Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession

By Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

Book Overview

How is it that Americans are more obsessed with exercise than ever, and yet also unhealthier? Fit Nation explains how we got here and imagines how we might create a more inclusive, stronger future.

If a shared American creed still exists, it's a belief that exercise is integral to a life well lived. A century ago, working out was the activity of a strange subculture, but today, it's almost impossible to avoid exhortations to exercise: Walk 5K to cure cancer! Awaken your inner sex kitten at pole-dancing class! Sweat like (or even with) a celebrity in spin class! Exercise is everywhere.

Yet the United States is hardly a "fit nation." Only 20 percent of Americans work out consistently, over half of gym members don't even use the facilities they pay for, and fewer than 30 percent of high school students get an hour of exercise a day. So how did fitness become both inescapable and inaccessible?

Spanning more than a century of American history, Fit Nation answers these questions and more through original interviews, archival research, and a rich cultural narrative. As a leading political and intellectual historian and a certified fitness instructor, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is uniquely qualified to confront the complex and far-reaching implications of how our contemporary exercise culture took shape. She explores the work of working out not just as consumers have experienced it, but as it was created by performers, physical educators, trainers, instructors, and many others.

For Petrzela, fitness is a social justice issue. She argues that the fight for a more equitable exercise culture will be won only by revolutionizing fitness culture at its core, making it truly inclusive for all bodies in a way it has never been. Examining venues from the stage of the World's Fair and Muscle Beach to fat farms, feminist health clinics, radical and evangelical college campuses, yoga retreats, gleaming health clubs, school gymnasiums, and many more, Fit Nation is a revealing history that shows fitness to be not just a matter of physical health but of what it means to be an American.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 022665110X
• ISBN13: 9780226651101
• Release Date: February 2023
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A Great Introduction to the History of Fitness Culture in America

Fit Nation is an excellent introduction to the world of health and wellness. It serves as an excellent education for the novice fitness enthusiast, insightful in the evolution of fitness culture in America, offering adequate warnings of the abundant grifters found in the fitness space (supplements, equipment, and empty promises) as well as addressing the inequality inherent in the wellness industry (Is health something only those with the money to purchase it can have?). Spanning the past 100+ years, we learn the evolution of fitness culture, the advancements in understanding nutrition and exercise physiology, and how human nature has remained the same - still wanting results without effort and being willing to pay for it. Without being preachy or opinionated, Ms. Petrzela addresses the good and bad of the fitness world. She provides a text that should be read widely by a more informed populace of consumers as they seek products and services for their health.