Culture Study Podcast - The Women's Fitness Industrial Complex

00:00:00.000 hey everyone i know they say this every week but we have more episodes that we're working on

00:00:04.380 all the time and that means that we need more questions so you might recognize john ronson's

00:00:09.660 name from his books the psychopath test or so you've been publicly shamed melody recognizes

00:00:15.900 him loves him from his tremendous work on this american life that's where a lot of people know

00:00:20.800 him from and he has a new book coming out called the castle and it's about uh let's put this in

00:00:26.700 quotes the unraveling of 21st century masculinity so our question for this episode is going to be

00:00:32.480 basically like what's going on with boys and men right now there are so many places this could go

00:00:38.440 and none of them are too weird to talk about but just like we're gonna go more into the weird stuff

00:00:44.540 and less into the like men are sad because it's the end of patriarchy although obviously that's

00:00:51.200 part of the answer to this question um we are also doing an episode with priya parker on her

00:00:56.240 new book about conflict. It's called The Art of Fighting. So we need your questions on fighting

00:01:01.660 with people you love, or people you don't, but that you want to maintain relationships with,

00:01:06.280 fighting within a community, all of it. And then we're also going to have Adi Cornish back on the

00:01:11.300 pod, this time with her podcast co-host, Ari Shapiro. And we're going to talk about code

00:01:16.320 switching. This is something that NPR hosts or former NPR hosts obviously think about a lot.

00:01:22.820 We're going to talk about how you change your voice, your posture, your demeanor, like whether

00:01:27.920 you talk about reality television or not, how you talk about celebrities, whatever, depending

00:01:33.060 on layered context.

00:01:34.420 So please send your questions.

00:01:36.700 Finally, we're going to have this super interesting episode about financial interdependence, also

00:01:42.380 sometimes known as collectivist personal finance.

00:01:46.000 So how can you all, everyone in your community, everyone in your family be rich together?

00:01:52.300 and obviously we're going to define rich in different ways we're going to rethink what

00:01:56.580 financial stability looks like and how to spread it across family and communities

00:02:00.660 i can't wait for this episode and we need your questions to make it great so can't wait to see

00:02:07.320 what all of you come up with as always we get so many compliments on how great our

00:02:12.120 listener questions are so please send them our way

00:02:22.300 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:02:26.220 I'm Kylie Van Horn, and I'm an endurance sports dietitian and owner of Fly Nutrition.

00:02:31.720 I'm Zoe Rome. I am a science journalist and communicator, as well as an elite ultrarunner and a podcaster.

00:02:40.240 And together, we are the hosts of the Your Diet Sucks podcast.

00:02:44.880 You're both endurance athletes.

00:02:46.700 what are some of the wellness trends that are bombarding you in your feeds or just like I don't

00:02:53.820 know in the chats in the discourse like what is what are you seeing a lot of right now Zoe you

00:02:58.740 don't even have you have social media right now um I'm actually well I've current I've I've I've

00:03:04.780 recently deleted Instagram but I still feel like a lot of these sort of myths will will find you

00:03:13.200 I think the sort of biggest umbrella that a lot of these fit onto is the sort of idea that insert name of restrictive diet will solve all of your problems forever. It could be paleo. It could be keto. It could be low carb. It could be ancestral. It could be seed cycling. Whatever it is, there's always this promise that cutting some demonized ingredient or macronutrient out of your diet is going to revolutionize your athletic training.

00:03:43.200 your quality of life, your skin, all of it. And lo and behold, that almost never works. A lot of

00:03:49.680 times these diets catch on because at the beginning, it feels good to be able to, I mean,

00:03:56.380 people get a sense of control and agency from eliminating broad swaths of nutrients and

00:04:01.820 ingredients from their diet. They might even lose a little bit of weight in the short term because

00:04:05.900 they're just eating fewer calories a day. But when you look at the long-term sustainability,

00:04:11.040 viability and effectiveness of these diets, the data pretty much never supports our ability to

00:04:16.960 stick to them long term or their effectiveness long term. So I would say the big myth is just

00:04:22.100 you need to cut XYZ ingredient or nutrient out. So diets, always a standard. Like, I just feel

00:04:31.000 like at some point, I just feel like diets are going to, I have hope. I'm like, oh, maybe we're

00:04:35.640 the end of diets but then they just come back as like wellness right like the seed like or or like

00:04:42.080 being or figuring like figuring something out about your body and i know that some people are

00:04:46.560 legitimately gluten-free but then other people are like i just cut out gluten and it changed my life

00:04:51.240 um what else what other trends like i'm seeing i would say so much supplements for sure you know

00:04:59.540 They never go away. I feel like just working on the clinical side of things, just with a lot of athletes, I'll always get people that come into working together and they'll have like a list of like 30 different supplements that they're taking.

00:05:15.680 no like i heard this thing on on this like tiktok account like and i purchased this supplement and

00:05:23.220 it you know and it promises to do this thing um so so we always have to go through and i'll be

00:05:30.080 like why are you taking that supplement and most people for half their supplements have no idea

00:05:34.920 why they're taking them which is wild it just it reminds me of that episode of the pit season two

00:05:40.640 where the woman comes in and she's like bright yellow and they're trying to figure out what's

00:05:44.940 going on and it's that she started taking turmeric and like lots of people take turmeric but she was

00:05:50.380 like what's wrong with take i just like up my dose i thought more is more right and just like

00:05:55.820 like really dangerous tax levels of turmeric in her body toxicity like but i think that sometimes

00:06:03.300 this is what i see in supplements also i i hear like a lot of women who i trust saying things like

00:06:09.480 oh like you're not on creatine yeah i know there's always a new and fancy powder that you need to be

00:06:17.920 adding to your smoothie or some vitamin that you need to be adding to your stack and i think you

00:06:22.520 just pointed out a logical fallacy at the heart of a lot of it is this idea that more is always

00:06:27.660 better right like we're in this era of everything maxing if a little bit of vitamin c is good for

00:06:33.440 your immune system, then surely a mega dose of vitamin C is even better. When lo and behold,

00:06:39.400 when you look at the evidence on these things, the complicated truth is that the right amount

