutely. And then if I may take another
(05:00):
giant leap forward and go to the post industrial revolution
era in our history. So you know, the industrial revolution
happens all of a sudden, you have like assembly lines
and things like that, and people are sitting a lot.
I'm just gonna make broad strokes here. Yeah, and before
before we keep moving forward, speaking of post industrial revolution,
(05:21):
there were a group of nineteenth century German political refugees
who sparked something in the US called the turn Variant movement.
I hope I'm saying that correctly. And they were pro
gymnastics and calclinics and their goal was to get physical
fitness in every American school. So they were like a
gang of gymnasts, Yeah, gang of German gymnasts. But they
(05:44):
sparked this huge movement and this should be something that
our podcast pause stuff you missed in history class maybe
could take a closer look at. And they were also
um responsible for popularizing bowling in the United States, thank you.
I know. Yeah, So that's going on in the nineteenth century.
And then really crank things forward to the twentieth century
(06:07):
and what's going on. Well, so I mentioned that we
started sitting a lot, right and that that honestly, like,
without going off on a tangent, it's probably are sitting
that's going to kill us. Yeah, we're sitting down as
we record this podcast, and we should really be on
exercise balls. We should be or just or you know,
doing bicep curls as we talk. Yeah, we'd be ripped.
I'm doing squats right now in my mind. Um. So,
(06:31):
in the nineteen fifties and sixties, diseases that were spurred
by basically sitting around and not having that daily physical
activity started to really emerge. Things like cardiovascular disease, cancer,
and type two diabetes became much more prevalent during this period,
and so that led a lot of physicians and you know,
(06:51):
health health minded individuals in general to think, what can
we do about all of this, all of these health issues. Yeah,
I feel like we are living in a time when
we are constantly being inundated with pretty frightening, almost scare
tactic like messages about how uh, you know, we are
(07:12):
all gaining too much weight, we are not moving enough.
Our health, our collective health is just going down the tubes.
But really in the nineteen fifties, it was there was
a massive health panic going on as well, and it
was related to the development of the minimum Muscular Fitness
Tests and children by doctors Hans Krauss and Ruth Hirschland,
(07:33):
who were measuring the muscular strength and flexibility among American kids,
and they also compared that to kids in Austria, Italy,
and Switzerland. Yeah, it turns out that a lot more
American kids were failing at least one of the tests.
And in response, no, parents didn't get angry, children didn't
(07:54):
go outside and play. No. Eisenhower, the President, created the
Council on Youth Fitness and the Citizen Advisory Committee on
the Fitness of American Youth. And it's also during this
time that several health and fitness groups got their starts,
such as the American Health Association, the American Medical Association,
and the American College of Sports Medicine. So a lot
of people were like, we've we've got to do something.
(08:15):
Our kids are soft well. And the fascinating thing about
this is that a lot of the that fire was fan.
Those flames were fan the fitness flames. I'll stop with
these horrible fire analogy. Um, a lot of it was
undergoted though by Cold War fears, essentially saying too it
(08:37):
was it was more focused to on on the fitness
of the boys, and we were coming out of World
War Two and massive militarization um into the Cold War era.
And John F. Kennedy wrote an article for Sports Illustrated
in December of nineteen sixty called the Soft American in
(08:57):
which he bemoans the fact that essentially he's saying that
that the up and coming American youth are becoming far
too soft and mentally, morally or physically, and uh, that
it's going to be are the downfall of the United States.
That the Soviet Union at the time was becoming strong
(09:18):
and muscular and bench pressing and doing one armed push ups,
while the United States was just all of the kids
were just watching TV. Yeah. Well, I mean he's going
on and on and talking about you know, this is terrible.
Our kids are soft. You know a huge amount of
kids are failing these muscular strength and flexibility tests, where
the European kids are, you know, bouncing off walls and stuff.
(09:38):
So why is it a big deal? And he finally
he finally says it. There's that little ahamament where he says,
if we waste and neglect this resource, if we allow
it to dwindle and grow soft, then we will destroy
much of our ability to meet the great and vital
challenges which confront our people. So there you go. Armed
conflict has been a major part of our culture leading
(09:59):
up now. And while he says it's also vital you know,
health and fitness, or vital to activities of peace. Basically
it's like, people, we've got to be ready in case
the commies come. But he's also like, I mean we
don't I mean we don't have to fight, you know,
we need muscular strength for the activities of peace as well.
But and then he also makes this great prediction um
(10:20):
by the nineteen seventies, according to many economists, the man
who works with his hands will be almost extinct. So
a lot of a lot of fear about the rising technology,
about the threats of the Cold War. I'm sure there
were still lots of post World War two jitters going on.
And so this is the initial spur of working out
(10:43):
and organized exercise and gym's in the United States. Well,
one person who didn't wait around for JFK to call
everybody fat was Jack Lelane. Who I mean, he's like
the most famous outside of Arnold Swartzenegger. In my mind,
he's like the most famous fitness guy ever. He he's
(11:03):
basically referred to as the founder of the modern fitness movement,
and he died in eleven at the age of ninety six.
I believe as like the fittest man in existence. And
what inspired Lolane was a fitness talk he heard at
age fifteen, and he immediately goes out and starts working
out with weights, and eventually, at age twenty one, in
(11:24):
nineteen thirty six, he opens a fitness studio with a gym,
juice bar, and health food store. And I can tell
you people thought he was absolutely crazy. Yeah, oh yeah.
In nineteen thirty six, doctors thought that this guy who
was drinking all this juice and pumping all this iron
thought that he would be setting himself up for heart
attacks and loss of sex drive. Yeah, watch out for
(11:45):
those weights. But yeah, he also like he really popularized
the whole TV fitness thing. Uh. The Jack Lolaine Showed
debuted in nineteen fifty one in San Francisco and went nationwide.
A couple years later, and part of his thing was
to draw kids in and then encourage them to get
their parents involved in getting moving well. And that's very
significant too, because the rise of TV and and kids
(12:09):
being drawn toward more sedentary leisure activities. One thing into
that JFK talks about in UH the Soft American article
and Sports Illustrated was about how high school parking lots
were filled with cars because kids weren't walking to school anymore,
and on the weekends they're just sitting in front of
the boob tube instead of running around. And so it's
pretty significant that jacque Laine UH started to spread his
(12:32):
message through that medium. And it's those boomer children that
were largely the targets of that first wave of oh no,
everyone's getting soft, who were the one the adults in
the nineteen seventies and eighties who really started the like
nationalizing the private fitness industry as well, who made working
(12:56):
out a thing. Yeah, and we'll I'll backtrack a little bit,
but I do want to speaking of baby boomers, this
quote from Time magazine in nineteen two says that most
of the seventy six million boomers are finished with the
drug culture and alternative therapies. Instead, many of them have
seized on fitness ergo Older Americans jog in an attempt
(13:17):
not to be pushed aside by an army of fresh,
unlined faces. That sounds terrifying. Well, it sounds like today,
you know, in terms of I mean even back then,
like we talked today about plastic surgery and how everyone
wants to keep looking young. Well, the same what was
going on in nineteen eighty two. And and that quote
was coming from uh paper that we found called the
(13:39):
Rise of the Modern Fitness Industry by Mark Stern that
was published in Business and Economic History in two thousand eight.
