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JONQUILYN HILL: You know, in the post-World War II era, for a while, people thought exercise was bad for you.

SHELLY MCKENZIE: That is absolutely true.

BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:

What?

HILL: They used to think you had a certain amount of heartbeats.

LUSE: For your entire life?

MCKENZIE: Yes.

HILL: Yes. And it’s like, why waste your heartbeats on running and exercising and lifting weights?

LUSE: They were cooking good.

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LUSE: They were cooking with that one.

HILL: (Laughter).

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LUSE: Hello, hello. I’m Brittany Luse and you’re listening to IT’S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what’s going on in culture and why it doesn’t happen by accident.

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LUSE: Have you picked up a couple weights recently?

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LUSE: Started walking or jogging or doing Pilates?

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LUSE: Maybe you’ve joined a rack league.

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LUSE: Well, me too. I’ve dipped my toe into strength training. I started back in dance classes this year and I am dedicated to taking at least one hour-long walk a day. And a lot of other people are getting active, too. The Sports and Fitness Industry Association surveyed 18,000 Americans in 2024. They measure the lowest bar for activity, and they found that 80% of Americans did one sport or physical activity at least once that year. That’s the highest level they’ve ever recorded.

It’s 25 million more people than were active in 2019. It also found that the number of people who engage heavily with a sport or exercise, what they call core participation, has risen to 55% of Americans, which is also the highest they’ve recorded. But how do we get from some people thinking exercise is bad for you to this? How does exercise culture fit into our broader culture? And how does more enthusiasm for exercise square with the focus on fitness in our politics?

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PETE HEGSETH: It’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops.

LUSE: I’m getting into it with a couple of very smart thinkers and self-professed gym rats. Jonquilyn Hill, host of Vox’s “Explain It To Me” podcast.

HILL: So happy to be here.

LUSE: And Shelly McKenzie, author of “Getting Physical: The Rise Of Fitness Culture In America.”

MCKENZIE: Thank you.

LUSE: So just to let the audience understand where we’re at right now in gym history, gym culture, we can see in some recent data that more Americans are exercising. What do you think is driving that cultural shift towards the gym?

HILL: I mean, I think we’re in a peak optimization era, you know? Like, everyone wants to be better, faster, stronger.

MCKENZIE: Absolutely.

HILL: And physical activity is one way to do it, I think, especially with young people. It’s something you can control in a world that feels real uncontrollable right now. And also, you know, if you can’t put your money towards buying a home, you can put it towards…

MCKENZIE: (Laughter).

HILL: …Going to that Pilates class, going to that cycle class.

MCKENZIE: (Laughter).

HILL: Like, it’s something that you can control and do, and one way that you can make yourself better in a world where things don’t seem that great right now.

LUSE: That feels related to me, to how I think the pandemic really refocused a lot of people on their bodies. You know, the pandemic kind of supercharged existing wellness trends. But also, I think a lot of people came to realize just how fragile their bodies really are. I also think about just the fact that, you know, the United States specifically is a country that doesn’t have universal health care, unlike a lot of other, you know, rich countries that have similar sort of economic profiles.

HILL: It’s expensive if you’re going through the ACA marketplace, if you’re going through your employer. And it’s a thing of, like, OK, maybe I get that high-deductible plan and just, you know, really eat those fruits and veggies, get that exercise in. I remember years ago talking with Dr. Jen Gunter for a show I was producing on menopause. And she told me, one of the best things you can do as a young woman to prepare for being an older woman is to lift weights. Like, that will help you stave off osteoporosis. And ever since then, I was like, well, I guess it’s going to be me and these weights in this gym. Got to do it for future me.

LUSE: It kind of truly is one of the few things within our control when it comes to, you know, preventative health, even though it obviously can’t prevent everything.

MCKENZIE: I agree that fitness does give you a sense of control over your body. But at the same time, it’s a double-edged sword because people who engage highly in fitness like to think of themselves as invincible. But truly, you know, genetics, it’s a thing. Accidents, they happen.

LUSE: Yeah.

MCKENZIE: And we can do a lot for our own health, but it’s no excuse for citizens having difficulty accessing health care.

LUSE: Yeah, I mean, that’s a very good point. Another thing I’m thinking about that might be contributing to the rise in gym-going, I got to mention GLP-1s. These are drugs that very often, when they’re prescribed, they come with a recommendation to eat a lot of protein and also to exercise. There is the rise of MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, you know, RFK Jr.’s slogan. And then also, of course, I think there’s, like, inescapable fitness influencers on social media.

MCKENZIE: Right.

LUSE: I imagine that all of those things affect how people think about themselves and their bodies.

