Abstract
How can we understand the modern obsession with individuals wanting to ‘get fit’? Millions are leaving work and heading straight for an evening jog or workout at the gym; society is becoming accustomed to monitoring calorie consumption; and indeed, it is no longer uncommon to see social media feeds filled with users posting their corporeal progress towards what they comprehend to be an ‘ideal’ and ‘desirable’ body shape. In The Age of Fitness: How the Body Came to Symbolize Success and Achievement, Jürgen Martschukat (in Alex Skinner’s translation) undertakes an explication on the notion of fitness to explore why it has become so sacrosanct in our everyday lives. The book traces fitness back to its historical origins; along the way, drawing upon the thinking of Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species (1859) and how he anchored ‘the idea of competition as an inescapable ordering principle . . . [through the] close coupling of the social and biological sciences’ (p. 41). In other words, how ‘fitness is a pre-requisite for success, even survival, in a world of supposedly all-pervasive competition’ (p. 41). Fast-forward to the 1970s, here Martschukat asserts, in his central argument, that the age of fitness truly emerged contemporaneously with the rise of neoliberalism which has inculcated a certain way of thinking for society and its subjects. How the individual must be constantly working on themselves and their performance while interpreting most situations through a competitive lens. This book illustrates how the modern era that is now ridden with self-responsibility, performance and competition now uses fitness as a marker for success or failure.
Six chapters follow the introduction which are entitled: (1) ‘“Fit or fat”? Fitness in recent history and the present day’; (2) ‘Fitness: Trajectories of a concept since the eighteenth century’; (3) ‘Working’; (4) ‘Having sex’; (5) ‘Fighting’; and lastly (6) ‘Productive, potent, and ready to fight?’. These are written in a fashion that does not make them interdependent, allowing readers to turn straight to their area of interest without having gone through the entire book. However, I agree with Martschukat that reading the book as a coherent whole offers the best insight into understanding ‘how deeply fitness is inscribed in modern societies’ (p. 6). Martschukat is especially compelling throughout, in characterising the societal perceptions of those that do not conform to the archetypical ‘fit body’ – as he observes how fatness has been portrayed antithetically to fitness. The stigmatisation of fat people subsequently reflects how corpulence has become a discriminatory factor for individuals competing for the best jobs, as ‘those that are fat . . . [are perceived as] incapable for taking responsibility for maintaining and enhancing their fitness and labour power’ (p. 138) with their bodies being regarded as indicators of (un)willingness to perform at work. Martschukat is also convincing in examining fitness and masculinity, in parallel terms. For example, in Chapter 4 (‘Having sex’), there is a wide-ranging analysis on how men that are dysfunctional, sexually, are seeking pharmaceutical interventions like Viagra to ameliorate their sexual fitness and eliminate any uncertainties about their ‘completeness as men’ (p. 99). The fifth chapter (‘Fighting’) takes the premise that the fit body signals a readiness to fight, a willingness to make sacrifices and, if need be, to go to extremes in the ‘struggle for survival’ (p. 139). Here, Martschukat examines how the fit body is closely linked with that of the heroic, martial and masculine: ‘Rocky and Rambo showed how, with the help of a hardened, muscular, yet highly functional body, coupled with determination, readiness and the right attitude, one can make one’s mark and become a hero’ (p. 122). An emerging logic from Martschukat’s thinking throughout his writing can be illuminated with the following maxim: with the erosion of fitness comes the erosion of masculinity. Likewise, as fitness is developed, so is a sense of masculinity.
This review started by questioning the obsession permeating modern times about individuals wanting to ‘get fit’. Martschukat attributes this to the ‘conditions of omnipresent competition’ (p. 140), for which fitness is being used as a yardstick by neoliberalists in motivating us to become ‘productive, potent, willing to fight, capable of the extraordinary, and always willing to improve ourselves’ (p. 14). The Age of Fitness offers an incisive and stimulating read that lays bare the structural, institutional and ideological forces that intersect and impact the simplest of our everyday choices/dilemmas regarding what we should (or should not) be eating; the number of miles we should be running; and also how long we should be able to last in bed. This makes it an essential read not just for sociologists, but also those that remain dubious about how contemporary societies are defining success(es) and failure(s). Anybody at odds – and we all ought to be – with the turn that fitness has taken in these neoliberal times owes it to themselves to read this book.