00:06:44.000 of this substance is the right amount. And taking infinitely more increasing amounts isn't additive

00:06:51.300 and in fact can really overwhelm your kidneys and your liver because it still has to process

00:06:56.540 all of these nutrients. And it's hard to sell a little bit of vitamins to a few people,

00:07:03.040 but it's a lot easier and a lot more lucrative to sell a boatload of vitamins to everyone. And so

00:07:09.860 you get this messaging that makes it seem like taking huger amounts of creatine is additionally

00:07:15.840 additive, that huge amounts of acai or insert superfood here is like continually additive

00:07:22.520 when there's always going to be diminishing returns. And if you don't actually have a

00:07:26.740 deficiency throwing vitamins or smoothie powders at something is kind of a uh solution in search

00:07:34.640 of a problem yeah and the other one that i would say that i see all over the place and i'm sure

00:07:40.100 you'd both see this as well and again at a certain level i'm all for it is just like lift lift heavy

00:07:47.280 Mm hmm. Well, it's like that hyper specific. Yes. Like the hyper specificity to it could be like changing your diet for your cycle or you have to change your exercise routine based on your different like hormonal parts of your cycle or something like that.

00:08:07.360 You know, I feel like I get tons of hyper specific questions about that as a sports

00:08:13.240 dietitian and people want me to like give them this like hyper specific plan that they

00:08:20.260 need.

00:08:20.720 They feel like they need to alter everything.

00:08:23.840 Totally.

00:08:24.440 I and I did not know as much about the like tracking the lifting to your cycle, which

00:08:31.020 we have a whole question about this.

00:08:32.360 We'll talk about that later.

00:08:33.200 But Zoe, you pitched the idea for this episode, which is going to be very far reaching, which is basically like the women's sports industrial diet complex. Why do you feel like, I mean, your whole podcast is in some ways about this, but why do you feel like this is something that is really important for us to address directly?

00:08:53.120 I think that this came from a good bit of curiosity sort of in my own life. I'm an elite athlete and there's increasing buzz online about emerging science, particularly looking at female athletes, which is great and exciting, particularly given that women have been historically disenfranchised both by medicine and by science.

00:09:17.580 So there's sort of this void that's opened up by the fact that medicine, science, particularly exercise science, which is kind of a young and squirrely field, that's, you know, it's young in its own right.

00:09:30.420 And particularly, there's a huge lack of research that pertains specifically to female athletes.

00:09:38.620 And so you get this big information vacuum.

00:09:41.820 And into this information vacuum floods an entire cottage industry of influencers.

00:09:46.820 and would-be science communicators who are using this information vacuum and I think a really

00:09:53.600 positive desire on behalf of women to invest more in their health and exercise in movement. So I

00:10:00.600 think there's a lot of positives here, but there's a lot of, I mean, it's at my most cynical bad

00:10:07.120 actors or maybe just naive or ill-informed actors who sort of flood this zone with super specific

00:10:15.020 information where their prescriptions get way out over the skis of what the evidence would suggest

00:10:21.140 actually makes sense given what we have. So I think that there's sort of also this dynamic where

00:10:27.420 because there has historically not been a ton of research on women, what very little research we

00:10:32.880 do have, people are reluctant to caveat and to critique. And particularly because women have

00:10:40.500 been so underrepresented, not just in the research, but as researchers and as communicators,

00:10:45.900 it feels bad to critique a lot of the women who are the loudest in this space because a lot of

00:10:52.700 people want to feel seen and heard and like their experience and how they feel is being validated by

00:10:58.800 the science and the medicine. And so oftentimes the first people to validate that impulse of like,

00:11:04.700 man I feel like a lot of the prescriptions that are based on research done on men I don't feel

00:11:10.780 like that works for me or I don't feel like it includes my perspective as someone navigating

00:11:15.020 menopause or someone navigating the menstrual cycle and then you sort of have this dynamic where

00:11:21.300 the loudest voices are not always the ones that are the most evidence-based and it creates this

00:11:27.940 place where the narratives that sort of end up being the stickiest are the ones that are a bit

00:11:33.840 more emotionally satisfying than scientifically satisfying. Totally, totally. And like there's

00:11:40.320 so much gray area and I see this all over the place with people talking about hormone replacement

00:11:46.200 therapy, which we can talk about later. But Kylie, one thing that I've noticed, like I see a ton of

00:11:51.200 this oriented towards perimenopausal and menopausal women because of my age. But is this

00:11:58.840 also directed towards athletes in their teens and 20s and early 30s oh yeah I would say definitely

00:12:08.100 for sure um and it often is based around the the cycle you know cycle syncing and changing up your

00:12:17.180 nutrition to the to try to match the part of your cycle you're in and I think Zoe sort of alluded

00:12:23.980 to it but another thing that i see is like there there can be some shreds of research and there

00:12:30.020 might be actually communicated by certain experts in the space but the the expert too might have

00:12:37.960 financial interest or like uh want to sell things and so i think a lot of these products are 0.97

00:12:45.160 products and um recommendations are developed to kind of sell certain female-oriented products or 0.96

00:12:53.680 or protocols for people to follow so that other people can make money. 1.00

00:12:59.540 Yeah. Well, and this is the, this is the thundercloud over our entire conversation,

00:13:03.820 which is that when we feel uncertain about something in our like particularly capitalist

00:13:09.940 society, we try to buy things that will fix it. Yes. And just, you know, the, the biological

00:13:16.300 sort of chapters that female athletes are navigating, like, like whether they're young

00:13:20.620 women, whether it's the menstrual cycle, reproduction, pregnancy, and postpartum, and

00:13:25.560 then peri and menopause, every single one of those life stages introduces a whole new 0.94

00:13:30.640 opportunity to create and then pitch into a totally manufactured insecurity. So a lot

00:13:37.980 of these things, you know, they might sort of be complicating variables when it comes

00:13:43.280 to doing research, though even that I think merits its own degree of skepticism. But what

00:13:48.980 it certainly does is open up an incredibly rich market to sell things into because with every

00:13:56.080 life stage comes body changes. And we've been cultured from the time we were very, very young

00:14:01.660 to resist any change, right? Like if the marketing were to be believed, we should want to be stuck

00:14:06.480 in amber as our 18-year-old selves, which thank God that we age, right? But we're taught to fear

00:14:13.200 this. We're taught to resist it. And at every life stage that introduces a change, that introduces

00:14:20.080 insecurity, instability, that creates a really rich marketing opportunity.

