Fitness Culture

In contemporary Western societies, the “fit body” has replaced body decoration as a potent symbol of status and character, both for men and for women. As clothes are ever more revealing, what is fashionable is the sculpting of the body itself. Fitness gyms and health centers have become highly visible as the sites where such a body is produced. Fitness gyms are a special breed of gyms: they are typically unisex, non‐competitive environments aimed at providing recreational exercise to boost physical form and well‐being (Sassatelli 1999). Fitness gyms are at the core of a much broader fitness culture, comprising a variety of commodities: news‐stands are full of magazines on physical exercise, health, and beauty that promote an increasingly nuanced vision of the “fit body” and offer advice about exercises and diet that may help in achieving it; bookshops have an increasingly large and varied collection of exercise manuals; and fitness festivals are getting more media coverage and contribute to the professionalization of trainers. Besides this, there has been a remarkable diffusion of fitness training aids – from aerobics videos to home‐fitness equipment – for individual use at home. Fitness culture can also be said to be much broader than the people who actually and regularly train, as the growing market for sportswear clearly testifies.