And he cites a statistic that only twenty four percent
of Americans reported exercising regularly in nineteen sixty, so working
out not so much of a thing, and nine seen
(14:00):
sixty but then by seven according to a gallop pole,
that number jumped to sixty nine percent. And uh he
attributes that that leap to a crisis in both health
and identity. Yeah, because you know, similarly to what we
were talking about earlier with health, heart disease, I mean,
and things like that. From you know, sitting um, it
(14:23):
finally occurred to people that Hey, like, maybe we should
get our heart pumping and our lungs expanding to prevent
some of these diseases. And a big proponent of that
was Dr Kim Cooper, who was the one I did
not know before we started this research. He was the
one who coined the term aerobics in his nineteen sixty
eight book of the same name, and he is a
big pioneer of using exercise as a preventive measure in health.
(14:48):
And yeah, he focused more on philosophy over treatment well.
And it's also fascinating how there is this corporate angle
to fitness as well, um that you can tie. We
could have a whole huge conversation on more of the
masculinity angle of this, but this started to be reported
on in art and magazines like Forbes and Fortune in
(15:10):
the late seventies and eighties, where the thing to do
if you wanted to be a powerful guy, especially in business,
then you worked out like you were going to be
physically fit in order to be to have the appearance,
the correct appearance of a CEO saying. And I didn't
realize this. I thought the whole in house Jim thing
(15:30):
was more of a modern thing, you know, at like
Google offices and stuff, you know, fancy fancy corporate offices
that have giant Jim's installed. But yeah, this really started
to get underway in the late seventies early eighties because
fitness was really thought to increase productivity, reduced absentee ism,
and enable recruitment and attention, not to mention, uh, improve morale. H. Yeah,
(15:53):
and you've got this switch because uh, you know, during
the going back to Victorian times, dieting became a thing
which was linked more toward morality. There's always been this
uh kind of misguided link between um, your physical appearance
in the state of your your inward appearance. And you
have this major shift a hundred years later where we
(16:16):
just embraced the vanity of it. It's all about the
body image, how you look on the outside. Gyms that
start springing up become new dating hot spots. Why do
you think all of those leotards were so high cut?
Of the fashion the fitness fashion, Olivia Newton John Yeah.
In ninety eight, New York Magazine wrote that there's a
(16:39):
new class that devised eliteism an entirely different manner, and
that manner is exercising and working out because at the time,
working out was a thing that was done mostly by
more highly educated, wealthier white people as a as a
fancy shmantic end of thing to do. So let's talk
(17:02):
about the actual, uh, the gym's themselves and the rise
of things beyond just going to like a local y
m c A but actual private fitness clubs and gems. Yeah. There,
there definitely are still gyms that cater to specific activities
like boxing or martial arts things like that, but they're
(17:23):
greatly outnumbered by this modern, clean, sparkling fitness club idea.
And fitness clubs got their start way back in the day,
although membership was very low because it was seen as
kind of a fancy pants thing. Right. So back in
this guy Victanny began began his first club in Santa Monica,
(17:44):
ended up opening dozens more clubs in the fifties and sixties,
and he wanted these locations to be seen as quote
temples of luxury and respectability, which was really a departure
from the whole like, dudes are going to go in
there and grunt and sweat and pump iron and you know,
get their muscles all big and stuff. So this whole
idea that you go in there and you're pampered and
(18:05):
you have all of these fancy machines and stuff. Was
a was a new development. Yeah, And during the nineteen
seventies there are two major types of fitness clubs that
emerged once that were geared towards racket sports, that were
essentially offshoots of country clubs UM. And then you had
the much more common types of gyms we think of
(18:25):
these days, which are those storefront gems that focused on
low cost, high volume service. And I thought it was
really interesting how Mark Stern points out that there were
major problems that arose in the gym industry, a lot
of complaints that were filed with the Federal Trade Commission
because a lot of people were opening all of these
(18:46):
gyms wanting to capitalize on this new emphasis on exercise
and working out. UM. But they would do it by
essentially like hassling people into signing contracts with atchy membership
deals and perhaps unsanitary locker rooms. Yeah, all sorts of
(19:07):
shady dealings going on. Because gyms are not are not
an easy business to get into. It turns out, yeah,
well they would, I mean they would oversell. Basically, they
would get all of these members signed up counting on
the fact that people would drop out either it would
be too expensive for them, or they just didn't all
the halfle anymore or things like that. So, but I
(19:29):
can see why the gym business is so attractive because
as far as private fitness clubs go, UM in nine,
there were only about three thousand of these private clubs.
That has grown uh to twenty thousand eleven years ago
in two thousand two. That's a crazy jump. Yeah, as
of a two thousand six or an estimated forty two
(19:49):
point seven million gym members in the United States. And
one of the big reasons that jim have become so
popular is women essentially exercise and working out being changed
from uh, you know, more of just a guys going
(20:10):
in and pumping iron to it being something that women
do as well. And this is something that really takes
off in the nineteen seventies and the eighties, people like
Jane Fonda leading the way. And when we talk about
the rise of women in gym's and women in fitness, uh,
(20:30):
it starts off as something that is propelled by more
feminist ideology of saying, hey, you know what we can
we need to go in there we need to be
physically strong as well. We can work out alongside men,
no big deal. But then it becomes this double edged
sword where it's like, oh, hey, in order to be attractive,
I need to be working out five days a week.
(20:52):
And oh god, yeah, there's definitely I mean we you know,
we could go on and on about that forever and
and that kind of also goes back to some of
things we talked about in our dieting feminism issue all
that stuff. Um, but yeah, I mean, you really have
this this rise in the strong tone body aesthetic, like
I'm gonna look all mustlie and shiny and tan, as
(21:13):
opposed to you know, the flower Children, the waves of
the sixties and seventies. So now you had this whole
new aesthetic to worry about. Whereas maybe women had gotten
interested in fitness because I want to be healthy or
you know, I wanna whatever, go to the gym, now
it's like, oh, okay, well if I go to the gym,
it means I have to look like Jane Fonda. Shoot,
(21:33):
that would be awesome. Yeah. Well, I mean I'm just
saying like that would be fun to like that's a
costume thing. I don't actually want to have to deal
with those high cut leotard's um. And beyond that too,
there have been some interesting conversations around gendered gym's. When
I mean by that our women's only health spas and
(21:55):
gyms that have since opened up, which initially like in
the nineties and these when when these the Women's World
Health Spot opened in New England. There are places like
the Lucille Robert's Health Spot that opened in New York
and other places that were attributed to even more feminism
and saying, hey, this is part of women's lip We're
(22:15):
getting our own spaces to work out and to exercise. Yeah,
and more recently that's actually drawn a lot of controversy. Um,
sort of sort of unexpectedly, I would think, because it
seems like these women only gyms are a positive thing.
