Draper said he was also emotionally abusive, telling her, among other things, to \u201cstart doing Pilates every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/pilates_call_her_daddy_c39415.jpeg\")
Reality TV star Jessi Draper said on the podcast \u201cCall Her Daddy\u201d that her husband was emotionally abusive before filing for divorce, including telling her to \u201cstart doing Pilates every single day.\u201d
\n (Call Her Daddy)<\/p>\n
Pilates has grown in popularity in recent years, fueled in part by social media. This dig at the exercise routine of Draper, the \u201cSecret Lives of Mormon Wives\u201d cast member, has much deeper misogynist roots than simply criticizing her appearance: It serves as shorthand for both a set of instructions and expectations for how a \u201cgood\u201d and desirable woman should be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This logic aligns with messages from parts of the manosphere that promote the notion that men have been made victims by the onset and momentum of feminism. The manosphere directs them to reassert their dominance over women to regain social status lost by their own lack of attractiveness \u2014\u00a0which, somehow, is caused by women.<\/p>\n
Influencers have increasingly popularized the ideal of a \u201cPilates girl\u201d \u2014 a woman who engages in what they see as a feminine form of exercise, one that doesn\u2019t result in bulky muscles. The Pilates girl doesn\u2019t go to the gym, where she might encounter other men. (They might look at her! She might look at them!) Instead, she opts for 50-minute classes that are assumed to be filled with other White, lithe women.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf your girl goes to Pilates, wife her up immediately,\u201d said one man creator on Instagram<\/a> who declared Pilates to be \u201cwholesome\u201d and \u201cthe biggest green flag ever for a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf your girl goes to Pilates, she\u2019s probably staying in on the weekends so she can get up early and go to a Solidcore or BodyRok class,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd she\u2019s going to come back from the Pilates class in a great mood because she went with her friends and didn\u2019t get hit on by any creepy guys and got a great workout in.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mariel Barnes<\/a> is an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studies the manosphere and its political impact<\/a>. She\u2019s not surprised that \u201cPilates\u201d has emerged as a kind of code word.\u00a0<\/p>\n Read Next:<\/p>\n Read Next: \u201cIt\u2019s a way of telling people what you want without being explicit about it \u2014 and it\u2019s also a way of trying to not seem like a terrible person,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n She pointed to Fusco on \u201cLove Is Blind\u201d as an example of the latest iteration of the manosphere, one with some level of plausible deniability.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s this normalization of some of these qualities that have emerged from the manosphere but couching them in a more palatable manner and making it harder for women to detect,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pilates has a reputation in the fitness world for being associated with privilege. \u201cLove is Blind\u201d alum Raven Ross, who is Black, recently found herself in the middle of a social media maelstrom<\/a> after posting a TikTok defending Pilates<\/a> against criticisms that it lacks diversity and is inaccessible.\u00a0<\/p>\n While YouTube videos of at-home workouts (like Ross\u2019<\/a>) abound, the practice can use specialized machinery in studios. Like yoga, the practice\u2019s origins aren\u2019t meant to be exclusionary, but the way it is marketed <\/a>usually caters to a specific body type and socioeconomic status.<\/p>\n Danielle Friedman<\/a>, the author of \u201cLet\u2019s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World\u201d<\/a> and a journalist focused on the history, culture and science of women\u2019s fitness trends, explained that Pilates was created by German boxer and gymnast Joseph Pilates while held by the British during World War I.\u00a0<\/p>\n During this time, he began teaching fitness to other internees, reportedly inspired by cats\u2019 movements. As Pilates began to refine his method, his focus shifted to what we refer to today as the mind-body connection, telling practitioners they could use their minds to control their muscles. He dubbed his new practice \u201ccontrology.\u201d<\/p>\n After the war, Pilates and his new bride, Clara, arrived in New York City, where they continued to teach \u201ccontrology,\u201d which gained a foothold in the world of classical ballet. By the 1950s, Friedman said, \u201ccontrology\u201d was becoming known as Pilates \u2014 and had found a new audience outside the dance community: wealthy New York City socialites.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was still very unusual for women to devote a designated part of their day to work their bodies, but because this had an association with dancers \u2014 and thus with grace and thinness \u2014 it became something that women who had time to spare in their days pursued,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t until the 1990s that Pilates went mainstream in concert with yoga \u2014 which has roots in ancient Indian practices \u2014 both responding to a kind of cultural backlash against the intensity of 1980s aerobics culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou could shorthand \u2018yoga body\u2019 and \u2018Pilates body\u2019 and people knew what you meant. The fact that it was practiced, both of them, by supermodels and professionally beautiful, thin women really cemented that aspirational quality,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n The current rise in popularity, Friedman said, can be seen as a backlash to interest in weightlifting and strength training \u2014 especially among women \u2014 and exercises that are about creating visible muscle mass, as opposed to thinness.<\/p>\n Read Next:<\/p>\n Read Next: On social media, the virtues of Pilates are extolled by both men and women creators who don\u2019t make explicitly political content but who promote an aspirational lifestyle rooted in wealth, traditional gender roles and living a \u201csoft life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Barnes said the manosphere has a \u201crigid conceptualization of what a woman should be\u201d: a traditional, submissive stay-at-home wife who doesn\u2019t challenge a man\u2019s status as the breadwinner and head of household and who fits a specific aesthetic presentation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the stereotype of who goes to Pilates is that aesthetic,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s this slim, toned svelte woman who is younger, has no curves, a flat stomach and ab definition. And they use Pilates as a euphemism for getting that kind of woman.\u201d<\/p>\n The same Instagram creator who said men should \u201cwife up\u201d women who go to Pilates called in in another post<\/a> to \u201cbring back stay-at-home Pilates wives,\u201d clarifying that he didn\u2019t believe that women shouldn\u2019t work but should choose a career that allows time to \u201ctan by the pool, go to Pilates, go to farmer\u2019s markets in a sundress and raise a family.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Other men post Reels joking about working hard so their future wives can go to Pilates and drive luxury cars. Women \u201csoft life\u201d creators who promote Pilates as part of their highly curated aesthetics are often seen but not heard: take one Reel from a woman showing herself exercising on a Pilates reformer<\/a> with the overlaid text: \u201cYou can\u2019t hurt me. I\u2019m a millennial with a degree I don\u2019t use, a husband who provides and being spoiled is my love language.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n All of this isn\u2019t to say that people \u2014 including women of all ages \u2014 shouldn\u2019t be able to freely do Pilates without men telling them to.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that Pilates is a great way to become strong,\u201d said Friedman. \u201cIt\u2019s an excellent form of resistance training. It just doesn\u2019t tend to create as much mass as other forms of strength training.\u201d<\/p>\n But Friedman also noted that throughout history, exercise culture has operated in direct dialogue with the social power women have held.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRight now it\u2019s hard to parse what\u2019s happening, but I think as long as women are focused on making themselves small and controlling their bodies for other people\u2019s pleasure or benefit, that sort of inherently puts women in an unequal position.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n ![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/weighted_vest.jpg\")
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\n What\u2019s the deal with weighted vests?
\n <\/a><\/p>\n![\"Joseph](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/joseph_pilates.jpg\")
Joseph Pilates, founder of the Pilates exercise method, helps a client through an exercise routine in his 8th Avenue studio on October 4, 1961 in New York City.
\n (I.C. Rapoport\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\n ![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ED-Influencers-1.jpeg\")
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\n The internet has always fueled eating disorders. Influencers could be adding to the harm.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n