The link between pilates and right-wing politics.
Aka the most clickbait title I’ve ever written.
Okay, let me paint not one, but two, pictures for you.
On the first one we have the world of politics and the resurgence over the past few years of traditional values. It contains the World Congress of Families, an American coalition that promotes Christian right values internationally (remember the midwives in Sweden who didn’t want to perform abortion and sued when they lost their jobs? Yes, their legal bills were sponsored by the World Congress). It also contains Nicki Hayley talking about how embryos should have the same rights as children and politicians all over the world in outrage over drag queens holding story times for children.
On the second one you see your TikTok or Insta-feed. If you’re a young woman it’s likely you’ve come across videos such as “I started doing pilates and suddenly my waist was snatched, hormones balanced and I lost all excess weight”, or “I started training in tune with my cycle, stopped doing strength training and now my skin is clear”. Now don’t get me wrong, I love pilates, but there is something else going on here. I don’t think it’s really about pilates. And I definitely don’t think that it’s a movement that has women’s health and wellbeing as its only goal. As usual, when we talk about women’s bodies and trends, some deeper societal force is at play.
So, what could the force be that links these two trends together? One thing that I’ve become increasingly fascinated with over the past year is the pipeline between wellness culture and right-wing politics, and particularly social media’s role in it. Social media is a platform where norms and values can spread between different sectors of society, such as politics and wellness. In this case, wellness culture is starting to promote the traditional gender roles that right-wing conservative politics rest on. Traditional gender roles that have historically proven to increase gender equality (I know, this is great right?).
The trope of the soft, cycle-syncing pilates girl is yet another trend that monopolises women’s attention on their physical appearance (Feminist scholars have made the argument that when women gained rights in the 1960s, the wellness and beauty industry exploded as another way to keep women in a subordinate position in society). Aside from the fact that most arguments on hormone balancing has been scientifically found to lack any evidence (Norah MacKendrick, has spent the past years analysing this and found almost no legitimate medical support), it reinforces the argument that men and women are biologically different. An argument has historically been used to push for traditional values and subordinate women.
Laura Pitcher recently wrote an article for British Vouge looking at cycle syncing but in relation to the workweek. She brings up the issue of spending years pushing against gendered labour rhetoric, only to now go back to focusing on this divide with the argument that women should base their work on their cycle. And in doing so, it perpetuates the idea that gender is something binary. While the experts she interviews in the article raises some interesting points, we should create workspaces that are more inclusive and flexible in how people are allowed to show up and work, what worries me is that the argument that women are biologically different won’t actually change the system but instead again just be used as an argument to exclude them from power.
Similar to linking cycle syncing to the workplace, linking it to exercise excludes women from spaces such as the gym. This is an area where we’ve seen a lot of progress in the past decade of women increasingly stepping into traditionally male spaces like weight-training, crossfit, and bodybuilding. Now we have a big movement saying to stay out of that, stay soft, stay small.
Am I saying that a bunch of politicians are sitting in a room shaping algorithms and social media trends? No. But I am saying that we need to be able to contextualise trends, especially those that relate to gender roles, to see what larger purpose they may serve.