Sports and the Cult of the Body Under Capitalism

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title = “Sports and the Cult of the Body Under Capitalism”
date = 2022-07-15
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Now that summer season has fully started and the holidays in the Author’s country are kicking in, one can observe with increasing frequency the promotion of the “Summer Body” or “Beach Body” everywhere, colorful advertisements for sports products and diet fads litter every magazine near the counter of your favorite grocery store. When going for a walk, one can observe all manners of people going about their daily fitness routines, be it walking, jogging, or even the fashionable “Street Workout”. The fitness industry stands at a global revenue of roughly 100 billion, although it has dipped down to about 55 billion during the pandemic. It is however quickly recovering and expected to soon succeed the 100-billion-treshold once again. And this doesn’t even include the weight loss and diets market, where 72 billion are spent each year in the United States alone. That money is equivalent to some median estimates of what it would cost to end world hunger. So, how did this industry happen to become so huge and what are the implications of it?

Sports themselves have always been a feature of societies, in the past as much as now. The ancient Greeks are famous for their Olympiacs, but even away from huge organized tournaments, competitive games have been played and observed in just about every human society. Roughly 1500 sites have been found in Central America thought to have been built with the purpose of playing the famous Mayan “Ball Game” (and no, the winner was NOT sacrificed after these games) in mind. It is clear that there is a natural human drive to participate in sports, either directly or as an observer. It has been posited that the factionalism observed with sports teams and the often assorted hooliganism serves as a psychological replacement for war in peacetime. Famous athletes are also often revered figures, garnering millions of fans and admirers around the entire world.

There is a certain culture around team sports, the partisanism one feels for their favorite team, the spirit between the players of a team working successfully as a unit to win a game. But what the Author will be talking about here is the culture and psychology in individual fitness, concerning the crowd of regular gym-goes, diet-followers et cetera. The Author considers themselves to be part of that crow and as such will attempt to deconstruct and understand its workings from the inside.

Especially in Bodybuilding, which is dominated by men, there is a huge focus on aesthetics. Of course, one of the most common goals of gym-goers is to simply lose weight, but many do not stop there, instead opting to pursue further goals of not only fitness but also the “perfect body”. But what is this perfect body, and where does the idea of it come from? There is no denying that human bodies can be very aesthetically pleasing, and the positive effects from being healthy and strong don’t need any further explanation. Yet, the Author doubts that these factors are the only ones that play into most peoples fitness goals – a much more pressing matter is often the issue of body image. And where does this body image come from? Like everything else, it is shaped by the material and cultural world around us, with its movie stars, fitness advertisements and social media platforms. An aesthetically pleasing body can today become a commodity to be fetishized on platforms like Instagram, where it can not only be admired by others but also judged in the form of “Likes” gathered from a posting. With enough time and effort, one could even make a living solely by being a “fitness influencer”.

There is also considerable difference between the body images for the male and female sex. While males are also objectified, and objectify themselves, this applies in an even higher capacity to women, who are already in current society often objectified by default, as their bodies are seen as commodities on a perverted kind of “sexual market” and regarded as objects to be acquired. The male body, supposedly, should also be one of strength and display of power, showing an edge in competitiveness and dedication. Women on the other hand are oftentimes even scared of resistance training because they have been told by society that strength is a masculine trait and thus would make them less desirable. According to societal standards, women should instead opt to be very skinny (oftentimes advertisements even display women with BMI so low that it could become an actual health problem) and feminine. Of course, what exactly is masculine and feminine changes in society constantly. Thus, both sexes are trapped in a constant race to better objectify themselves as commodities to be judged by other people. This leads to all sorts of problems in individual fitness, like rampant steroid abuse in some corners of the bodybuilding culture. It also leads to constant psychological pressure on the ones that participate in this culture, and an unhealthy sense of competition.

In a socialist society, there would of course stil be individual fitness and a culture around it. The Author however thinks that there could be a significant shift in how we perceive our own bodies, other peoples bodies, and the nature of performing physical activity with the goal of “betterment” in different areas which could overall lead to not only a more healthy society for those who participate in the culture of individual fitness, but also those who do not. Without the tendency of capitalism to commodify even the individual itself, psychological pressures would decrease and we would finally be free to pursue sports for what they should be – a celebration of the feats mankind is capable of. We must pursue states of human flourishing, and this is yet another small part of it.