HILL: It’s very easy for not being, quote-unquote, “in shape,” not looking a certain way to become a moral failing. It can be a lot of pressure. And it can start to feel like, oh, my gosh, what am I doing wrong? And why does everyone else but me get it right?

LUSE: Let’s talk about who’s exercising. Younger people are less likely to have done zero exercise in the past year than older people. Why do you think they might be exercising more?

MCKENZIE: Young people are certainly aware of the need to exercise. They’ve heard it in health class and going all through secondary school. They also have fewer responsibilities, you know, probably don’t have kids yet. The gym is the place to go after work rather than the bar. Bars are expensive now.

LUSE: (Laughter) Yeah, I mean, the gym I belong to, you know, it’s the cost of two expensive cocktails a month.

MCKENZIE: Right.

HILL: (Laughter).

LUSE: So, you know, mom, no longer in the young people demographic. I’m not hitting happy hour up because the prices aren’t aligning with my budget, you know, and neither is a hangover.

MCKENZIE: Right.

LUSE: So I definitely imagine that’s part of it, you know. Plus, we keep seeing data that young people drink the least out of all age groups.

HILL: They probably follow – I mean, I know I follow tons of people who are fitness influencers. I feel like every six months I have a new favorite fitness influencer.

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HILL: Because my former favorite one gets canceled for some reason. And then it’s like, oh, well, found a new girl to watch at the gym and try her workouts.

LUSE: (Laughter).

HILL: And so I think that’s a major factor. I think it’s just considered part of taking care of yourself now in a way it wasn’t for generations past. Like, everyone’s eating a ton of protein. Everyone’s taking supplements. Everyone’s like, OK, I’m at the Pilates class. Like, it’s just very much a part of the social structure now.

LUSE: I’m glad you brought up Pilates because I feel like Pilates has exploded due to social media over the past five years.

HILL: Shout out to Lori Harvey.

LUSE: Shout out to Lori. Very good point. Shout out to influencer with famously defined abs Lori Harvey. And I had started going to Pilates in, like, 2018, 2019. My friend Sada (ph) introduced me to it. We were by far the youngest ladies in class. And so, yeah, to suddenly see that, like, you know, you can’t find any open classes on Sunday mornings and that they’re full of 20-somethings also says something about maybe how people might be signaling status.

HILL: Oh, absolutely. You know how there’s that saying, you have to dress for the job you want? I think people now are exercising for the lifestyle they want.

LUSE: Oh.

HILL: Like, you know, I’m not a Whole Foods mom yet.

LUSE: (Laughter).

HILL: But I can go to this Pilates class, and I can put on this lululemon, and I can at least look like one until my time comes. And I think that is a factor. That’s the soft-life exercise. And then you have your, like, gym bros with your more, like, and this is the masculine exercise. I think people are exercising for the lives they want.

LUSE: That’s very, very interesting. Exercising for the lives they want. Coming up – why politicians are worried about our fitness, too.

HILL: People in power will never be satisfied with the American body, the same way people are sort of never satisfied with their own bodies.

LUSE: Stick around.

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LUSE: Now, I want to turn our attention now to women over 65. Journalist and author Derek Thompson pointed out women over 65 are spending 96 minutes per week on exercise, sports and recreation. That’s 42 more minutes than they were spending 20 years ago. This is according to data from the American Time Use Survey. Something to note is that the survey doesn’t distinguish between doing exercise and sports or watching exercise and sports. But I’m wondering, why might women over 65 be exercising more?

MCKENZIE: Menopause is having a moment, and…

LUSE: Yeah.

MCKENZIE: …Women – to prevent osteoporosis, they need to get into the gym and lift heavy weights. Lifting weights is not just for men. Older people have been a target demographic of the gym industry for quite a while now.

LUSE: I did not know that.

MCKENZIE: If you think about it, you know, who’s got some money? Who is available as a client during daytime hours when personal trainers are sitting idle, when machines are sitting idle? And the smart chains are actually developing programs for their older clientele to capitalize on this market, to keep the physical buildings full from open till close.

HILL: For a while, people thought exercise was bad for you.

MCKENZIE: That is absolutely true.

LUSE: What?

HILL: They used to think you had a certain amount of heartbeats.

LUSE: …For your entire life?

MCKENZIE: Yes.

HILL: Yes. And it’s like, why waste your heartbeats on running and exercising and lifting weights?

LUSE: OK. Maybe they were cooking. Maybe they were cooking with that.