You know, they provide a quote unquote safe space where
you can go and not feel intimidated, not worry about
(22:35):
who's staring at you and all that stuff. But thirteen
years ago, according to an article on CNN, there were
actually a couple of lawsuits claiming that these clubs illegally
discriminated against men and perhaps also surprisingly um, members of
the Massachusetts branch of NOW, which is the National Organization
for Women, lobbied hard to prevent legislation that prohibited single
(22:59):
sex clubs over the concerned that it could actually open
the door to resegregating golf clubs and other venues. Yeah,
because it need to remind listeners that it was only
in two thousand twelve at the Augusta National Golf Club
accepted its first female members, all the way back in
two thousands. Yeah, the long time ago. So it's kind
of interesting to see how you know, you've got the
(23:20):
arguments on on both sides of that, because obviously, like
women's only gyms are very popular. Just take Curves for example,
first Curves women only gym opens by their franchising by
two thousand to their nine thousand locations. So obviously there
is um there, there's a desire for that, and if
(23:42):
you google gender and gym culture, you will get all
sorts of headlines such as Mars lan Vinos of the gym,
pink and blue with the gym, you know, because it
is a very gendered space because if you think about
you walk in the free weights area, it's the ellipticals
and the aerobics rooms, and obviously I'm not saying that
(24:07):
there's no crossing, but by and large those are in
in papers that have looked at the gender space of
the gym environment, it's usually divided like that. And I
remember going to the gym in college and it wasn't
my favorite thing to do, not because I didn't like exercising,
(24:28):
but because there it was a charged atmosphere because you
are not wearing as many clothes as you might in class.
You are sweating there, you know, there's conversation going on.
I would go in the morning just to avoid the
whole thing. Uh. And it was also funny to see
how some other women would obviously dress up a little bit.
(24:54):
Oh my god, the makeup at the gym. Lots of
makeup at the gym. Kristen and I, we should remind
you went to the same college in the same gym,
and oh, my good goodness, women stuff with a full
I makeup at the gym, like how do you? I
would sweat one drop and all that stuff. We're just
flat off my face and I break downto a hundred pimples. Yeah,
but then again I was actually working out and that
(25:17):
was bat well. That was back in college when I
actually I felt like I had time I would go.
I had this great block of time during the day
where I would go in the middle of the classes
and really nobody was there because it was around lunchtime.
I dreaded going at night after all the classes were over,
after dinner, around like seven or eight. It was crazy
town and I would never I would not have dreamed
(25:37):
of setting foot in the in the freeweights area because
it was it was swarming with dudes. I would go
in the mornings when it was me and the professors
and I could wear my sweats and no big deal. Um.
And there was a paper that we found on gender
at the gym by Thomas your Inson from University of
(26:02):
Gottenburg in Sweden feed and Spooden, and essentially he says
a lot of the same things in this paper that
we have in terms of some women feeling discomfort because
there is a typically a more male dominated atmosphere in
the gym. We have our gendered spaces, like Christens talking
(26:22):
about how I mean, even if you're a woman who
uses the freewights, you still kind of know what we're
talking about. Like even people men who do aerobics, women
who use the freewights, you can still tell that there's
that weird you get weird looks and and people are like,
why is that man in an aerobics class? What's that
woman doing in our freeweight space? Yeah, because you it's
(26:45):
it's crossing those gendered lines a little bit. Like he
talked about how, you know, the construct of masculinity and
the male physical ideal that is much more muscular driven
compared to more of the female idea that's more about
toning and shaping. There's even some I don't have the
direct quote in front of me, but there was a
(27:07):
quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about how women can't really
build like getting super muscular, you know, it's more about
shaping and molding. And maybe I think there was also
an attitude of maybe they shouldn't write and because I
think it was Reebok that didn't sponsor a particular women's
(27:27):
bodybuilding competition because they didn't like the look of some
of those women. They were way too masculine and scary
looking for Reebok to handle. Um. But female bodybuilding is
a relatively recent phenomenon when you take all of exercising
history into account, and it really does freak people out.
In this paper that Thomas Johansen did, most of the
(27:48):
men that he interviewed expressed one of two things, either
discussed or respect mixed with disgusted. And it comes to
female bodybuilders because again I think it's it's because of
that being a transgressive in a way of crossing those
of gendered lines. Now, one thing that Johansson also brings
(28:11):
up about jim culture is homophobia. He talked about how
the male sphere is characterized by a more distant relationship
between the instructures and the population of the gym. How
you know, it's more likely to you're more likely to
see a personal trainer with a female client rather than
a male client. But I'm I'm gonna go ahead and say,
from a personal experience, I don't I think that's becoming
(28:34):
less and less of a case of a case, especially
when you think about gay jim culture. There's even a
book that I found by Eric Alvarez, who was a
personal trainer in San Francisco, who essentially did like a
giant ethnographical study of gay jim culture, and he wrote
a book about it called Muscle Boys Gym Culture Um
(28:55):
which he breaks down the different types of guys at
gay gym's or gay men at gym's UM and talks
about how, uh there is a strong intersection between gyms
and gay culture because of the pursuit of the ideal
body image and also social interaction. It has been like
a major place for gay men to meet each other.
(29:17):
And I'm not just talking about things like you know,
stereotypes like cruising the locker rooms, um, but actually like meeting, interacting,
you're working out together, um. And he claims. Alvarez does
that gay men and the gym culture have been largely
responsible for creating the overall both the gay, straight, whatever
male physical ideal, and it challenges that bigoted stereotype of
(29:43):
gay men as being weak and limp rested. So working
out is important too to a lot of gay men.
Whereas I hate talking to people at the gym, I
do too. Please please please please leave me a lot.
That's why I just run by myself. Well, when when
I was at the Augusta Jim, UM, I was left
(30:05):
alone for the most part. I mean, it was definitely
taboo to like try to talk to other people, really
because you didn't want to come off as a creep
whatever gender. UM. But I just remember this like elderly man.
You know, he was wearing the headphones that have the
radio built in, and he's wearing his red, white and
blue sweatband, like I want to be Jack Lane. But
he like, he wouldn't stop talking to me. And I
did the thing where I, you know, frustrated, Lee took
(30:29):
out my headphones, was like what what? I can't what
and he was just trying to ask me, like what's
your name? How often do you come to the gym?