00:14:27.160 I had a dermatologist tell me when I was in my late 20s, and it was the first time as an adult

00:14:33.880 that I had really ever figured out my skin. I was super acne prone as a kid, just really dealt with

00:14:40.780 it throughout my 20s figured it out at least like felt calm my skin felt calm and she said

00:14:46.160 every decade of your adult life your skin will change and you'll have to figure it out again

00:14:52.320 and it was like nightmare and totally I was like one serum for life you know one face mask that's

00:15:00.320 it it was just so discouraging and I was like really I have to do this again and again and again

00:15:06.620 And I feel like men don't have to do that.

00:15:09.540 Is that true?

00:15:10.240 No, right?

00:15:10.520 Like they're just like, whatever, sir, you're gorgeous.

00:15:13.080 Love it.

00:15:13.940 Grow a beard if we're feeling weird about it.

00:15:15.920 I know, totally.

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00:19:00.260 Okay, so I want to get into the questions. We said before we started taping that we got

00:19:04.620 so many good questions that like we might need to do a second episode on this. If you would like

00:19:09.340 that, please tell us in the comments. So we're going to talk about wellness marketing towards

00:19:13.920 women, where it comes from, whether it holds up. And we're going to start with big picture

00:19:18.360 questions and then look at a few specific trends and then end with another big picture question.

00:19:24.180 So let's start with this question from Shea. How should we parse the difference between what I

00:19:29.060 would think is a very true lack of peer reviewed gold standard research into women's health issues,

00:19:33.500 including how all health issues specifically affect women and the ways in which women's

00:19:38.500 health companies take advantage of that to pinkwash their products how do we know what is real versus

00:19:43.680 what is propaganda what are some good ways to identify real information when it's all tied to

00:19:48.320 product delivery and capitalism so we were kind of talking about this already but uh kylie do you

00:19:54.800 want to start with this one i mean i usually i guess we can start with uh maybe little identifiers

00:20:02.780 of what like how we can help people maybe identify that they're being marketed to or

00:20:09.980 there are certain things that are being extrapolated and claims being made to try and

00:20:15.400 sell you something um I don't know if that would be a good kind of spot um I feel like uh whenever

00:20:22.840 we are like in our podcast episodes we always talk about language and how there's certain like

00:20:31.180 extreme forms of language that can be used whenever people are maybe talking about a

00:20:38.220 specific thing on social media they'll use um really big words like hack your whatever or

00:20:46.120 they might say like um boost maximize boost yeah yep yeah so like extreme sorts of words that

00:20:55.860 cover but if you think about they either like offer a quick fix or they are like really broad

00:21:02.260 and so they're taking like a shred of a small study and then they're extrapolating it and making

00:21:10.160 it try to apply to this like larger swath of people and usually when you start hearing those

00:21:17.200 bigger claims that's where you need to put on your thinking cap and actually try to get some

00:21:21.800 try to think about some nuance and I think the nuance piece I think is really difficult because

00:21:27.840 when we look at what's being communicated on social media or in just in media in general

00:21:35.240 a lot of times people like to hear a simple answer and unfortunately the research on female

00:21:42.960 athletes or people just engaging in fitness is not huge and so a lot of times like the the media

00:21:51.600 presence will play on this idea and try to make it seem like there is more out there than there

00:21:58.700 actually is. So they give a simple answer instead of providing the nuance. And then, you know, we

00:22:04.860 had chatted a little bit about like creatine or something. It's tough because people will hear

00:22:10.580 like, oh, I think I need to be taking this for, you know, perimenopause or postmenopause. So I'm

00:22:16.700 just going to do it versus taking into account their situation, the nuances that might occur

00:22:23.280 in their situation and whether they actually need that thing as part of their routine.

00:22:30.440 Right. Like not identifying that there were, I mean, this is the key to advertising, right? You

00:22:35.440 don't realize there's a problem until the advertising tells you that you're having a

00:22:39.380 problem and that their product will fix it. And so if it's not something that you have already

00:22:44.520 identified as a problem in your training, in your life, in the way that you feel in

00:22:49.180 your body, like, is this what, like, do you need this thing?

00:22:54.540 Zoe, what would you add here?

00:22:56.180 Yeah, I would say one of the big issues is that when you're working with this data set,

00:23:00.660 which is a really limited data set, right?

00:23:02.720 Like, there was a big meta-analysis that came out a few years ago that looked at over 5,000

00:23:07.320 publications with over 12 million different research participants from six of the largest

00:23:13.060 exercise science journals.

00:23:14.520 and it found that only 63% of the publications included participants of both sexes, 30% were men only, and 6% was females only.

00:23:25.820 So that 6% is a pretty measly number, and it doesn't leave us a ton of data to work with.

00:23:32.080 So a lot of times into that vacuum, it sort of makes things unfalsifiable, because when you have no data, no solid data, it makes it hard to prove people wrong.

00:23:41.160 So you have this dynamic where claiming that science ignored women is both true, but a lot of times brands, social media influencers, marketing copy will try to use that as like a permanent liability shield.

00:23:57.260 And it will, again, try to give a lot of the prescriptions, products and protocols the sort of veneer of pseudo feminism of like, yes, queen, finally, there's a multivitamin for you.

00:24:07.960 And a lot of times when you look at these claims, if they get more specific, a lot of times the actual science is pretty clear about the limitations of use cases, where if you're trying to move product, all of your incentives are to widen the lens on how many people and in what use cases might benefit from your product.

00:24:31.840 I also think it's really helpful to look at the product if there is an actual outcome that you can measure its effectiveness.

00:24:40.620 A lot of times things like feel better, have more energy are things that make it really challenging to check any kind of actual claim against.

00:24:49.840 I also think it's worth asking yourself what would falsify the claim.

00:24:53.980 So often people end up taking a bunch of supplements or engaging in these protocols because they haven't set up like sort of set guardrails for themselves ahead of time of what would make me think this is no longer worth pursuing.