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LUSE: My producer is telling me that’s not every doctor but definitely some, like cardiologist Peter Steincrohn, who wrote a book called “You Don’t Have To Exercise!” in 1942. But that kind of thinking was pretty strongly debunked a couple decades later with further research and with autopsies on people who exercised a lot, like marathon runner Clarence DeMar.

HILL: And if you think a lot about boomer women, like, that was when they were kids. It’s a brand-new world now for them. You know, they’re told – at first it was like, don’t exercise, and then, like, you don’t want to be muscular. That’s for men. That’s for boys. And now they’re in a time where it’s like, yeah, it’s OK to lift weights. It’s OK to do those things. I think it is almost like sort of a renaissance for them, like, realizing, oh, I can do this.

LUSE: I mean, something that crosses my mind all the time is the fact that the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon – that didn’t happen until 1967. She used a loophole to register under her initials. And, you know, the race director grabbed her and started ripping her number off her clothes. She ended up finishing the race, but women weren’t explicitly allowed to enter the Boston Marathon until 1972. I also want to talk about, though, something else – another place I’m seeing kind of this obsession with fitness show up, and that’s in American politics. The U.S. secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, made headlines when he said there would be no, quote, “fat generals.”

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HEGSETH: It’s tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.

LUSE: As already mentioned, fitness is a big part of RFK Jr.’s MAHA platform. In an executive order, President Donald Trump reestablished the Presidential Fitness Test for children, saying, quote, “we must address the threat to the vitality and longevity of our country that is posed by America’s declining health and physical fitness,” end quote. Now, this isn’t new. The Obamas were big into promoting fitness, too. But I wonder, why is there so much focus on fitness and what appears to be a focus on anti-fatness in politics right now?

HILL: I think part of it is a desire to go back to an imagined era. Like, you know, we’re talking about that post-World War II era. In the American imagination, everyone was thinner. Everyone was fitter.

MCKENZIE: I absolutely agree that there is a huge, huge nostalgia trend. I would say that it even dates back to this idea that Americans have these – or white Americans, I should say, have these big muscular, healthy-looking bodies. These are the bodies that cleared the frontier. These are the bodies that made westward expansion happen. These are the Paul Bunyan bodies. But in fact, it’s a really dated idea about fitness if you only imagine fitness in terms of muscular strength because what they’re thinking about is how bodies look. They’re not thinking about how bodies function.

LUSE: Even in you bringing up the olden days, in the same executive order where the president wanted to reinstate the Presidential Fitness Test, he referenced “The Soft American,” which is JFK’s treatise on why, quote, “soft Americans” were both bad for military readiness and mental capacity. I think there’s been a lot said about obesity rates increasing since the mid-century, but people weren’t necessarily healthier then. I would also venture a guess that if everyone were running around broad and strapping in the 1950s and ’60s, JFK would have seen no need to write this treatise called “The Soft American.”

MCKENZIE: Right. This is the era of the man in the gray flannel suit. We’ve got the 9-to-5 schedule. We’ve got the beginnings of the lives that, you know, we live today in 2025. This is when they begin to take shape.

LUSE: Yeah.

MCKENZIE: What was happening, we begin to see heart attacks right and left, and heart attacks become an epidemic in terms of the time. People begin to think, well, what are we going to do? How are we going to stop this? At the same time, you’ve got scientific research happening that they’re trying to figure out why this is and how we’re going to remediate this, and physical activity begins to look like the key. What JQ mentioned before about the anti-exercise physicians, there were several of them. It was not a foregone conclusion that exercise was good for you. Cease or decease was one of the famous slogans of the time, meaning cease exercise or decease – die. And as we start to come out of the ’60s into the ’70s, as I figure this out, that, you know what? Your heart does well with some movement, that’s where jogging comes from.

LUSE: Something that’s interesting to me in this is that America exerts its power through, like, soft power. Like, culture or economics and also drone warfare. You know, like, these are things that don’t have to do with, like, the body or really musculature at all. Like, if we’re not out there doing hand-to-hand combat, ’cause that’s just not how war is conducted these days, what is this about? This obsession with, like, America being fit?

MCKENZIE: In a way, it almost feels like a mirror. It’s like, people in power will never be satisfied with the American body the same way people are sort of never satisfied with their own bodies.

LUSE: Dang.

MCKENZIE: Have you all ever had a moment – you know, I think, especially for women, you look back at a younger picture of yourself, and you look so cute, and you’re like, oh, my gosh, why didn’t I like my body then, or like…

HILL: (Laughter).

MCKENZIE: …Why did I pick at myself…

LUSE: Yeah.

MCKENZIE: …Like that? Like, I looked…

HILL: Yeah.