And when I told him how much I came to
the Jim, He's like, you should really think about coming more.
I was like, I'm going to knock you off of
the olliptical, but I actually have Okay, So that's like,
ha ha, funny whatever old man talking to him. I
do have a really horrific Jim Experienced story about talking
(30:50):
to someone and trainers. I actually I was, uh the
last gim that I belonged to was friends with a trainer.
He was a great guy. He helped me a lot,
you know, really nice guy. But I went with another
trainer one time and he was really creepy, crossed across
a lot of boundaries, called me at home. Um email
(31:11):
started emailing me and I had to finally say, like,
you've got to stop, you know, I you like, gym
culture can be scary. Yeah. I had an experience at
the personal trainer where it was it was too close
for comfort and I had to say, you coming to
the gym is not me saying I would like to
(31:34):
uh hang out. Yeah. It was also like just on
a final side note to it's incredible, like when when
the personal trainer was being too forward with me mid workout,
like when I when I exercise, I flush, I excessively sweat.
(31:56):
You know, that's half the reason why I don't want
to talk to you is because I kind of look like,
you know, a monster. I look like I have the
flu and as sauna. So it is uh, I mean,
and we could go we could go on and on
and on about gym culture because because it is there,
there are so many fascinating dynamics going on in there
(32:17):
in terms of just personal body issues and the beauty
myth starts to come in there, and these physical ideals,
and you have sexuality that is inherently tied into the
mix and gender and and and and and we pay
for it. We are money. There are monies to go
to these places. Yeah, so I guess we should ask
(32:39):
people about their gym experiences, Like what I'd like to
hear about people's experiences with the gender spheres gems and
do you cross them or do you feel like you
need to stick to one side or the other right?
And what are what are your interactions there? I mean,
are there people listening who really prefer to work out
just around guys, just around women? Does it feel our
(33:01):
gym safe spaces? I feel like in a lot of
ways for a lot of people, they are kind of
unsafe spaces because it brings out all of these insecurities
that we have, is we try to shape our bodies. Yeah,
I just didn't make eye contact when I went to
the gym. I what kind of want to see you
in a gym? Now you sound like a tough cookie.
Well I really I really enjoyed that, Jim, thank you,
(33:22):
I guess or why I really appreciated it. It was
a good place. Um. So I think that's that's all
we have to talk about. Like I said, we could
go we could go on and on, um and there
are many other topics we could branch off into. But
in the United States, at least we have cold war
fears to initially thank for for fueling this. Thanks Russia,
(33:47):
Come on, so send us your thoughts on gym's and
working out moms. Stuff at Discovery dot com is very
can send your letters. Oh and if you are working
out while you're listening to the steppisode, good for you.
Know a lot of people exercise and listen. Here is
(34:08):
a letter from Robert about our Pinterest episode. Kristin has
a little shout out for you. He says, I would
like to nominate one of Kristen's line from the show
as the funniest line I have ever heard on your
podcast quote, I went to manteresting to see what men
are nailing. Oh I did say that. I know that
(34:29):
was my junior high self coming out and not my
mature forty eight year old self, but it was funny
I checked out manterest Ing. I would just like to
say that as a manly man, if a dude has
to go to a quote manly pinning site, then he
is overcompensating. I am secure enough in my manhood to
not only need a Pinterest account, and I will pin
anything there that I like. So thank you, Robert. Keep pinning,
(34:50):
Keep on pinning and visit just a small little plug.
You can visit our little our little pinboard, pinboard of
but pinterest such stuff. Mom never told you. I've got
an email here from Julie about our episode on food
expiration dates, and she says I get made fun of
constantly to work for eating expired products. Nothing too crazy,
(35:13):
although I will drink my milk up to ten days
after the cell by date. My manager thinks I'm nuts.
She's more extreme though I offered her and expired Altoyd
and she refused it. But to me, Kenny never expires.
Chocolate is good for years, even if it starts to
get a little white. I might try it if I'm desperate.
In the case of the altoy, though, my boss was right.
(35:34):
I found them at my desk over a year old,
and I didn't taste like anything like sugar, but no
meant I didn't get sick. But it was just the
flavor thing that you mentioned, So I thought I would
share Altwood's or no good after a while. Also, one
time I mispread the date on my milk and poured
it into my cereal. It came out normal looking. The
cat wasn't interested. And that should have been a tip off,
(35:55):
but I got a spoonful in my mouth and then
ran to the sink. I double check my carton expression
dates now, oh, expired milk. Hey, let's in this podcast
on a soured milk note. Thanks to everyone for writing
in too. Mom Stuff at discovery dot COM's where you
(36:15):
can send your letters. You can also hit us up
on Facebook, follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast,
and follow us on Tumbler as well. Well. We are
at stuff mom Never told You dot tumbler dot com.
And if you want to learn more about how to
stay fit and healthy and very very happy, you should
head over to our website, it's how stuff works dot
(36:36):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And since it is January, one
better time than to talk about Jim's working out exercising.
(00:27):
Because the one thing I feel like I've mentioned this
before uh in the podcast that a I take yoga
regularly and be the worst time to take yoga at
my studio is in January, because Heavens to Betsy, it
is flooded with people. Yeah. I noticed that when I
lived in Augusta, I was a member of the y
like the whole time I lived there, because I liked it.
(00:49):
It was a low key gym. It wasn't like meatheads
all the time or whatever. Um. And I noticed that
every year, like in January, I would come in and
not be able to get a freaking machine yeah at all.
And I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll just
wait until February and come back. And it's great that
people want to exercise. One of those common New Year's resolutions,
of course, is to get in shape loose some weight,
(01:11):
and so people tend to go through these early January
fitness crazes by Valentine's Day. Who knows if we're still
exercising regularly or not. But I was wondering what I
was thinking about, like the fact that we have to
that we go to other buildings outside of our home
to exercise, and we pay rent essentially in spaces to exercise.
(01:35):
I wanted to know when did Americans in particular start
doing this? When did we start having to work out?
Because wouldn't that be nice? Don't you remember like when
I whenever I go vintage clothing shopping, I'm amazed by,
like how how tiny so many of the women's clothes are,
and how none of them were going to the gym. Yeah,
(01:58):
what was what was going on on? I guess they
were walking. They were walking a lot more in places. Yeah,
christ and I were just talking about how when I
was in England for a couple of months over a
summer one year, even though I was eating nothing but
like fish and chips and drinking beer, I walked everywhere
every day all the time, and so I actually lost
weight and my legs looked fabulous. Uh yeah, And if
(02:22):
we go way way back in time, I thought this
was pretty funny. We found a timeline of exercise and
Fitness from a couple of exercise scientists at the University
of New Mexico, and they mark the point where things
really start going down for humans at ten thousand, eight
thousand BC, during the Neolithic agricultural revolution. So we were
(02:44):
we've been screwed from the get go. Once we started
or once we stopped being hunter gatherer nomads, we we
were just totally screwed. Yeah, they said that agricultural developments
meant that we had a more sudentary lifestyle. And to that,
I say, like, are you kidding me? Like people were
still walking, right, they still had to like run from
saber tooth tigers, right, perhaps, yeah, And then moving up
(03:07):
on the timeline, I mean there are a lot of
um not you know, like exercise tips. There aren't ancient
Jane fond of videos but which there are chiseled in
little leotard. But I mean there are ancient attitudes and
in cultures about physical activity and how it benefited the
body and the spirit. You know, Confucious encouraged physical activity.