00:25:07.680 And a lot of times folks can fall either into the sunk cost fallacy or this idea of like, well, what's the harm?

00:25:14.140 I might as well keep doing CrossFit or I might as well keep taking 30 supplements a day.

00:25:19.380 So I think a lot of times it comes down to, like Kylie said, assessing if it's really a use case for you specifically and understanding that while we maybe don't have as rich a body of research as we might prefer to make these decisions on, female athletes are not a totally different species from males.

00:25:39.100 And so there are some things that transfer. That doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and totally disregard any science that is based on males because there are some things that carry over. And so I think that you should be really suspicious whenever people point to that vacuum as the sole means of their earned authority.

00:26:00.920 one thing that i think a lot about is that especially for people who are let's say like

00:26:06.960 this is not their job right they're not professionals they are just like running on

00:26:12.520 the side or doing triathlons on the side or whatever like and it's they think of it as a

00:26:17.100 hobby ultimately my doctor is not going to have any advice for me about creatine about fueling

00:26:24.760 about these things right she like unless i'm going to a doctor who is also an athlete who

00:26:30.440 would actually just tell me like as a friend not as like a medical professional mostly right

00:26:35.000 and because it's my hobby it would be difficult to get a referral to like you know and someone

00:26:42.720 like you kylie and have my insurance cover it and so most people are operating in this like

00:26:48.480 this amateur knowledge vacuum right where like they and especially if they don't know how to

00:26:55.640 find scientific papers or know how to read scientific papers which are not always the

00:27:00.480 easiest to purse so i think it just we're in a this place of like where do we find this and also

00:27:07.780 i think a lot of health magazines or like places that used to do a little bit more of this science

00:27:12.820 communication are either, uh, gone or ruled by, uh, affiliate links. So yes. Well, and I think

00:27:22.020 part of the challenge too, is people are looking for answers specifically like perimenopausal,

00:27:29.260 postmenopausal females. Um, that's like one of the biggest groups of people that reach out to me for

00:27:35.960 help. They want an answer and they feel like the healthcare system is not able to provide that for

00:27:42.340 them. And so they feel kind of like lost, left behind, and just grasping for, they want an

00:27:50.780 answer. And if there's a simple answer, then they're like, okay, great. I'm going to do that

00:27:54.860 and that and that and that. Right. And it's like, well, everything else in my life is chaos. So

00:27:59.900 maybe this one thing will actually be simple. Yeah. I can kind of like relate to that kind of

00:28:05.300 being like getting into the perimenopausal age group myself. It's kind of like, oh, like I can,

00:28:11.440 I really want more information and answers, too. And so I understand how we can all, you know,

00:28:17.740 be susceptible to wanting to to kind of have something that we can grasp on to that that is

00:28:23.840 going to maybe help us. I think a lot of times borrowing practices from elite athletes, this is

00:28:30.140 a kind of funny thing that we see when you really look at the marketing of how a lot of health and

00:28:34.580 wellness trends are marketed at men versus women, because for men, you would think that every single

00:28:39.860 person is a former army operative who's training for the Super Bowl by how they're marketed to

00:28:45.460 because the emphasis on performance and objectives and outcomes and data is that of borrowing the

00:28:52.160 authority from pro athletes. With women, it's so much more softer and squishier and it's about 1.00

00:28:58.140 glowing from within and a sort of ephemeral vitality a la Gwyneth Paltrow. But I think 1.00

00:29:06.140 that there's actually a way in which, like, treating yourself like an elite athlete, even if

00:29:10.880 you're just a work-a-day gal who goes to the gym, in terms of eating enough, sleeping enough,

00:29:16.240 treating yourself well, and advocating for yourself with medical professionals. If something hurts or

00:29:21.800 you're struggling with fatigue, demand to be taken seriously like an elite athlete would, even if

00:29:27.420 you're just kind of a regular gal off the street. I think where that advice breaks down and where

00:29:33.060 we should be careful is when people use the credibility of athletes to sell products, right?

00:29:38.260 Like so often folks will use that appeal to authority to say like, well, if Michaela Schifrin

00:29:44.200 uses this greens powder, then I, a lady who goes on a brisk walk four times a week, must also need 0.76

00:29:51.540 that to optimize my aerobic training when in fact, yeah, maybe just spend a little extra time in the 1.00

00:29:58.060 vegetable aisle at the grocery store. But I think, you know, there's a world where telling

00:30:03.400 women to advocate for themselves as if they're an elite athlete is a net benefit. And even if

00:30:09.280 that means that some of the other folks might chill out and not wholesale adopt all of Tom

00:30:14.480 Brady's wellness practices. I think this is especially difficult for women who don't look 0.54

00:30:20.380 like the idealized, like, slim athlete lady, right? I just know people who've gone into the

00:30:27.840 doctor wanting help with like a particular problem or like something to do with sleep

00:30:33.480 or something to do with stuff that is perimenopause and like the the recommendation is just like

00:30:39.200 a flat lose weight right yeah and i can see how that would be incredibly frustrating and 1.00

00:30:47.220 demoralizing and um you would turn away from that right well a lot of a lot of women get gas lit at 0.99

00:30:55.460 the physician's office unfortunately like yes just from experience working with people again

00:31:01.880 they'll come to me because they're like well my doctor is not giving me answers and I feel like

00:31:07.380 I'm being gaslit and so what should I do you know I'm like I I'm not a doctor so I can't necessarily

00:31:14.060 like I have scope of practice as well and so that makes it difficult too and I have to help

00:31:19.900 women oftentimes like advocate for themselves and try to find maybe another professional that 0.89

00:31:26.880 might be able to help them. But like a lot of people lose steam and they feel really defeated 0.82

00:31:32.600 because of those kinds of experiences that they have at a medical establishment.

00:31:38.200 And, you know, I won't name names, but like the online sites where you can sign up and

00:31:42.140 basically, like, they'll just blanket prescribe a GLP-1 or HRT to you. And my doctor was actually

00:31:52.700 criticizing these places. And I was like, listen, the reason women are going to these places in 1.00

00:31:59.600 particular is because they are not getting specific perimenopausal and menopausal care.

