The health & fitness sector is on the rise. In 2009 its global revenue amounted to 67 billion US dollars, in 2018 its global revenue reached 94 billion. The number of health clubs worldwide has also significantly increased: from 128,000 in 2009, to more than 200,000 in 2017.
But why is this market becoming so successful and profitable?
One way to address this question is by understanding why people work out.
In 2020, there is no doubt that individuals worldwide care about their physical appearance. A search on Instagram using the hashtag #fitspiration (a combination of fitness plus inspiration), returns more than 16 million posts, containing images or videos of muscular and toned semi-naked bodies accompanied by motivational notes. Lately, this has prompted psychologists from Leeds Beckett University to analyze such posts, in order to identify the main messages that are being portrayed. They concluded that the hashtag #fitspiration encourages the psychological process of self-objectification, according to which people see their bodies as objects, sexually objectify the fit body and, collectively, use fitness training to achieve aesthetic ideals represented by society. In effect, people want to look beautiful and be in good shape because they are constantly subjected to media communication that portrays specific standards of beauty.
In order to persuade the public, advertising usually acts via two main strategies: I) products are usually accompanied by models showing perfect bodies, whose role is to convey the following subliminal message: “I am beautiful. But if you buy this product, you will be beautiful too.” II) Given that these models do not statistically reflect the general population, they can distort the perception of reality, making individuals think that what is widely considered, statistically speaking, the “average” beauty level, is higher than it truly is. People who think their beauty is below average, search more often for idealized models to compare to.
Collectively, these mechanisms exacerbate the psychological process of internalization, according to which a young individual grows adopting societal and cultural standards as their own standards, trying to replicate them in real life. Unfortunately, most of the time people cannot keep up with their models, which remain unreachable and are sources of discomfort and feelings of inadequacy. Several studies performed in many different countries have associated the internalization process of beauty ideals to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, especially among children and teenagers.
It can be easily hypothesized that the paradigm of modern beauty portrayed by the media is a key contributing factor to the rise of gym subscriptions, and to the global success of the health & fitness sector. Gyms are in fact the places where individuals can expect to satisfy their internalized societal standards.
A 2017 Statista survey shows that the main reason why people do not renew their gym subscriptions is, paradoxically, because they do not use it (22%). While only 5% quit because they met their fitness goals and another 4% because they didn’t meet them, a far greater proportion of people quit because they felt out of place (10%) or did not know what to do at the gym (13%). These data reveal that achieving or not achieving fitness goals are not the primary reasons for quitting. This implicitly also suggests that people do not subscribe in the first place with the clear intention of improving their training standards. Even though they often don’t know what they should do at the gym, they nevertheless decide to join a fitness club. But why?
The constant exposure to ideals of beauty prompts a process of internalization. Individuals grow up with an urgent psychological need to achieve such standards. They subscribe to fitness centres. However, while they unconsciously seek to satisfy their aesthetic desire, they lack what is needed to pursue it: interest, expertise and the drive to set fitness goals. They simply picture the perfection of their body as the goal, without knowing how to achieve it. Indeed, gym subscribers do not realize why they should go to their fitness centre, and what they should do there. They just want to develop a perfect body. They soon start to skip their training sessions, and they eventually stop going to the gym. During this process though, their internalized desire to mirror the societal aesthetic standards does not vanish. It comes back regularly, causing what we could call an “aesthetic frustration”: the individual is perpetually confronted with their inability to mirror their ideals of beauty. A US survey about gym membership sales in 2016 by the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association seems to support this hypothesis. It shows that there are three distinguishable peaks throughout the year when people subscribe: January, July and September. This most likely reflects New Year’s resolution, summer swimsuit fitting and post-summer resolution. Data also indicate negative trends from January through April, and from September through December.
This scenario unravels how important it is in fitness training to set “internal” goals, and to avoid “external” ones. This has been formalized in the so-called self-determination theory, which distinguishes intrinsic motivation – in the reported case, performing a training session for its inherent pleasure – from extrinsic motivation – performing a training session to obtain a result that is separate from it, that is a consequence of it, such as the ones mentioned above. Clearly, improving physical appearance is an extrinsic motivation.
People must find internal reasons to work out at the gym; they must sculpt their inner virtue. Otherwise, they will end up dropping their gym subscriptions more and more often. They will be left alone with a sensation of guilt and impotency for having betrayed “their” quest for beauty.
Notes
- The views expressed in this post are those of the author and not of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science or LSE.
- Featured image courtesy of Danielle Cerullo via Unsplash.