(03:28):
Yoga was developed by Hindu priests. And then we get
up to ancient Greece, which is really what a lot
of people site when they talk about the history of exercise,
Gymnasium's bodybuilding, wrestling, all that stuff, because the ancient Greeks
and Romans really had an appreciation for a beautiful body
and considered fitness and health to be just as important
as mental health and uh fun etymology tidbit here, Gymnasium
(03:54):
comes from the Greek root jymnose, which means naked, because
as we know, a lot of male Greeks in the
ancient world appreciated nude working out, which seems dangerous if
you're a guy. I'm just saying things swinging around. I mean,
what happens when yeah, you know what, We'll just leave
(04:14):
it there. Yeah, well we will. But there is also
an ancient Greek saying of exercise for the body, you
have music for the soul. I can get on board
with that ancient Greeks. And then moving way forward to
the Renaissance. I know we're taking leaps and bounds through history,
but we have another thing. We have a lot to
(04:35):
talk about. But during the Renaissance, for instance, there was
this resurgence of appreciation for you know, ancient Greek culture
and the high minds of the day linked fitness, physical
fitness to intelligence, which is a good thing. I mean
like that, that is true. There's a major like brain
body connection. Absolutely. And then if I may take another
(05:00):
giant leap forward and go to the post industrial revolution
era in our history. So you know, the industrial revolution
happens all of a sudden, you have like assembly lines
and things like that, and people are sitting a lot.
I'm just gonna make broad strokes here. Yeah, and before
before we keep moving forward, speaking of post industrial revolution,
(05:21):
there were a group of nineteenth century German political refugees
who sparked something in the US called the turn Variant movement.
I hope I'm saying that correctly. And they were pro
gymnastics and calclinics and their goal was to get physical
fitness in every American school. So they were like a
gang of gymnasts, Yeah, gang of German gymnasts. But they
(05:44):
sparked this huge movement and this should be something that
our podcast pause stuff you missed in history class maybe
could take a closer look at. And they were also
um responsible for popularizing bowling in the United States, thank you.
I know. Yeah, So that's going on in the nineteenth century.
And then really crank things forward to the twentieth century
(06:07):
and what's going on. Well, so I mentioned that we
started sitting a lot, right and that that honestly, like,
without going off on a tangent, it's probably are sitting
that's going to kill us. Yeah, we're sitting down as
we record this podcast, and we should really be on
exercise balls. We should be or just or you know,
doing bicep curls as we talk. Yeah, we'd be ripped.
I'm doing squats right now in my mind. Um. So,
(06:31):
in the nineteen fifties and sixties, diseases that were spurred
by basically sitting around and not having that daily physical
activity started to really emerge. Things like cardiovascular disease, cancer,
and type two diabetes became much more prevalent during this period,
and so that led a lot of physicians and you know,
(06:51):
health health minded individuals in general to think, what can
we do about all of this, all of these health issues. Yeah,
I feel like we are living in a time when
we are constantly being inundated with pretty frightening, almost scare
tactic like messages about how uh, you know, we are
(07:12):
all gaining too much weight, we are not moving enough.
Our health, our collective health is just going down the tubes.
But really in the nineteen fifties, it was there was
a massive health panic going on as well, and it
was related to the development of the minimum Muscular Fitness
Tests and children by doctors Hans Krauss and Ruth Hirschland,
(07:33):
who were measuring the muscular strength and flexibility among American kids,
and they also compared that to kids in Austria, Italy,
and Switzerland. Yeah, it turns out that a lot more
American kids were failing at least one of the tests.
And in response, no, parents didn't get angry, children didn't
(07:54):
go outside and play. No. Eisenhower, the President, created the
Council on Youth Fitness and the Citizen Advisory Committee on
the Fitness of American Youth. And it's also during this
time that several health and fitness groups got their starts,
such as the American Health Association, the American Medical Association,
and the American College of Sports Medicine. So a lot
of people were like, we've we've got to do something.
(08:15):
Our kids are soft well. And the fascinating thing about
this is that a lot of the that fire was fan.
Those flames were fan the fitness flames. I'll stop with
these horrible fire analogy. Um, a lot of it was
undergoted though by Cold War fears, essentially saying too it
(08:37):
was it was more focused to on on the fitness
of the boys, and we were coming out of World
War Two and massive militarization um into the Cold War era.
And John F. Kennedy wrote an article for Sports Illustrated
in December of nineteen sixty called the Soft American in
(08:57):
which he bemoans the fact that essentially he's saying that
that the up and coming American youth are becoming far
too soft and mentally, morally or physically, and uh, that
it's going to be are the downfall of the United States.
That the Soviet Union at the time was becoming strong
(09:18):
and muscular and bench pressing and doing one armed push ups,
while the United States was just all of the kids
were just watching TV. Yeah. Well, I mean he's going
on and on and talking about you know, this is terrible.
Our kids are soft. You know a huge amount of
kids are failing these muscular strength and flexibility tests, where
the European kids are, you know, bouncing off walls and stuff.
(09:38):
So why is it a big deal? And he finally
he finally says it. There's that little ahamament where he says,
if we waste and neglect this resource, if we allow
it to dwindle and grow soft, then we will destroy
much of our ability to meet the great and vital
challenges which confront our people. So there you go. Armed
conflict has been a major part of our culture leading
(09:59):
up now. And while he says it's also vital you know,
health and fitness, or vital to activities of peace. Basically
it's like, people, we've got to be ready in case
the commies come. But he's also like, I mean we
don't I mean we don't have to fight, you know,
we need muscular strength for the activities of peace as well.
But and then he also makes this great prediction um
(10:20):
by the nineteen seventies, according to many economists, the man
who works with his hands will be almost extinct. So
a lot of a lot of fear about the rising technology,
about the threats of the Cold War. I'm sure there
were still lots of post World War two jitters going on.
And so this is the initial spur of working out
(10:43):
and organized exercise and gym's in the United States. Well,
one person who didn't wait around for JFK to call
everybody fat was Jack Lelane. Who I mean, he's like
the most famous outside of Arnold Swartzenegger. In my mind,
he's like the most famous fitness guy ever. He he's
(11:03):
basically referred to as the founder of the modern fitness movement,
and he died in eleven at the age of ninety six.
