The Eternal Aesthetics of Youth
Natalia Mehlman PetrzelaOriginally published at Ultraphysical.
A few months ago, days ahead of my 45th birthday, I reflexively clicked on a suggested post in my Instagram feed. “She looks like me – in a good way,” I thought appreciatively, taking in the anonymous woman whose form presented itself for judgment before my bleary morning eyes. Without detailing how I scrutinized her body in a way I know is unhealthy, I could tell from her strong physique — and the weights in the frame — that she clearly worked out, but also that she had probably carried children, and that her priorities appeared to be what I consider healthy: occasionally skipping the gym, enjoying a cocktail, polishing off your kids’ fries, or even ordering your own. As a historian of fitness culture and longtime gym rat who has experienced firsthand the body-image pressures that sadly remain a rite of passage into American womanhood, I curate my feeds to exclude the most noxious content, like new moms shilling flat-belly tea and “fitpros” whose expertise lies in camera angles rather than exercise science. But this time, the algorithm got it right, I marveled, smashing the “like” button with satisfaction.
In a split second, however, I realized things were not as they appeared: the image that had reflected back to me a flattering version of myself was… this woman’s “before” picture. Clicking revealed the “after” life that is the heart of her account: a fifty-something force with sinewy biceps and a ripped eight-pack to match, hoisting herself through pull-ups with a heavy chain wrapped around her slender upper body, which she shows off in cute crop top sets and low-slung jeans. Sheepish that I had seen myself positively reflected in a before photo – a sign I was “letting myself go”? – and embarrassed at the poignancy of that pang – So pathetic I even care about such superficial BS! I well know before-and-after pics only show physical change (and not always accurately), and comparing myself to strangers on the internet never leads anywhere good. My humiliation faded, but the fascination remained. These unlikely transformations both inspired and exhausted me, as each second I lingered on images of this strange sorority added to the endless scroll of similar accounts that whispered, if I just want it badly enough, it isn’t too late to lift, and look, like them.
I have unfollowed and refollowed these accounts several times since, but more important than my emotional reaction is the evocative question they raise: what does it mean to participate in a fitness culture that is ever more inclusive of older people, but also unremittingly obsessed with the aesthetics of eternal youth?
The inevitability of aging and one’s attendant bodily decline is as old as time, but resisting it at the gym is relatively new. The expectation that regular people — not “health nuts” or elite athletes — should exercise into old age was bequeathed to us by the Boomer generation. For most of American history, the desire to work out regularly made exercisers of any age members of a strange subculture, not compliant with a social imperative, as today. This was especially true for women, as early 20th-century performers like Katie Sandwina were literal freak show attractions, and the few women on mid-century Muscle Beach had to convince scandalized observers of their femininity, that “beneath every womanly curve lies a muscle.” But for men too, the idea that exercise decoupled from organized sports was narcissistic, unmasculine, and even lethal, was widespread.
In the 1960s, the discovery of “aerobics” – or cardio – combined with the fear that excessive leisure was making Americans of all ages dangerously unfit, made exercise more popular than ever before. Books such as How to Keep Slender and Fit After Thirty (1969), however, made clear that the older exerciser was still an anomaly. But Boomers took to jogging, and then aerobics, in the 1970s and 1980s, and when shin splints or hearing loss made these intense activities less accessible, this avid, aging audience drove demand for yoga, indoor cycling, and resistance training. By the 1990s, Jane Fonda was making yoga VHS tapes, and “Silver Sneakers” programs offered targeted programs to people over 50 in health clubs nationwide, still consistently the industry’s fastest growing demographic.
This “graying of the gym,” once considered a space for the young, has persisted for decades, though it rarely comes up in conversations about diversity and fitness culture, which tend to focus more on race, class, gender, and size. Perhaps this silence is because the process has been so seamless, or because it is slightly awkward to acknowledge the integral presence of older people in a realm so consistently fixated on preserving youth. Sometimes it is deliberately obscured; at one health club where I worked, a manager confided that while smooth-skinned twentysomethings graced their billboards and sylph-like models got discounted memberships, it was the 50-plus demographic that kept them in business, paying full freight and buying personal training and massage packages. Quiet as this presence can be, the health objectives of older clients have meaningfully expanded the aims of fitness culture beyond pure aesthetics to include longevity, bone health, flexibility, and community.
