Women and Fitness in American Culture

This book explores common representations and experiences of American fitness. It takes women’s experiences as the center of inquiry toward an understanding of the function of fitness in our lives and in our culture-at-large. Ranging from 1968 to the present, from Jane Fonda to WiiFit, from revolution to institutionalization, from personal to political, and beyond, this book considers a broad range of topics from an interdisciplinary perspective: generations, cultural appropriation, community development, choreography, methodology, healing, and social justice. Drawing on her experience as a cultural theorist, educator and fitness instructor, the author offers critical and creative approaches that reveal the limitations and possibilities of fitness. The book enables readers to think about their own relationship to fitness as well as the more abstract meanings of the term, and suggests the idea that fitness has some potential to transform our worlds—if we’re willing to do the work(out).

Sarah Hentges (RYT and YACEP) is a professor of transdisciplinary cultural studies at the University of Maine at Augusta and the founder and lead curator of The Spiral Goddess Collective, a Center for Mind/body Movement in Bangor, Maine. She has taught fitness classes (and college classes) for over 25 years and yoga for 20 years.

Sarah Hentges
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 264
Bibliographic Info: appendix, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7480-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1399-4
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments  ix

Preface  1

Introduction  3

One. Tensions: Form and Function  13

Two. Tools and Trade  61

Three. Toward a Theory of Feminist Fitness  90

Four. Edges/Bodies and Minds  135

Five. Transformations  179

Appendix: Fitness Terms, Products and Personalities  225

Chapter Notes  229

Works Cited  239

Index  247

“Illuminating…highly recommended”—Choice.