I believe as like the fittest man in existence. And
what inspired Lolane was a fitness talk he heard at
age fifteen, and he immediately goes out and starts working
out with weights, and eventually, at age twenty one, in
(11:24):
nineteen thirty six, he opens a fitness studio with a gym,
juice bar, and health food store. And I can tell
you people thought he was absolutely crazy. Yeah, oh yeah.
In nineteen thirty six, doctors thought that this guy who
was drinking all this juice and pumping all this iron
thought that he would be setting himself up for heart
attacks and loss of sex drive. Yeah, watch out for
(11:45):
those weights. But yeah, he also like he really popularized
the whole TV fitness thing. Uh. The Jack Lolaine Showed
debuted in nineteen fifty one in San Francisco and went nationwide.
A couple years later, and part of his thing was
to draw kids in and then encourage them to get
their parents involved in getting moving well. And that's very
significant too, because the rise of TV and and kids
(12:09):
being drawn toward more sedentary leisure activities. One thing into
that JFK talks about in UH the Soft American article
and Sports Illustrated was about how high school parking lots
were filled with cars because kids weren't walking to school anymore,
and on the weekends they're just sitting in front of
the boob tube instead of running around. And so it's
pretty significant that jacque Laine UH started to spread his
(12:32):
message through that medium. And it's those boomer children that
were largely the targets of that first wave of oh no,
everyone's getting soft, who were the one the adults in
the nineteen seventies and eighties who really started the like
nationalizing the private fitness industry as well, who made working
(12:56):
out a thing. Yeah, and we'll I'll backtrack a little bit,
but I do want to speaking of baby boomers, this
quote from Time magazine in nineteen two says that most
of the seventy six million boomers are finished with the
drug culture and alternative therapies. Instead, many of them have
seized on fitness ergo Older Americans jog in an attempt
(13:17):
not to be pushed aside by an army of fresh,
unlined faces. That sounds terrifying. Well, it sounds like today,
you know, in terms of I mean even back then,
like we talked today about plastic surgery and how everyone
wants to keep looking young. Well, the same what was
going on in nineteen eighty two. And and that quote
was coming from uh paper that we found called the
(13:39):
Rise of the Modern Fitness Industry by Mark Stern that
was published in Business and Economic History in two thousand eight.
And he cites a statistic that only twenty four percent
of Americans reported exercising regularly in nineteen sixty, so working
out not so much of a thing, and nine seen
(14:00):
sixty but then by seven according to a gallop pole,
that number jumped to sixty nine percent. And uh he
attributes that that leap to a crisis in both health
and identity. Yeah, because you know, similarly to what we
were talking about earlier with health, heart disease, I mean,
and things like that. From you know, sitting um, it
(14:23):
finally occurred to people that Hey, like, maybe we should
get our heart pumping and our lungs expanding to prevent
some of these diseases. And a big proponent of that
was Dr Kim Cooper, who was the one I did
not know before we started this research. He was the
one who coined the term aerobics in his nineteen sixty
eight book of the same name, and he is a
big pioneer of using exercise as a preventive measure in health.
(14:48):
And yeah, he focused more on philosophy over treatment well.
And it's also fascinating how there is this corporate angle
to fitness as well, um that you can tie. We
could have a whole huge conversation on more of the
masculinity angle of this, but this started to be reported
on in art and magazines like Forbes and Fortune in
(15:10):
the late seventies and eighties, where the thing to do
if you wanted to be a powerful guy, especially in business,
then you worked out like you were going to be
physically fit in order to be to have the appearance,
the correct appearance of a CEO saying. And I didn't
realize this. I thought the whole in house Jim thing
(15:30):
was more of a modern thing, you know, at like
Google offices and stuff, you know, fancy fancy corporate offices
that have giant Jim's installed. But yeah, this really started
to get underway in the late seventies early eighties because
fitness was really thought to increase productivity, reduced absentee ism,
and enable recruitment and attention, not to mention, uh, improve morale. H. Yeah,
(15:53):
and you've got this switch because uh, you know, during
the going back to Victorian times, dieting became a thing
which was linked more toward morality. There's always been this
uh kind of misguided link between um, your physical appearance
in the state of your your inward appearance. And you
have this major shift a hundred years later where we
(16:16):
just embraced the vanity of it. It's all about the
body image, how you look on the outside. Gyms that
start springing up become new dating hot spots. Why do
you think all of those leotards were so high cut?
Of the fashion the fitness fashion, Olivia Newton John Yeah.
In ninety eight, New York Magazine wrote that there's a
(16:39):
new class that devised eliteism an entirely different manner, and
that manner is exercising and working out because at the time,
working out was a thing that was done mostly by
more highly educated, wealthier white people as a as a
fancy shmantic end of thing to do. So let's talk
(17:02):
about the actual, uh, the gym's themselves and the rise
of things beyond just going to like a local y
m c A but actual private fitness clubs and gems. Yeah. There,
there definitely are still gyms that cater to specific activities
like boxing or martial arts things like that, but they're
(17:23):
greatly outnumbered by this modern, clean, sparkling fitness club idea.
And fitness clubs got their start way back in the day,
although membership was very low because it was seen as
kind of a fancy pants thing. Right. So back in
this guy Victanny began began his first club in Santa Monica,
(17:44):
ended up opening dozens more clubs in the fifties and sixties,
and he wanted these locations to be seen as quote
temples of luxury and respectability, which was really a departure
from the whole like, dudes are going to go in
there and grunt and sweat and pump iron and you know,
get their muscles all big and stuff. So this whole
idea that you go in there and you're pampered and
(18:05):
you have all of these fancy machines and stuff. Was
a was a new development. Yeah, And during the nineteen
seventies there are two major types of fitness clubs that
emerged once that were geared towards racket sports, that were
essentially offshoots of country clubs UM. And then you had
the much more common types of gyms we think of
(18:25):
these days, which are those storefront gems that focused on
low cost, high volume service. And I thought it was
really interesting how Mark Stern points out that there were
major problems that arose in the gym industry, a lot
of complaints that were filed with the Federal Trade Commission
because a lot of people were opening all of these
(18:46):
gyms wanting to capitalize on this new emphasis on exercise
and working out. UM. But they would do it by
essentially like hassling people into signing contracts with atchy membership
deals and perhaps unsanitary locker rooms. Yeah, all sorts of
(19:07):
shady dealings going on. Because gyms are not are not
an easy business to get into. It turns out, yeah,
well they would, I mean they would oversell. Basically, they
would get all of these members signed up counting on
the fact that people would drop out either it would
be too expensive for them, or they just didn't all
the halfle anymore or things like that. So, but I
(19:29):
can see why the gym business is so attractive because
as far as private fitness clubs go, UM in nine,
there were only about three thousand of these private clubs.