That said, this new ritual of a perpetually active retired life can come at the expense of rest. “You may have imagined a hammock or a reclining chair awaiting you after decades of stress and personal exertion,” the late Barbara Ehrenreich wryly commented in her final book, “But no…you have a new job: going to the gym.” Gen X and elder Millennials are now solidly in their 40s and 50s, and many of us are following in our parents’ sneakered footsteps and continuing to head to the gym. Ironically, we also seem to be resurrecting the aesthetic objectives our parents mostly abandoned at our age – or from which they were excluded. A sign of this new-old chapter was at the 2020 Super Bowl, when the oldest Gen Xers were just hitting 55. Shakira, 43, and Jennifer Lopez, 50, performed at halftime, electrifying the audience with their toned bodies, acrobatic choreography, and apparently indefatigable energy. Viral memes breathlessly compared JLo to Golden Girls star Rue MacLanahan, who was the same age when the sitcom debuted in 1985: one was swinging around a stripper pole, the other playing the fact that she still felt sexual desire for laughs. THE NEW 50!?! messages filled my feeds and chats.
Four years later, this new crop of fifty-something influencers I can’t quit clicking on is encouraging the masses to believe that the J Lo path is available to us, if we just choose it: one reel shows a hunched woman in a bathrobe, glasses, and a bun, clutching her lower back embodying, “what I thought my 50s would look like;” a quick transition and she is squatting under a heavy barbell, glowing muscles popping beneath a shiny spandex set and a swinging ponytail, representing “what your 50s actually look like.” A bootcamp class I like reflects a lower-key version of this dynamic; some of the strongest, most coordinated and conventionally fit-looking participants are clearly at least in their late 40s. They do not seem to be headed for the rocking chair, or a gentler age-segregated program.
If we are carrying on a Boomer tradition in continuing to exercise as we age, doing so with such fierceness and in pursuit of unapologetically aesthetic outcomes seem to be new expectations that we Gen X/Elder Millennials are layering on all on our own. Is this progress? Maybe. Imagining that such an intense level of performance, and yes, eye-popping appearance, might be achievable can feel positively thrilling. As arresting as these women influencers look, their appeal is just as much in their welcome resistance to the idea that (peri)menopause in particular and aging in general must mean fatigue, weight gain, and slowing down. They join a growing conversation that takes seriously older women’s health needs, but shake off both the ominous tone of much of this discourse and the presumption that medical intervention, or aggressive dieting, is required to weather this life stage. Even as they share before-and-after images that center physical change, they are careful to use the language of “self-love,” not to condemn interventions like hormone treatment, and to dismiss the quick-fix spot-training quackery that was our generation’s entry point to exercise.
All this matters, even if I never lift or look like these formidable women. I think about them and feel less frivolous when I set aside an hour to practice my handstand, a skill I recently decided I wanted to master, for no other reason than I think it’s cool, and challenging, and I could never do it as a child. I summon them when I am served endless ads for armor-like “mom” swimwear in thick fabrics ruched across “problem areas,” though it’s no longer politic to call them that, and instead swipe them away to return to my less restrictive bikinis, even if they don’t fit like they used to. They also give me hope that in ten years they might fit even better, and reassurance that it’s not delusional to believe I could choose to make that happen.
And yet. There is something comforting about the elastic hug of those mom suits – I do have a couple – that allows me to exhale with relief that a “bikini body” is a cultural expectation I can finally be free from caring about. I am reminded of octogenarian feminist Gloria Steinem’s reflection on aging; at about sixty, she expressed exhilaration at being “free from the demands of gender” in a way she had not felt since childhood, before the aesthetic expectations of femininity were fully heaped upon her. To that point, when the frothy enthusiasm about the Shakira-JLo Super Bowl spectacle “redefining 50” subsided, some women admitted the performance left them deflated: wasn’t one of the few benefits that aging promised women emancipation from the expectation of looking hot? Now that small consolation was being wrested away by celebrities with teams of trainers, nutritionists, and stylists, and it was supposed to be “inspiring”! I recognize that exact same ennui in my experience of these addictive social media accounts that have sprung up since.
Does their example help us – or even just me – resist dominant ideas about youth and beauty, or just prolong the time frame in which we are beholden to them? I am not sure. In a world when eleven-year-olds spend their allowances on anti-aging “skincare,” twentysomethings inject themselves with “preventative Botox,” and being mistaken as older is grist for TikTok meltdowns, it is hard not to interpret these phenomena as on a continuum in which ever older women and ever younger girls are expected to invest ever greater energy cultivating their physical appearance and chasing youth. Perhaps the greatest fantasy of all is that social media – rather than ourselves – will liberate us from the most limiting aspects of fitness culture, rather than simply presenting them in enticing new forms.
Featured image courtesy RDNE Stock Project on Pexels.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is Associate Professor of History at the New School. She is the author of Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture (Oxford, 2015) and is working on a new book about American fitness culture. She is a co-host of the Past Present podcast. You can find more about her scholarly and popular work at www.nataliapetrzela.com.
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