00:32:05.960 And the recommendation, right, is to like, look up someone in your area who is specifically trained

00:32:11.320 as so few doctors are in menopausal care.

00:32:14.620 And I looked on, like, I went to the directory.

00:32:17.720 There's an official directory.

00:32:19.060 There is one provider in my city, which is like a midsize city,

00:32:24.700 and she doesn't take insurance. 0.99

00:32:26.920 That's how in demand she is. 1.00

00:32:28.300 She doesn't take insurance, right?

00:32:30.400 And I'm like, well, why wouldn't I go online

00:32:33.340 if I'm not getting the care that I, like, I can't get into a GP,

00:32:37.080 I can't find this care.

00:32:38.540 Like, I'll just, like, take my own care into my own hands, which is risky.

00:32:44.140 It's not great.

00:32:45.660 And it's crazy that we treat something that if you, I mean, if demographics were to be believed, over half of Americans will experience menopause.

00:32:54.480 But the way the medical establishment treats us as if it's some, like, rare mosquito-borne disease from, like, sub-Saharan Africa.

00:33:02.920 Like, how dare you specialize in that?

00:33:04.840 How dare you specialize, again, in a thing that the majority of our fellow acute, like, just over half, will go through at some point in their lives.

00:33:14.380 And it's not at all like a core part of a lot of medical curriculums.

00:33:18.940 And I think that particularly when you look at the incentives of the for-profit healthcare industry, the thing about, you know, particularly a lot of the concerns of people who are experiencing menopause and perimenopause, postmenopause are squishy.

00:33:33.160 It will involve spending a lot of time in a room with a human asking them tough questions that may or may not make you any money down the line.

00:33:41.860 And so all the entire incentive structure, this entire system that we've built up is basically tailor-made to underserve half the population and sort of in some ways overly pathologize a very normal part of life and also underserve the very real quality of life concerns that come along with it.

00:34:01.400 Yeah. Okay. I could talk about this literally for another hour, so maybe that's our next one.

00:34:06.780 But I want to talk about cardio. This question is from Molly.

00:34:10.900 What's up with all the hate towards cardio? It seems like recently, everyone is telling women

00:34:15.580 to lift heavy and avoid cardio because it spikes your cortisol, which is a vast oversimplification

00:34:22.020 of the actual science of how exercise impacts cortisol production. In addition, cardio has a

00:34:29.320 host of other benefits that are great for people of all genders. Where did the sudden hate for

00:34:34.720 cardio come from? Why is it only women who are being discouraged from running, biking, etc., 0.96

00:34:40.400 and not men? Is it trending because it's popular with people who hate cardio and are glad to have

00:34:46.540 an excuse to skip it? Or is it because women are tired of being told to solely work out in a way 0.95

00:34:52.440 that's designed to make you skinnier? Would love to hear your thoughts. I know the anti-stair 1.00

00:34:58.080 overstepper lobby must be strong right now. Totally. You know, in some ways it's good,

00:35:03.760 right? Like historically women haven't been told that it's a good idea for them to pick heavy 0.72

00:35:08.420 things up and to focus on exercise rather than making themselves smaller, but to do it to 1.00

00:35:13.780 increase their function, quality of life, or even strength. Like if you want to lift heavy and get

00:35:19.660 big muscles, rock on. That's amazing. However, like she said, this does sort of get to the core

00:35:25.840 of a real big oversimplification,

00:35:28.280 which is sort of our cultural misunderstanding

00:35:30.100 of cortisol, a stress hormone,

00:35:32.940 and this idea that this thing is sort of a boogeyman,

00:35:36.840 that it's always inherently bad and scary,

00:35:39.260 and that we want to tamp down on it.

00:35:40.960 I think we see a pretty similar sort of narrative

00:35:42.940 happen with inflammation.

00:35:44.980 Everyone's trying to minimize their inflammation.

00:35:47.100 What is inflammation?

00:35:48.140 What is it?

00:35:48.640 These sort of like specters

00:35:51.080 that loom over being human right now,

00:35:53.480 of like, we're all inflamed, we have cortisol.

00:35:55.840 That's terrible. But importantly, inflammation is a part of the adaptation process. Cortisol is a part of the adaptation process. And while it's true that you don't want to be constantly flooded with cortisol all the time, which, I mean, essentially would be Cushing syndrome, which is like a real medical issue, which is rare but does exist, people have been taught to fear any amount of cortisol for any reason.

00:36:19.280 But we need cortisol. Our body produces cortisol in the morning to sort of help us get up and get at it and counteract the sort of chemical state of being asleep. And so people have been taught to fear cortisol. And a lot of it also, again, sort of does go back to this fear of gaining weight.

00:36:37.600 This idea that if you experience any amount of cortisol production in your body for any reason, it is going to make you gain weight.

00:36:45.700 And there is a relationship between cortisol and weight gain.

00:36:48.840 But when you look at cortisol, that, again, is reproduced as a necessary and not always detrimental byproduct of exercise.

00:36:57.480 Like exercise is stress.

00:36:59.320 That's part of what makes it worth doing because it stresses your body in a way that it's been able to adapt to.

00:37:05.780 So it's sort of this, you know, tried and true tale of casting one single, like, body system, chemical idea, macronutrient or ingredient as always bad, even if there might be sort of a mechanistic underpinning of, like, again, cortisol's not always good either.

00:37:23.980 It just really, really oversimplifies it and, again, teaches women to be scared of one single outcome of their body.

00:37:31.420 I think that, honestly, this is sort of just the Instagram version of the idea that running a marathon will make your uterus drop out.

00:37:39.120 It just has, like, a little more science-y veneer to it.

00:37:42.120 I just want to call out what I see as, like, the fundamental fat phobia in so much of this kind of fear-mongering, right?

00:37:52.780 It's like, what if you exercise and you gain weight?

00:37:56.940 Yes, yeah.

00:37:58.540 Like, what a waste it would be, right? 0.82

00:38:01.420 Like, it's just like it is and you can't say anymore or it's not like, I think, appropriate in many spheres to say like, oh, and then you'll get weight and that's the fucking worst, right?

00:38:13.920 Like, but it's there.

00:38:16.120 It's always there.