That has grown uh to twenty thousand eleven years ago
in two thousand two. That's a crazy jump. Yeah, as
of a two thousand six or an estimated forty two
(19:49):
point seven million gym members in the United States. And
one of the big reasons that jim have become so
popular is women essentially exercise and working out being changed
from uh, you know, more of just a guys going
(20:10):
in and pumping iron to it being something that women
do as well. And this is something that really takes
off in the nineteen seventies and the eighties, people like
Jane Fonda leading the way. And when we talk about
the rise of women in gym's and women in fitness, uh,
(20:30):
it starts off as something that is propelled by more
feminist ideology of saying, hey, you know what we can
we need to go in there we need to be
physically strong as well. We can work out alongside men,
no big deal. But then it becomes this double edged
sword where it's like, oh, hey, in order to be attractive,
I need to be working out five days a week.
(20:52):
And oh god, yeah, there's definitely I mean we you know,
we could go on and on about that forever and
and that kind of also goes back to some of
things we talked about in our dieting feminism issue all
that stuff. Um, but yeah, I mean, you really have
this this rise in the strong tone body aesthetic, like
I'm gonna look all mustlie and shiny and tan, as
(21:13):
opposed to you know, the flower Children, the waves of
the sixties and seventies. So now you had this whole
new aesthetic to worry about. Whereas maybe women had gotten
interested in fitness because I want to be healthy or
you know, I wanna whatever, go to the gym, now
it's like, oh, okay, well if I go to the gym,
it means I have to look like Jane Fonda. Shoot,
(21:33):
that would be awesome. Yeah. Well, I mean I'm just
saying like that would be fun to like that's a
costume thing. I don't actually want to have to deal
with those high cut leotard's um. And beyond that too,
there have been some interesting conversations around gendered gym's. When
I mean by that our women's only health spas and
(21:55):
gyms that have since opened up, which initially like in
the nineties and these when when these the Women's World
Health Spot opened in New England. There are places like
the Lucille Robert's Health Spot that opened in New York
and other places that were attributed to even more feminism
and saying, hey, this is part of women's lip We're
(22:15):
getting our own spaces to work out and to exercise. Yeah,
and more recently that's actually drawn a lot of controversy. Um,
sort of sort of unexpectedly, I would think, because it
seems like these women only gyms are a positive thing.
You know, they provide a quote unquote safe space where
you can go and not feel intimidated, not worry about
(22:35):
who's staring at you and all that stuff. But thirteen
years ago, according to an article on CNN, there were
actually a couple of lawsuits claiming that these clubs illegally
discriminated against men and perhaps also surprisingly um, members of
the Massachusetts branch of NOW, which is the National Organization
for Women, lobbied hard to prevent legislation that prohibited single
(22:59):
sex clubs over the concerned that it could actually open
the door to resegregating golf clubs and other venues. Yeah,
because it need to remind listeners that it was only
in two thousand twelve at the Augusta National Golf Club
accepted its first female members, all the way back in
two thousands. Yeah, the long time ago. So it's kind
of interesting to see how you know, you've got the
(23:20):
arguments on on both sides of that, because obviously, like
women's only gyms are very popular. Just take Curves for example,
first Curves women only gym opens by their franchising by
two thousand to their nine thousand locations. So obviously there
is um there, there's a desire for that, and if
(23:42):
you google gender and gym culture, you will get all
sorts of headlines such as Mars lan Vinos of the gym,
pink and blue with the gym, you know, because it
is a very gendered space because if you think about
you walk in the free weights area, it's the ellipticals
and the aerobics rooms, and obviously I'm not saying that
(24:07):
there's no crossing, but by and large those are in
in papers that have looked at the gender space of
the gym environment, it's usually divided like that. And I
remember going to the gym in college and it wasn't
my favorite thing to do, not because I didn't like exercising,
(24:28):
but because there it was a charged atmosphere because you
are not wearing as many clothes as you might in class.
You are sweating there, you know, there's conversation going on.
I would go in the morning just to avoid the
whole thing. Uh. And it was also funny to see
how some other women would obviously dress up a little bit.
(24:54):
Oh my god, the makeup at the gym. Lots of
makeup at the gym. Kristen and I, we should remind
you went to the same college in the same gym,
and oh, my good goodness, women stuff with a full
I makeup at the gym, like how do you? I
would sweat one drop and all that stuff. We're just
flat off my face and I break downto a hundred pimples. Yeah,
but then again I was actually working out and that
(25:17):
was bat well. That was back in college when I
actually I felt like I had time I would go.
I had this great block of time during the day
where I would go in the middle of the classes
and really nobody was there because it was around lunchtime.
I dreaded going at night after all the classes were over,
after dinner, around like seven or eight. It was crazy
town and I would never I would not have dreamed
(25:37):
of setting foot in the in the freeweights area because
it was it was swarming with dudes. I would go
in the mornings when it was me and the professors
and I could wear my sweats and no big deal. Um.
And there was a paper that we found on gender
at the gym by Thomas your Inson from University of
(26:02):
Gottenburg in Sweden feed and Spooden, and essentially he says
a lot of the same things in this paper that
we have in terms of some women feeling discomfort because
there is a typically a more male dominated atmosphere in
the gym. We have our gendered spaces, like Christens talking
(26:22):
about how I mean, even if you're a woman who
uses the freewights, you still kind of know what we're
talking about. Like even people men who do aerobics, women
who use the freewights, you can still tell that there's
that weird you get weird looks and and people are like,
why is that man in an aerobics class? What's that
woman doing in our freeweight space? Yeah, because you it's
(26:45):
it's crossing those gendered lines a little bit. Like he
talked about how, you know, the construct of masculinity and
the male physical ideal that is much more muscular driven
compared to more of the female idea that's more about
toning and shaping. There's even some I don't have the
direct quote in front of me, but there was a
(27:07):
quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about how women can't really
build like getting super muscular, you know, it's more about
shaping and molding. And maybe I think there was also
an attitude of maybe they shouldn't write and because I
think it was Reebok that didn't sponsor a particular women's
(27:27):
bodybuilding competition because they didn't like the look of some
of those women. They were way too masculine and scary
looking for Reebok to handle. Um. But female bodybuilding is
a relatively recent phenomenon when you take all of exercising
history into account, and it really does freak people out.
