Fitness Fanatics: Exercise as Answer to Pending Zombie Apocalypse in Contemporary America

Abstract

Physical fitness has a long history in the United States. Currently, functional fitness has emerged as a popular, novel method of exercising. Based on years of ethnographic research on a branded version of functional fitness, I argue this form of exercise is an audit system and culture, initiated by the creators of the brand itself, implemented in the gyms, and governed by the participants. This article illustrates that such an exercise regimen is a response to the post-9/11 world-complete with war on terror, economic insecurity, and border security threatsand provides a window into the necropolitics of elite, white America due to an uncertain, neoliberal future. [fitness, audit culture, race, zombie apocalypse, United States] RESUMEN Un buen estado físico tiene una larga historia en los Estados Unidos. Actualmente, la forma física funcional ha emergido como un método popular, novedoso de ejercicio. Basado en años de investigación etnográfica sobre una versión de marca del estado físico funcional, argumento que esta forma de ejercicio es un sistema de auditoría y cultura, iniciado por los creadores de la marca misma, implementado en los gimnasios y gobernado por los participantes. Este artículo ilustra que tal régimen de ejercicio es una respuesta al mundo posterior al 11 de septiembre-completo con la guerra contra el terror, la inseguridad económica y las amenazas a la seguridad de las fronteras-y provee una ventana a la necropolítica de la élite, América blanca debido a un futuro neoliberal, incierto. [estado físico, cultura de auditoría, raza, apocalipsis zombi, Estados Unidos]

“I feel terrible and need to exercise to find any sort of joy”: What COVID stay‐at‐home orders tell us about exercise as vitality politics and entertainment in the United States

“…The states most strongly represented in the sample were Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York. Social scientific research on exercise in the United States finds that it is largely practiced by white, middle-class Americans (Armstrong et al 2018;Eun-Ok Im et al 2011;Hejtmanek 2020;Lau 2011;Marshall et al 2007;Seo and Li 2010;Seo and Torabi 2007;Sohn et al 2017). We recognize that those who filled out our survey reflect these demographics, are interpellated to exercise, and are part of the bias associated with social networking sampling methods (Bernard and Gravlee 2014).…”

“…2018; Eun‐Ok Im et al. 2011; Hejtmanek 2020; Lau 2011; Marshall et al. 2007; Seo and Li 2010; Seo and Torabi 2007; Sohn et al.…”

“…2019). More specifically, Hejtmanek (2020, forthcoming) has over six years’ ethnographic research experience in gyms and on fitness 1 . We are also affluent white American women—members of the largest group of exercisers in the United States (Lau 2011; Marshall et al.…”

“…Specifically, we study how humans adapt to stressful environments, including mental institutions (Hejtmanek 2015), reindeer herding in Arctic environments (Ocobock et al. 2020), and extreme physical activity (Hejtmanek 2020; Ocobock et al. 2019).…”

In Pursuit of Fitness: Bodywork, Temporality and Self-Improvement in Mozambique

“…Functional training in other parts of the world similarly models itself on war and natural disaster. 92 Well-being, like fitness, does indeed deserve to be understood, as the anthropologist Michael Jackson suggests, 'not as a settled state but as a field of struggle'. 93 Yet there is also something specific about the Mozambican struggle, in its 'orientations toward the future' 94 and in its understandings of the transformative potential of body-work that colours how people today approach fitness.…”