00:38:17.040 This fear, I think, that's very internalized, especially amongst like people who are very into fitness, that something will like add extra weight.

00:38:25.480 I'm putting that in quotes.

00:38:26.280 Well, and it's also for people that aren't happy with their body. Like if you do happen to change your body composition as you get older, I mean, who would think that that would happen?

00:38:41.120 then that that is where people start searching for these solutions and then they hear oh cardio

00:38:49.660 is contributing to this and you need to lift heavy and that needs to be your focus so that

00:38:54.640 your body composition can go back to it the way it was when you were 20 years old then they're

00:38:59.920 like all right this is what I'm going to do right and then the other other thing that I think I don't

00:39:06.100 think you mentioned, Zoe, but a lot of times, again, the supplement industry is built off of

00:39:12.860 this idea. If you take something like cortisol and amplify how bad it is, then we can create

00:39:19.960 a supplement that can help balance out your cortisol. So that's another component of the

00:39:25.820 whole cortisol thing. I know it's not directly related to the cardio versus strength, but

00:39:30.440 Yeah, this idea also comes into the whole equation, I feel like.

00:39:35.840 And I think it's particularly instructive when you look at how social media and the attention economy works, because it's like perfectly tailor made to go viral of this thing you thought was good for you is actually bad for you, which is an extremely catchy way to start any kind of social media communication.

00:39:52.600 And again, just functions on the assumption that the only reason a woman would ever want to exercise is to modify how her body looks, which is not that is a reason that many people come to exercise, but is, again, I think a pretty flawed assumption that I would love to stop see our culture attached to exercise movement and fitness.

00:40:12.840 And I think that consistently training women, they need to be hyper vigilant about the ways that everything they do, every choice they make impacts how their body looks.

00:40:22.780 We just have better things to do with our time and energy than being worried if lifting weights, in addition to make us strong, might accidentally make us look slightly left like an early 90s Victoria's Secret model. 0.94

00:40:35.300 Or like the weight thing.

00:40:36.700 Oh, my gosh, I went to an Airbnb the other day that had a scale in it.

00:40:40.440 Oh, my God.

00:40:41.000 Oh, how rude.

00:40:42.840 like that's disturbing because they went out of their way to go to target and to purchase this

00:40:48.380 thing and to put it in their airbnb i was so mad and it was the airbnb that we were staying in

00:40:54.740 uh during a ragnar relay race like so it was 12 women stayed in this airbnb and we're like

00:41:01.380 you know like we're running through the night we're sleeping we're bloated we're eating so

00:41:06.900 much food we're having so much fun type be fun um and like here's the scale just being like oh

00:41:13.880 well you think you're having fun i was so mad um okay we got so many questions about periods

00:41:20.480 and fitness and we talked briefly about this before but i want to read two questions and

00:41:25.280 then we'll talk a lot more uh this first one comes from brit what is up with fitness influencers and

00:41:30.020 period culture i see tons of posts with all this messaging about not lifting heavy during your

00:41:34.920 luteal phase, or you're really tired during X phase, so you should rest. I'll disclose that

00:41:39.800 I'm very skeptical about all this, so I probably just said the wrong phase. But is this actually

00:41:43.660 based on anything? Do period cycles actually cause that big of differences in the bodies of

00:41:48.240 people with uteruses to make a difference in fitness training? Or is this just another way

00:41:52.320 for influencers to grift and a new way for us to both police our bodies and I'm just a girl our

00:41:57.720 way out of fitness spaces prematurely? And then here's Audrey. I know the idea of building your 0.99

00:42:03.080 workout routine around your menstrual cycle is trendy right now, but why do I keep seeing 0.75

00:42:08.000 Instagram posts from Planned Parenthood encouraging it? I know they're trying to engage with young

00:42:13.420 people, but from what I've seen, there's no scientific merit to the idea, and it's mostly

00:42:18.020 being petal bite influencers to sell supplements. What gives? All right, what do we know? What do

00:42:23.940 we know about menstrual cycles and fitness? Well, what we know is that women as individuals will 0.99

00:42:30.620 feel all different kinds of ways throughout the menstrual cycle, but you can't scale that up to

00:42:35.880 breaking news. Shocking, I know, to everyone listening. But you can't scale that up to the

00:42:41.620 population level. There is no one way everyone feels during the luteal phase. There is no one

00:42:47.880 response to how anyone will respond to a certain workout stimulus on any one part of their menstrual

00:42:56.320 cycle. There will be a huge gap between how any two women feel, but that unfortunately is going 0.98

00:43:03.020 to do a very poor job at selling supplements or selling exercise protocols and meal plans. 1.00

00:43:09.820 And again, I think this becomes so sticky because for so long, women have felt ignored and they've 0.71

00:43:15.540 kind of been told like, don't worry about it, sweetheart, just like suck it up and get back 1.00

00:43:19.160 out there on the court and ignore how you're feeling. And that's also not true either. That

00:43:23.640 logic breaks down on the individual level. So the messy truth is that you should be aware of how

00:43:29.760 you feel, but there's no population level prescription that we can give people. You might

00:43:35.840 feel great lifting heavy on your luteal phase, and that is awesome. However, you're going to have a

00:43:40.940 really hard time sustaining a practice long term if you're always trying to match people up with

00:43:47.680 these super specific workout prescriptions. And I think it falls into this idea of hormonal

00:43:54.440 determinism, where something that was sort of originally meant to be empowering of like,

00:43:59.100 look, ladies, we did a science for you. Isn't this great? But it sort of becomes this way of

00:44:05.380 forecasting how you will or won't feel. And so you'll have women hold themselves back in competition, 1.00

00:44:11.600 or they might do more than they should when they should really rest, or they might rest when they 1.00

00:44:17.140 feel good. And then when the prescription fails them, they'll blame themselves rather than the

00:44:22.360 shoddy science it was built on. Because the fascinating thing, when you really look at the

00:44:26.820 studies that a lot of this is based on, the women are self-reporting where they are in their

00:44:31.800 menstrual cycle. And if you know anything about self-reported menstrual cycle data, or if anyone

00:44:36.840 else out there is not a total maniac about tracking their cycle, you know that we can often be quite

00:44:41.940 wrong. And when you compare self-reported cycle data versus like an actual hormonal assay, which

00:44:48.620 is super expensive and is not like a standard part of protocol, like scientists are not actually

00:44:54.560 looking at where people are in their menstrual cycle. They're asking, where do you think you are?

