![]() adults and 1 in 5 high school students meet the recommended physical activity guidelines,” according to the CDC. However, while the rise of exercise culture has led to fitness-focused New Year’s resolutions, that doesn’t mean exercise is actually a widespread hobby. “Changing ideas of women’s bodies, and what they’re capable of, pick up speed in the ’60s and ’70s, and make exercise a more accepted and celebrated pursuit - going to the gym as a New Year’s Resolution being part of that,” says Petrzela.Īt the same time, the ’80s and ’90s saw the expansion of a conversation about diet and fitness that continues today. Jazzercise helped pave the way for today’s boutique fitness studios, and in the same era jogging also became popular among both men and women. For example, the founder of Jazzercise, Judi Sheppard Missett, credited the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act with the success of her business, on the idea that when women didn’t need a man to sign off on their credit-card applications anymore, it became easier for them to go out and sign up for exercise classes. In fact, the growth of the women’s movement was closely related to the expansion of women’s workouts. ![]() We just laughed because we knew they were wrong.”Īs notions of what women’s professionally capabilities expanded, so too did notions of their athletic capabilities. “People used to say that if women worked out, they would become masculine-looking or wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. “In those days, lifting weights was considered unfeminine,” Stockton told Sports Illustrated Women in 2002. She opened a gym for women on Sunset Boulevard and wrote a monthly column “Barbelles” in Strength and Health magazine. Meanwhile, telephone-operator-turned-female-bodybuilder Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton popularized weight-lifting for women in the 1930s and 1940s at Santa Monica’s” Muscle Beach.” In one famous stunt, she lifted a 100-pound barbell above her head while standing on her husband’s hands. In the spirit of JFK, he saw starting these gyms as crucial for cultivating citizenry to fight the Cold War,” says Petrzela. TIME called Vic Tanny’s the “biggest chain of sweatshops in the U.S.” by 1961, and joked that Tanny’s “sell is every bit as hard as his muscles.” The chain Vic Tanny’s Gyms is credited with popularizing health clubs and the idea of annual memberships to a gym in the ’50s and early ’60s. Some entrepreneurs and trainers played a key role in the rising exercise culture. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. Students in physical education classes did sit ups and pushups to the chorus “Go, you chicken fat, go away! / Go, you chicken fat, go!” A shorter version was mailed to television and radio stations.įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. The Kennedy Administration also mailed schools a record of “Chicken Fat,” a six-minute song composed by The Music Man composer Meredith Willson and performed by Robert Preston. This push for fitness led to an expansion of the President’s Council on Youth Fitness and calls for the formation of a White House committee on the topic under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and an annual Youth Fitness Congress for state governors. Only if our citizens are physically fit will they be fully capable of such an effort.” ![]() “We face in the Soviet Union a powerful and implacable adversary…To meet the challenge of this enemy will require determination and will and effort on the part of all Americans. 26, 1960, issue of Sports Illustrated, calling on Americans to exercise more. Kennedy wrote in a piece titled “The Soft American” in the Dec. ![]() “In a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our society,” President-Elect John F. ![]()
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