Working out: consumers and the culture of exercise.

NORTH AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE CAN BE CHARACTERIZED BY ITS obsession with fitness and exercise. American consumers spend billions of dollars annually on exercise products (Howell) as diverse as health club memberships, whey supplements, yoga videos, and zip-up sneakers. Cultural institutions encourage this focus on exercise; in the media, a dramatic increase can be seen in the number of exercise articles written for women's magazines over the last thirty years (Wiseman et al.), and specialty magazines and TV programs targeting specific exercise segments have proliferated (Featherstone). In addition, government exercise and health propaganda has been widespread (Leepson).

Learning why exercise has become such an important part of modern North American culture has proceeded along many fronts. Researchers have examined individual motivations to exercise by using beliefs and attitudes (e.g., Jayanti and Burns; Williams et al.), normative health models (e.g., Moorman and Matulich), and social comparison theory (e.g., Frederick, Havitz, and Shaw; Gulas and McKeage). At the group level, researchers have examined exercise differences based on age, gender, and ethnicity (e.g., Duke; Howze, Smith, and DiGilio; Jackson and Henderson). At the institutional level, researchers have started to explore the role that the media plays in presenting different views of health (Andsager and Powers) and fitness (Duncan and Messner). However, these pockets of research in social psychology, health, sociology, communication, and sports marketing are difficult to integrate into a coherent story about the way that exercise permeates our culture. Although Thompson and Hirschman's poststructuralist model of the body is most apt at illuminating several aspects of exercise culture, their focus on the overall "socialized body" leaves other important exercise elements in the shadows.

This article introduces a framework to help us understand exercise as a modern cultural phenomenon. I will argue that Arthur Frank's typology of "body use in action" can be applied to exercise consumption situations to explain individuals' exercise behaviors and identities. In addition, the typology helps us to understand how advertising and the media exert pressure on exercise consumers and instill complex cultural meaning in exercise products. In-depth interviews with six exercisers support the usefulness of the typology and provide insight for its application in the real world.

Because Frank's typology and its application to exercise, advertising, and the real-life behavior of individuals are intertwined, I will describe the interview method before presenting the typology and situating it in relevant literature. This outline avoids needless repetition of main ideas and integrates conceptual theory, previous empirical research, and key support from the interviews.

Method