00:44:59.880 The gap between those two things ends up being so big that so much, like 90.99% of the do this

00:45:08.420 on your cycle, stuff falls apart under the least amount of scrutiny.

00:45:13.800 Kylie, yeah, what do you say when people say, like, ask you these questions?

00:45:17.880 There is actually a shred of truth to, like, there can be different rates of metabolism

00:45:24.440 for things like caffeine in the second half of your cycle, or your resting metabolic rate

00:45:30.540 can be elevated in the second half of your cycle.

00:45:33.240 so essentially when hormones change yes that can impact our ability to break down certain foods

00:45:42.060 or oxidize fats etc i think the challenge comes in when people get try to get hyper specific with

00:45:49.360 that and they don't even have the foundation styled in you know so they're like i want to

00:45:55.000 develop my nutrition plan to go along with my cycle but yet they're not even eating enough

00:46:00.280 protein they don't even understand like their different carbohydrate needs for different types

00:46:06.880 of training days and it's like these are bigger components to your overall nutrition that we know

00:46:13.700 we have a lot more data and evidence stating that they're going to have a huge performance benefit

00:46:21.040 or just even a health benefit right then trying to hyper like you know adjust your nutrition plan

00:46:29.160 in different phases of your cycle and so that's where a lot of people then they get frustrated

00:46:34.840 because they don't want it unfortunately it's harder sometimes to do the basic things

00:46:40.220 and people get really sick of us talking about that on the pot on our podcast i think

00:46:45.220 um but the reality is is i mean those that's the work that needs to be done first you're never

00:46:52.560 going to go viral telling people to get eight hours of sleep and to eat three meals a day and

00:46:57.600 manage their stress and to plug themselves into a community. But you can absolutely go viral

00:47:03.780 telling people they need to take 10 milligrams of fish oil on the third full moon of their ninth

00:47:08.800 lunar cycle. And so you sort of get these hyper specific prescriptions because they feel true

00:47:15.240 and they feel sciencey even when they really just aren't. And again, I think it always comes down

00:47:21.720 to asking like do you have those foundations dialed in does the re was the research done on

00:47:27.240 a population that matters for you and like again what are the actual consequences here because so

00:47:34.080 often it sort of gives people this really narrow sort of silver bullet or this hack of like if i

00:47:39.080 can just optimize my cranberry intake one day of the month that feels a lot more attainable to 0.99

00:47:44.840 some women then let me like try to have a manageable workload good work-life balance 1.00

00:47:50.000 adequate child care and access to health resources. Right, right. I think a lot of this comes from 1.00

00:47:55.980 looking at diet culture itself because people, a lot of people have a really lengthy diet history

00:48:04.940 and they've done a lot of, you know, they, whether it's Weight Watchers or some kind of like extreme

00:48:11.700 like keto thing, they've tried all the different diets and so they're like, well, I haven't tried

00:48:18.240 specifically trying to change my diet for my cycle so they want that as an answer too because

00:48:24.420 they're still frustrated usually it's because of weight and body composition I would say like the

00:48:29.540 majority of time that I chat with people it's a dissatisfaction with their body image yeah I was

00:48:35.780 just gonna say that like the voice of Virginia Sol Smith front of the pod is just in my ear

00:48:40.540 through this entire conversation being like that's restriction like what people are trying to do this

00:48:46.220 this isn't like this is an act of restriction it is a diet and like it is a way of funneling

00:48:53.720 that energy in a way that you feel like is not as like diet culture-y but it's still restriction

00:48:59.460 and probably results in all sorts of other behaviors as a result yeah we see this a lot

00:49:04.180 with like a lot of diet culture for men has just been rebranded as biohacking and it puts on a

00:49:10.020 little science hat and it sort of becomes this culturally sanctioned practice of oh no it's

00:49:15.060 totally cool that he's only eating one meal a day because he's biohacking whereas if a woman did it 0.71

00:49:20.300 we have the cultural awareness to go like oh sweetie that's an eating disorder and so this 0.96

00:49:25.780 sort of becomes this way of again laundering diet culture through this veneer of science to make it

00:49:30.860 a bit more palatable either to the culture or maybe even make it a little more palatable to 0.99

00:49:36.280 ourselves because we all know as like delightful 21st century feminists we shouldn't be trying to

00:49:41.280 lose weight and like we're so over diet culture and we're too smart for that and so we know to

00:49:45.840 ascribe even maybe just subconsciously a different and more acceptable and modern vocabulary to what

00:49:52.540 is a very old practice right and i see this too with some people who have struggled with

00:49:57.580 orthorexia which is essentially like exercising as a means of uh weight control and like i

00:50:05.920 definitely struggled with this in my 20s like as just like exercising all the time like that is

00:50:11.640 your restriction you're like I'm not gonna diet I'm just gonna exercise all the time and that's

00:50:16.440 strength right or that's like that's me being a feminist or that's me trying to live out my

00:50:21.340 feminist ideals and it is it's just for me it comes back to this idea of like I want to control

00:50:27.160 my body in order to make it more societally palatable yeah it's the same stuff with just

00:50:33.860 like a slightly updated costume every single time like all of these ideas are sort of parasitic and

00:50:39.580 they can latch on to whatever the cultural zeitgeist is now that we're again all empowered

00:50:44.900 women trying to be healthy and strong again it can you can use those words to describe practices

00:50:51.420 that are anything but empowering and anything but healthy and the challenge is because we are in

00:50:58.480 this context of needing to have a larger national conversation about health and well-being and about

00:51:05.300 folks access to healthy and nourishing foods it allows a certain part of the population to really

00:51:11.820 go overboard with things like clean eating and exercise because to the culture at large someone

00:51:19.180 who is exercising constantly and only eating pure healthy clean foods that might look very virtuous

00:51:25.620 this that might look extremely healthy, but, you know, this person is unable to go to birthday

00:51:30.640 parties, cannot go out to eat at a restaurant, and feels totally out of control the second they

00:51:35.860 don't get to eat out of their little bento box of what makes this okay. And I think that you can't

00:51:43.220 know what's going on from what things look like on the outside. They may look healthy on the

00:51:47.680 surface, but it always comes down to getting curious of, like, how does this function inside

00:51:52.440 the person because nine times out of 10, it's a means for control and it's a means for sort of 1.00

00:51:58.680 making the female body particularly compliant.

