1
“FIT OR FAT”? FITNESS IN RECENT HISTORY AND THE PRESENT DAY

Cycling and self-tracking

Anyone who practices cycling – whether the average Joe on their Sunday morning bike ride or a pro ascending the Alpe d’Huez – almost certainly has a little computer on their handlebars. This measures speed, distance traveled and altitude attained, but also, depending on the device, one’s pulse rate, cadence, and power output in watts. The number of calories (supposedly) burned is also shown. The goal is obvious: the bike computer is an aid to self-observation. It is intended to provide information about the cyclist’s performance level and help optimize their activity, perfect their body, and enhance their potential. The symbiosis of body and technology, fundamental to cycling in any case, has reached a new level.1

As far as the targeted improvement of one’s performance is concerned, however, such a device has a shortcoming. It registers very precisely what is happening on the bike (only the physical performance, of course, not the joy of movement, let alone the pleasure derived from the landscape). But it records nothing of one’s life outside exercise. The device is unaware of how much exercise I get overall, how much beer I drink, whether I eat a lot of fatty meat and potato chips, and whether I get enough quality sleep. To observe and evaluate these things requires a different technology. If a smartphone is equipped with a corresponding app and supplemented by some gadgets, then one’s behavior can be tracked, measured, and evaluated 24 hours a day. This is known as fitness tracking or self-tracking. One can also use a smartwatch or a fitness wristband to do this. Measuring and recording one’s actions thus permeates everyday life, even when one is fast asleep – and all in the name of performance.

In Germany, about a third of the population is said to record data on movement, eating, sleeping, and bodily trends in one way or another. In the United States the figure is claimed to be almost 70 percent, though the numbers vary widely, depending on who one asks and what, exactly, one is talking about.2 In 2007, the Quantified Self (QS) movement was launched in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it has now spread throughout the Western world. Its adherents not only measure their bodily, behavioral, and environmental parameters. They also submit to psychological tests, genome sequencing and much more besides. The goal, as stated on the website of the German QS-Community, is to “reflect upon ourselves and understand what allows us to make better, more informed decisions.”3 Many self-trackers share their knowledge and data on the Internet with a community of like-minded people who are both their associates and competitors. Health insurance providers on both sides of the Atlantic are now offering discounts to those willing to practice self-tracking and fitness tracking or to submit the data generated. They have developed relevant apps or provide the necessary technology. According to the insurance companies, this makes it possible to identify the risk of illness earlier and more effectively.4

This raises sensitive social and political issues concerning electronic patient records and “big data” in the healthcare system. But my concern here is with a quite different matter, namely self-tracking as a paradigmatic practice of a culture and society that revolves around free individuals, competition, market, and performance as its essential principles. The QS movement itself underscores that its activities are oriented toward “every sphere of life.” Hence, its concept of fitness goes far beyond sports and physical workouts as such. Certainly, in the first instance self-trackers are out to determine their relationship with their own bodies. Yet at the same time, their actions and the data generated make it possible to establish relationships between the body, the individual, their society, and the environment in which they live. In a society based on its members’ autonomy and efficiency, self-tracking can even be considered a practice of engaged citizenship. Citizenship, then, is more than a legal concept. It encompasses the question of who is recognized as a productive member of society, why, and who may make certain claims on this basis. If working on your own fitness is a key criterion for this recognition, then the cyclist of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is the prototype of the good citizen.5

Health, fitness, and fatness in neoliberal times

Fitness, then, is more than just the prerequisite for success in sport. In the twenty-first century, a broad consensus exists on this point, regardless of whether we ask health authorities, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, or kinesiologist Karen Volkwein.6 Volkwein, for example, defines fitness as “health stabilized through training.”7 At first sight, this definition may appear clear and simple. Upon closer inspection, however, it reveals the tremendous scope and complexity as well as the multiple implications of fitness. First, and quite obviously, fitness is closely bound up with health, and in the recent history of Western societies health means more than the absence of infirmity or disease. Health, as the World Health Organization (WHO) already stated upon its establishment in 1948, is a state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing. This implies that the healthy individual has the means and capacity to meet challenges and live a good, productive life. It also makes health a symbol of success and a precondition for recognition. Second, Volkwein’s definition of fitness indicates that health may be stabilized through training or neglected and thrown out of kilter by its absence. This makes health and quality of life – not entirely but to a considerable extent – the individual’s own responsibility. They must actively manage themself and their life, taking the appropriate preventive measures. Practices of prevention, in fact, amount to a “crucial cultural technology of modernity.” Since the 1950s, “prevention” has become a key principle in medicine and society, one that, according to sociologist Ulrich Bröckling, requires the individual to act “as an autonomous and competent agent vis-à-vis their own life.”8 Third, while health may be stabilized through training, it can never be entirely stable. So, health can never be achieved, at least not definitively. Health is a point that can never be reached, and the older one gets, the further one moves away from it. Those who stop exercising and working on their own fitness are neglecting their health. Health is fleeting. It requires permanent work on oneself and signifies constant action. The logic of fitness is very powerful, even though we all know that illnesses can occur despite constant self-care.9

Hence, health is a highly normative concept, one that molds our notions of a good and a bad lifestyle.10 This is even more true of fitness, as it functions explicitly as a hinge between lifestyle and health. Companies like Jawbone and Microsoft enjoin potential buyers of their fitness bracelets to “Know Yourself. Live Better,” and even to “be a better human” (see figure 1). These promptings also come across as promises.11 Fitness is a regulatory and normative ideal of liberal, modern societies. It not only describes how you are, but what you ought to be – and how you can become what you ought to be.12

What we have to do, then, is interrogate how fitness operates, while laying bare the processes of inclusion and exclusion it facilitates.13 Who is considered fit, and who is not? What happens when some are considered fit and others are not? People are governed by fitness, and this is especially true of liberal societies, which are particularly vociferous in demanding citizens’ voluntary engagement.14 For the autonomous and self-responsible individual is central to liberal societies. And self-responsibility means ensuring one’s commitment and efficiency in every sphere of life. Those who manage themselves demonstrate their ability to take responsibility for society. Anyone wishing to be viewed as a successful individual and good member of society must be productive, reproductive, and ready to tackle challenges. One has to be hardworking, attractive, and strong. Here fitness plays a regulatory and normative role, though not necessarily through external enforcement in the form of prescription and punishment. Fitness creates zones of marginality and exclusion. This is its regulatory and normative effect. Those who fail to conform to the ideal at play here, who are considered ill or physically impaired, or who are, apparently, neglecting to work on themselves enough to become and stay fit, are marginalized or excluded. The power of fitness, the nature of its requirements, and the emphasis placed on them, have varied over the course of history.15

Figure 1 Advertisement for the Microsoft Smartwatch, 2014

Few things more clearly bring out the power of fitness, its linkage with physicality, and the political dimension of this entire complex than the collective fear of body fat. In recent decades, the fear of fat has taken hold of Western societies more than ever before. At first glance, fitness and fatness seem to be polar opposites, yet they are mutually constitutive. Together, they bring order to a culture and...