Fitness in the Age of Cultural Disunity

What is a “fit” person? Is there a definition of “healthy” that can apply to you and your neighbor alike? Does, or should, my definition of clean living agree with yours? If not, is that a problem for culture? Or is it a sign of a healthy and pluralistic society? Put more bluntly: which fitness ideas still unite us? What can a HIIT coach in Brooklyn, a bodybuilder in Lake Forest, and a yoga instructor in Montecito agree upon, if anything?

We live in destabilizing times. Traditional and generally agreed-upon definitions—of gender, of race, of the very notion of borders and nations—have found themselves weakened by the effects of secular modernity and the steady expansion of liberalism. (By “liberalism” here, I do not mean Western political progressivism, but rather the philosophy of liberalism extending out of the Enlightenment and emphasizing the emancipation of the sovereign self from traditional constraints: the liberalism that one finds in both free market theory and transgenderism). There are many forces underpinning our much-bemoaned moment of polarization, but surely one of them is the failure to agree on definitions of shared terms.

This is not something that merits much attention in the world of fitness, focusing as we do in that realm on the embodied self and perhaps by default rejecting the Cartesian dualism and distinctions between mind and body that endure in the “mind over matter” and “pain is weakness” mindsets. The gym, the studio, the Crossfit box: these are places of physical unity, and questions of linguistic epistemology tend to take a backseat to the unity of the matched rep and the mastered pose. Shared terms and their philosophical currency, in other words, seem to be of secondary concern in that setting, where they are exceeded in importance by the arts of physical excellence.  

But the power of shared terms in social stability should never be understated. Cultures tend to cohere and endure as long as there is general agreement upon shared terms—justice, fairness, even man and woman—and they tend to fragment when cracks appear in that terminological firmament. The midcentury conservative philosopher Richard M. Weaver described such uniting ideas as “spacious”: those shared terms that provide the foundation for social solidarity.

Weaver located the threat to that spaciousness in the ideas of William of Occam (he of razor fame), whose doctrine of “nominalism” posited that there can never be a unifying agreement on terms, and that things simply are what we say they are. By denying that there are metaphysical universals and that all things only have particular nature, William of Occam began the process of moving terms like “humanity” from universal categories upon which we could all agree to mere linguistic classifications that are shifting and arbitrary. 

Even if you are unfamiliar with the source material, you will know this idea from living in America circa 2024. Nominalism manifests itself in ideas like “speaking my truth” and they/them pronouns for the singular self; regardless of how one reacts to those concepts, it’s tough to dispute that they reflect a dis-uniting effect on shared terminology. Your Gen Z coworker with they/them pronouns in an email signature block is, almost literally, speaking a different language than, say, your grandmother.

You may not find such ideas pernicious on their face, but Weaver’s point is that a common culture cannot long endure with such disunity. Consider the once-unifying term democracy: does that mean the right to vote? The right to a mail-in ballot? The right to vote without a photo ID or Social Security number? If presidents are governing by executive order fiat in a frenzied few weeks before leaving office, is that “democracy”? What about “border”? Is that simply an idea? Is it only a border if there is a physical barrier to entry? These are all, as you have likely noticed, debates that are playing out in real time. Political problems, once you start examining them, tend to reveal themselves as terminological problems. If you doubt this, consider that roughly the last 60 years of American welfare state debates are essentially debates over the term “fairness.”

How does this apply to health and fitness? If you have paid even slight attention to currents of fitness thought in roughly the last decade, no doubt you are aware of the “body positivity” movement. This idea reflects a merited discontent with years of airbrushed models and six-pack abs: the fit woman as waifish size zero and the fit man as muscular Marvel hero. Beyond the unreality of these archetypes, from the basic unhealthiness of a twig-thin woman to the cartoonish carving of That Guy at the gym, the effect on young people skews negative in how it creates impressions of what a person should look like. But the impressions are long-lasting and powerful: I went to college in the early 2000s, when it seemed that every young woman in my dorm had a poster of a shirtless Brad Pitt in Fight Club, and I can tell you that image still holds sway in my brain when I look in the mirror.

The danger of the body positivity movement is that, like many reactionary forces, it has evolved from necessary correction to unmoored tyranny, in which proponents no longer want to change traditional strictures but rather see any attempt at uniform standards as oppressive. We once had generally agreed-upon definitions of things like minimum healthy levels of activity: 150 minutes of cardio a week, some strength training with increased levels as one ages, a diet that leans broadly Mediterranean, and so on. 