MCKENZIE: …Great. It’s like this feeling of never being satisfied. And it’s like, well, of course we’re never satisfied if the people who are in charge of us are also never satisfied. Like, if we’re always striving for this thing and it’s never going to be good enough.

HILL: What I see, it’s like a mirror, as you said, but what I see the administration doing is that it’s very much an administration that’s focused on appearances. We see this in what’s happening within the White House building or the fact that when the talks to the troops came out, not only did you talk about no fat generals, but African American men who had a relaxation on the grooming protocol to prevent painful ingrown hairs.

MCKENZIE: Yeah.

LUSE: Ingrown hairs and bumpy skin that comes from pseudofolliculitis barbae, which affects Black men more. Starting this past August, if it’s not treated within a year, members with that condition will have to leave service. In Hegseth’s memo, he said, quote, “the department must remain vigilant in maintaining the grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos.”

MCKENZIE: Right. I mean, this is an administration that cares about how things look. It’s not about function. I think this is just a politics of intimidation, just let’s stand there with our big bodies and show people that, you know, we’re bigger and stronger than they are.

LUSE: You know, that makes me think about a conversation we had earlier this year on our show with a really fantastic researcher named Roberto Olivardia. We were having a conversation that was specifically about, like, bigorexia, or muscle dysmorphia. And one of the things that came up in our conversation was musculature communicating a certain type of masculinity. I feel like that is kind of playing a role in this, too, is this idea of, like, brute strength being connected to masculinity.

HILL: Of course, the funny thing is – and “Saturday Night Live” picked up on this in their parody of the talk – is the emphasis on highly developed muscles along with a very clean-cut look is, of course, a prevailing aesthetic in a lot of gay populations.

MCKENZIE: I mean, it’s the male gaze at the end of the day, right? Like, it’s all for the male gaze.

HILL: Exactly, exactly.

LUSE: Oh, yeah. That’s gaze – G-A-Z-E, not…

MCKENZIE: Yes.

LUSE: …G-A-Y-S.

MCKENZIE: Correct.

LUSE: I got one last question. So the administration is trying to promote a version of fitness, you know, one that seems very visual, as you point out, Shelly. At the same time, that more Americans are engaging in exercise for their own many and varied reasons, as we have discussed. But I wonder – what is fitness? How would you define it?

HILL: Silence.

MCKENZIE: I know.

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HILL: It depends on who defines it and for what purpose. I mean, the definition of fitness is so much vaster. With every successive decade, we’ve added – medically speaking, we’ve added additional parts a fit body should have. You know, first, you know, we had to get to cardiovascular fitness, you know, a little bit of calistenics. Then running starts to come out. Then weightlifting starts to come out. We’re starting to think more about balance, flexibility, stamina, coordination. We’re adding all kinds of additional components to the scientific definition of fitness.

MCKENZIE: I mean, fitness, wellness, all these terms, it’s hard for me not to take off my skepticism hat because at the end of the day, it is a way to sell us stuff. Like, you cannot forget…

LUSE: (Laughter).

HILL: Sure.

MCKENZIE: …The capitalism of it all. That is a factor. But when I think of fitness in my own life, it’s like, OK, how do I move in a way that I’m capable of and that makes me feel good? And that, you know, it’s very hard to divorce yourself from outside sources to, like, not think about the scale, not think about the looks, but to try as hard as I can and think, like, OK, what makes me feel good? What’s good for my mental health? What’s good for my physical health? And moving in that direction.

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LUSE: Well, I tell you what – the next time that I set foot in that gym, I will be thinking about this conversation. Jonquilyn, Shelly, I appreciate it. Thank you.

MCKENZIE: Thank you.

HILL: Thank you.

LUSE: That was Jonquilyn Hill, host of Vox’s “Explain It To Me” podcast, and Shelly McKenzie, author of “Getting Physical: The Rise Of Fitness Culture In America.”

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LUSE: And I’m going to put on my influencer hat for a second and ask you to please subscribe to this show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you’re listening. Click follow so you know the latest in culture while it’s still hot.

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LUSE: This episode of IT’S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by…

LIAM MCBAIN, BYLINE: Liam McBain.

LUSE: This episode was edited by…

NEENA PATHAK, BYLINE: Neena Pathak.

LUSE: We have fact-checking help from…

SUSIE CUMMINGS, BYLINE: Susie Cummings.

LUSE: Our supervising producer is…

BARTON GIRDWOOD, BYLINE: Barton Girdwood.

LUSE: Our executive producer is…

VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.

LUSE: Our VP of programming is…

YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.

LUSE: All right. That’s all for this episode of IT’S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I’m Brittany Luse. Talk soon.

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