Case by Case

What lurks below fitness' body-friendly language

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What lurks below fitness' body-friendly language

Through the lens of "pretty" sports, positive language still masks a skinny-obsessed culture

Alexandra Sahara

and

kate

May 03, 2021

3 minute read

We’re trying something different with this week’s podcast!

Listen in to hear how we vet this pitch and as we dive deeper into deciding how to greenlight a story like this.

If you’re listening to our podcast, first of all, we love you—and second of all, we’d love you even more if you rated us on your favorite podcasting app. Thank you so much, and as always, let us know if you like what you hear! We want to make Case By Case a tool that works for you, especially if you’re a newsperson or seeker of good stories.

☕ Coffee for pitches ☕

THE LEDE

This week, we’re suggesting a narrative-focused culture story with plenty of room for unique angles.

Athletes in performative sports like ballet, cheerleading, and dance hear and perpetuate very specific messages about their appearances and their bodies—usually that the ideal body is skinny. But that’s not news.

What is news is that those messages have been evolving to fit the body-positive pop culture, both explicitly and in ways that are unspoken.

Not only does this culture shift have implications for athletes, but also for the booming fitness industry as a whole.

THE BEST ANGLE

Using the high-pressure world of conventionally “pretty” sports like cheerleading, gymnastics, and ballet, use your story to track the changes in language as they adapt (or don’t) towards body positivity.

The basis:

Chloe Angyal’s April 7 Washington Post article asks an old question about ballet dancers with a very 2021 answer. What are ballet dancers told about their own bodies? Apparently, now, they’re told to be lengthened, strong, fit, pulled up.

But all of those words still mean skinny.

The guiding question:

Is popular, seemingly positive fitness jargon masking something more sinister?

The answer:

Sometimes. But there’s just as much, if not more, to unpack in what goes unsaid.

This kind of language is everywhere, and it has been for a while.

Think of words like toned, sculpted, and lengthened; “power” as a synonym for intense and sweaty.

You hear these at boutique fitness classes like Peloton, Soulcycle, and Corepower Yoga. Or in online workouts like Blogilates and Chloe Ting, the viral queen of the coronavirus lockdown.

But your barre instructor or personal trainer probably isn’t going to go “tough love” on you and tell you that you need to lose weight in the same way that elite athletes hear it.

There are two reasons for that:

We’ve been moving in a more body-positive direction as a society for a while now, and whether it’s a permutation of beauty standards or an honest shift, we’re just more aware that thinness isn’t always ideal—or attainable.
The relationship between you and a trainer is a contractual one, and the power is in your hands. It’s as simple as this—if they step on your toes, you’ll stop paying them. And your look, your progress, and your outcome are all your choice.

But sports don’t work like that. A coach, teacher, or trainer decides the look of the team or the dance company—and it inherently has to be uniform. Thinness is an executable goal to achieve uniformity. Dancers and cheerleaders pull off their routines in perfect unison, and that sentiment of uniformity runs deep.

And how do we know all this?

The power of personal narrative.

By putting together this pitch, we heard about body image in cheerleading from a woman named Kristina, who cheered at every level—Pop Warner, middle school, high school, collegiate—all while competing in extracurricular All Star cheer.

She recalled the lack of conversation around body image from coaches and the harmful nature of jokes and casual comments from teammates about their own bodies.

You can hear more of Kristina’s story in this week’s podcast on whatever podcast app you listen to.

The takeaway:

Even as the language that’s used to talk about body image—and our very perception of body image—is changing, the sentiments stay the same. To be toned, sculpted or even shredded, like fitness programs everywhere promise, you have to be thin enough to have visible muscles—that’s somewhere from 10-19 percent for women and 5-14 percent for men.

Multiple sources listed below in the sources section.

In a massive industry like fitness, positive language may seem like a step in the right direction. But it might not do the good it promises.

These are high-stakes and high-visibility sports to attract tens of thousands of youth players who take on the lessons they learn into adulthood.

Rather than assuming using body-positive language is solving the problem, consider how language can often provide cover for an industry that is doing what it always has done: training people to think “skinny” is ideal—both by using body-positive language and avoiding discussing the issue altogether.

Diverse sources worth interviewing:

A linguist. Talking to a linguist can help you nail down the specifics behind these language choices, changes, and the development of body-positive messaging and fitness jargon to date.

Someone like Sonya Renee Taylor, who wrote The Body Is Not An Apology, can ground you in the current world of body positivity and take a look at the movement’s intersectionality.

Someone from the CPSDA–Collegiate And Professional Sports Dietitians Association–or another sports dietitian can help discuss best practices for athletes, including messaging.

OTHER ANGLES WORTH EXPLORING

Case By Case loves gritty reboots and we’re still thinking about the portrayal of teenagers in popular media… and teen shows wouldn’t be teen shows without beautiful cheerleaders and stick-thin dancers. They’re staples on the pages of YA books, too.

How do portrayals of and messaging around eating disorders–from good to bad to ugly–affect audiences when they’re targeted at young teens?

This year’s “bikini body” discussion is all about the “quarantine body.” Terms like “body neutrality” are entering our collective vocabulary, and discussions about body positivity are as heightened as ever.

The body dictionary: Give us the terms we need to know as the fitness and body positivity movement evolve.