As Weaver would put it, these shared ideas–now regularly challenged by the body positivity and “fat studies” movements that see any guidance, however well-intentioned, as somehow colonialist and patriarchal–were the spacious ideas uniting our idea of how a healthy human lived. These are the spacious ideas that broadly underpinned social developments as disparate as the food pyramid, nutrition labels, questions at your annual physical, and so on. It is critical to note that these spacious ideas do not arise ex nihilo; they come from decades of scientific confirmation, historical evidence and longevity studies, and even contemporary anthropological study of other cultures. 

For evidence of how these ideas have been torn down, peruse virtually any article in the Well section of The New York Times—still the world’s most important media organization but indisputably the house organ of our intellectual elite—and note how often one sees the “something is good if it feels good, and vice versa” sentiment. Yes, you should lift weights—but not if it’s unpleasant! Sure, take a walk around the block for health—unless it’s strenuous, then return to self-care! Okay, there has been a traditional definition of “obese”—but you are always as healthy as you feel, and you should reject those oppressive definitions anyway! 

Besides the obvious problem that standards for health and fitness exist for a reason—because we have a wealth of data over time showing that they are likely better than not—the danger here is that the body positivity movement has drifted into what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre called “emotivism,” in which a thing is true because we feel it to be true. Rather than emphasizing necessary sacrifice, success through regular labor and effort, and the backbone to withstand unhealthy temptations (all hallmarks not just of health but also a life of virtue and excellence) the new fitness regime stresses first and foremost what I feel to be true. Maybe my waist size has ballooned to 44 and two-thirds of my calories come from ultraprocessed foods, but hey—I feel good and authentic to my true self, so who are you to dispute that?

The Times recently profiled, at great length, the “fat activist” Virginia Sole-Smith, who has sparked much positive and negative reaction for her divisive views on health and especially shaping children’s health. Sole-Smith, along with activists such as Victoria Abraham and the academics writing in scholarly journals such as Fat Studies, is decidedly unafraid to speak the language of prescriptive behavior. Consider these lines:

In Sole-Smith’s house there are neither “good” or “bad” foods nor “healthy” or “unhealthy” ones; doughnuts and kale hold equivalent moral value and no one polices portion size. By relieving herself and her family of rules about eating, Sole-Smith believes she will have a better chance of raising children who are proud of their bodies, trust themselves to enjoy their food and leave the table when they’re full. She serves dessert and snacks, like Cheez-Its, along with the dinner entree; her kids can eat their meal in any order.

Now, yes, perhaps the world of wellness has gone a bit heavy into assigning moral value to certain foods and activities (I say that as a vegan with one of those annoying faux-collegiate KALE shirts). But consider the logical consequences of Sole-Smith’s moral position here—and by assigning value to criteria it is a moral position—and the downstream effects of such thinking. 

We simply know, based on all available history and data, that kale is better for your body than a doughnut. We could get into nutritional value and ingredient lists, but no one can truly dispute this fact with a straight face. Kale is therefore “good” in a way that a doughnut is “bad.” By making a moral equivalence between the two—and, most importantly and most disturbingly to me as a father trying to raise two kids in an alarmingly unhealthy country—Sole-Smith and her fellow travelers in our intellectual elite are endorsing emotive living and giving tacit endorsement to what we know to be bad for most people.

“Revolutionary” is not too strong a word to describe what is happening here. An existing order that has endured because it works for most people and leads to the best individual and social outcomes is being torn down as we watch, and replaced by a new order of personal feeling, individual preference regardless of fact, and by default an endorsement of a corporate food system that emphatically does not have our well-being anywhere in its mission. Where once we had, even just a few years ago, a spacious idea of the moral and practical choices a person should make—maybe pass on the doughnut and have a kale salad, then take a walk and lift some weights—we now have voices of power loudly declaiming that those of us in fitness should dare not tell another person how to live.

Clearly I believe this to be a net social ill, and because I am a conservative willing to endorse the superiority of certain standards of behavior, I believe you should also find it to be such. It can be a difficult and lonely path to navigate the shoals of dominant opinion, but if you work with clients you should not shy away from giving practical advice but also communicating the moral worth of that advice. Some choices are better than others; we may publicly dispute this in order to save face with the new order, but we all reveal this core belief in our own actions. Be sensitive to individual differences, but do not be afraid to tell someone “You should not do that” as long as you can demonstrate and explain why.

Weaver’s most famous book is called Ideas Have Consequences, a title he disliked but a concept that becomes more obviously true the older one gets. The once-spacious ideas of health, from moderate movement to eating plants, have been disrupted. They are being replaced by ideas that we know to be bad for people. Responding to that effort takes individual action and, yes, defense of uniform standards. Whether we have the stomach to mount that defense remains to be seen.

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R.M. Stangler holds a PhD from the University of Kansas and worked for five years as a professor of English and communication before joining the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where he is Director of Foundation Relations. He is also a certified personal trainer and natural movement coach in Kansas City.