In this paper that Thomas Johansen did, most of the
(27:48):
men that he interviewed expressed one of two things, either
discussed or respect mixed with disgusted. And it comes to
female bodybuilders because again I think it's it's because of
that being a transgressive in a way of crossing those
of gendered lines. Now, one thing that Johansson also brings
(28:11):
up about jim culture is homophobia. He talked about how
the male sphere is characterized by a more distant relationship
between the instructures and the population of the gym. How
you know, it's more likely to you're more likely to
see a personal trainer with a female client rather than
a male client. But I'm I'm gonna go ahead and say,
from a personal experience, I don't I think that's becoming
(28:34):
less and less of a case of a case, especially
when you think about gay jim culture. There's even a
book that I found by Eric Alvarez, who was a
personal trainer in San Francisco, who essentially did like a
giant ethnographical study of gay jim culture, and he wrote
a book about it called Muscle Boys Gym Culture Um
(28:55):
which he breaks down the different types of guys at
gay gym's or gay men at gym's UM and talks
about how, uh there is a strong intersection between gyms
and gay culture because of the pursuit of the ideal
body image and also social interaction. It has been like
a major place for gay men to meet each other.
(29:17):
And I'm not just talking about things like you know,
stereotypes like cruising the locker rooms, um, but actually like meeting, interacting,
you're working out together, um. And he claims. Alvarez does
that gay men and the gym culture have been largely
responsible for creating the overall both the gay, straight, whatever
male physical ideal, and it challenges that bigoted stereotype of
(29:43):
gay men as being weak and limp rested. So working
out is important too to a lot of gay men.
Whereas I hate talking to people at the gym, I
do too. Please please please please leave me a lot.
That's why I just run by myself. Well, when when
I was at the Augusta Jim, UM, I was left
(30:05):
alone for the most part. I mean, it was definitely
taboo to like try to talk to other people, really
because you didn't want to come off as a creep
whatever gender. UM. But I just remember this like elderly man.
You know, he was wearing the headphones that have the
radio built in, and he's wearing his red, white and
blue sweatband, like I want to be Jack Lane. But
he like, he wouldn't stop talking to me. And I
did the thing where I, you know, frustrated, Lee took
(30:29):
out my headphones, was like what what? I can't what
and he was just trying to ask me, like what's
your name? How often do you come to the gym?
And when I told him how much I came to
the Jim, He's like, you should really think about coming more.
I was like, I'm going to knock you off of
the olliptical, but I actually have Okay, So that's like,
ha ha, funny whatever old man talking to him. I
do have a really horrific Jim Experienced story about talking
(30:50):
to someone and trainers. I actually I was, uh the
last gim that I belonged to was friends with a trainer.
He was a great guy. He helped me a lot,
you know, really nice guy. But I went with another
trainer one time and he was really creepy, crossed across
a lot of boundaries, called me at home. Um email
(31:11):
started emailing me and I had to finally say, like,
you've got to stop, you know, I you like, gym
culture can be scary. Yeah. I had an experience at
the personal trainer where it was it was too close
for comfort and I had to say, you coming to
the gym is not me saying I would like to
(31:34):
uh hang out. Yeah. It was also like just on
a final side note to it's incredible, like when when
the personal trainer was being too forward with me mid workout,
like when I when I exercise, I flush, I excessively sweat.
(31:56):
You know, that's half the reason why I don't want
to talk to you is because I kind of look like,
you know, a monster. I look like I have the
flu and as sauna. So it is uh, I mean,
and we could go we could go on and on
and on about gym culture because because it is there,
there are so many fascinating dynamics going on in there
(32:17):
in terms of just personal body issues and the beauty
myth starts to come in there, and these physical ideals,
and you have sexuality that is inherently tied into the
mix and gender and and and and and we pay
for it. We are money. There are monies to go
to these places. Yeah, so I guess we should ask
(32:39):
people about their gym experiences, Like what I'd like to
hear about people's experiences with the gender spheres gems and
do you cross them or do you feel like you
need to stick to one side or the other right?
And what are what are your interactions there? I mean,
are there people listening who really prefer to work out
just around guys, just around women? Does it feel our
(33:01):
gym safe spaces? I feel like in a lot of
ways for a lot of people, they are kind of
unsafe spaces because it brings out all of these insecurities
that we have, is we try to shape our bodies. Yeah,
I just didn't make eye contact when I went to
the gym. I what kind of want to see you
in a gym? Now you sound like a tough cookie.
Well I really I really enjoyed that, Jim, thank you,
(33:22):
I guess or why I really appreciated it. It was
a good place. Um. So I think that's that's all
we have to talk about. Like I said, we could
go we could go on and on, um and there
are many other topics we could branch off into. But
in the United States, at least we have cold war
fears to initially thank for for fueling this. Thanks Russia,
(33:47):
Come on, so send us your thoughts on gym's and
working out moms. Stuff at Discovery dot com is very
can send your letters. Oh and if you are working
out while you're listening to the steppisode, good for you.
Know a lot of people exercise and listen. Here is
(34:08):
a letter from Robert about our Pinterest episode. Kristin has
a little shout out for you. He says, I would
like to nominate one of Kristen's line from the show
as the funniest line I have ever heard on your
podcast quote, I went to manteresting to see what men
are nailing. Oh I did say that. I know that
(34:29):
was my junior high self coming out and not my
mature forty eight year old self, but it was funny
I checked out manterest Ing. I would just like to
say that as a manly man, if a dude has
to go to a quote manly pinning site, then he
is overcompensating. I am secure enough in my manhood to
not only need a Pinterest account, and I will pin
anything there that I like. So thank you, Robert. Keep pinning,
(34:50):
Keep on pinning and visit just a small little plug.
You can visit our little our little pinboard, pinboard of
but pinterest such stuff. Mom never told you. I've got
an email here from Julie about our episode on food
expiration dates, and she says I get made fun of
constantly to work for eating expired products. Nothing too crazy,
(35:13):
although I will drink my milk up to ten days
after the cell by date. My manager thinks I'm nuts.
She's more extreme though I offered her and expired Altoyd
and she refused it. But to me, Kenny never expires.
Chocolate is good for years, even if it starts to
get a little white. I might try it if I'm desperate.
In the case of the altoy, though, my boss was right.
(35:34):
I found them at my desk over a year old,
and I didn't taste like anything like sugar, but no
meant I didn't get sick. But it was just the
flavor thing that you mentioned, So I thought I would
share Altwood's or no good after a while. Also, one
time I mispread the date on my milk and poured
it into my cereal. It came out normal looking. The
cat wasn't interested. And that should have been a tip off,
(35:55):
but I got a spoonful in my mouth and then
ran to the sink. I double check my carton expression
dates now, oh, expired milk. Hey, let's in this podcast
on a soured milk note. Thanks to everyone for writing
in too. Mom Stuff at discovery dot COM's where you
(36:15):
can send your letters. You can also hit us up
on Facebook, follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast,
and follow us on Tumbler as well. Well. We are
at stuff mom Never told You dot tumbler dot com.
And if you want to learn more about how to
stay fit and healthy and very very happy, you should
head over to our website, it's how stuff works dot
(36:36):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it how stuff works dot com
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