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00:55:50.760 Let's talk about Pilates. This person wants to remain anonymous, so Melody is going to read the

00:55:57.060 question. I'm struggling with the rise of the does Pilates every day archetype of femininity 0.99

00:56:02.940 and want to unpack why it feels so uncomfortable.

00:56:05.900 I generally see strength and fitness as empowering for women

00:56:08.940 and believe the best exercise is the one you genuinely enjoy and will stick with.

00:56:13.360 I've done Pilates regularly in the past and still love it for core strength and stability.

00:56:18.080 But there seems to be a growing culture around daily Pilates,

00:56:21.200 specifically for women, especially expensive studio memberships

00:56:24.880 that seem to require so much time and money that they crowd out other forms of movement.

00:56:29.300 At the same time, male comments like, if your girl goes to Pilates, wife her up, are increasingly trending on social media, which turns Pilates from a health activity into a marker of desirability.

00:56:41.300 It starts to feel less about fitness and more about signaling a specific ideal, thin, toned, affluent, conventionally feminine, and often white. 0.99

00:56:50.300 Another way to control unruly female bodies. 1.00

00:56:52.880 God forbid a woman get bulky while getting strong. 1.00

00:56:55.440 How can women who genuinely love Pilates reclaim it as an empowering form of exercise when it's increasingly tied to the male gaze, class hierarchy, and a narrow vision of femininity, one that celebrates being strong and fit, but only if you're also small, polished, and wife material? 1.00

00:57:12.180 Help.

00:57:13.340 This is a classic culture study question in that it kind of answers its own question in the question and leads us in so many different directions.

00:57:23.500 So who wants to start?

00:57:26.220 I think, you know, for me, I'm always interested in when these things become a means of communicating identity, because that is fully where it leaves the science and the utility behind and just becomes a cultural signifier.

00:57:38.700 And that's when a lot of these things really escape containment and get harder to sort of pin down what we're actually talking about.

00:57:44.900 Because I think a lot of times when a practice like Pilates becomes legible primarily as a signal, the cost shifts from physical to financial, which is something I think that's always useful to keep our eyes trained on.

00:57:57.560 A lot of these things have really small class caps, super expensive equipment, and the exclusivity and the sort of hard to attain of it all becomes the model.

00:58:08.700 And I think the daily of it, too, is really important because, again, I sort of feel like it's this way where female exercise culture is sort of starting to bridge closer to what, you know, men have also sort of had foisted upon them of making sure that every moment of our lives is spent, again, just being ultimately or as compliant as possible and as productive as possible.

00:58:35.800 And all the better if you're being compliant and productive in a way that satisfies the cultural idea of what it means to be feminine, which is like, of course, you are extremely healthy and you're extremely strong, but you need to be healthy and strong in the ways that we've been taught to view as healthy and strong in a woman, a.k.a. you should look like a ballerina in her late teens, kind of always.

00:58:58.540 And so I think the useful questions that I use sort of going into these, I'm going to do a very journalism thing and I'm going to answer this question with an assay of my own questions. But does this practice survive things that the gaze doesn't reward? Like, would you do it if the body modification was taken out of the equation?

00:59:21.400 And I think another sort of quick diagnostic question I like to run in instances like these is, does the marketing of the thing, the way the studio or the way the culture is contextualizing it, does it describe what you'll be able to do?

00:59:34.500 Does it describe a change in function or does it describe an aesthetic change?

00:59:39.440 And in most of these instances, it's that ballerina body that we're all trying to aim for, despite the fact that very few of us are going to be in Swan Lake anytime soon.

00:59:49.680 And then, you know, again, just like the physiology of it all. As an athlete, we are trained according to progressive overload, which means that you should be doing more over time in order to progress your results.

01:00:01.580 In the case of Pilates, if the work never gets harder, what you're doing is you're maintaining a compliant appearance rather than training yourself to be increasingly functional.

01:00:13.240 I think it's also fine to love things that are kind of culturally might have a bit of meh to them.

01:00:19.720 If you really like the thing and you're aware of the machinery around it, I think those two things are compatible.

01:00:25.740 I think it's when you start to outsource what you like to the machinery itself that things start to become a problem.

01:00:33.820 I also see this with CrossFit, you know, I feel like it's similar.

01:00:37.580 It's just Pilates for guys. 0.99

01:00:38.700 But even there's there are some women that do CrossFit. And I think some of it, too, we did an episode about cults. And I feel like it almost gets into this, like, people want to become a member of this community, but then it turns into a cult. And then it's like this weird relationship almost, you know.

01:00:57.120 well and there's often a lot of like sexual stuff going on specifically in crossfit because it is

01:01:03.780 more um mixed gender uh but i also think like part of what attracts people to these classes

01:01:11.180 to these studios is it is a form of community that is often not accessible in other forms if

01:01:17.840 you are especially if you have a life that is so packed that like okay but i have to also optimize

01:01:23.080 my exercise by going to my friend calls uh the specific sort of pilates that's become very

01:01:28.200 popular uh she's in seattle she calls it mean pilates uh like what is that like it's just like

01:01:35.140 uh it's like pilates gulp like you know it's not like they're not on the machines but it's just

01:01:41.500 like a and it's not like the pilates class that i took at the ymca in 2009 right it's very like

01:01:48.640 what this person is talking about in terms of Pilates.

01:01:51.640 Yeah, I think the community aspect is positive.

01:01:54.300 The sort of caveat I would have there is, again,

01:01:57.300 particularly women are socialized to build community

01:02:00.300 around discontent surrounding our bodies. 1.00

01:02:02.700 Totally.

01:02:03.220 This idea of normative discontent has been studied 1.00

01:02:05.880 that women will basically use as a connection ritual, 1.00

01:02:09.020 like, ugh, I feel so fat, or ugh, you know, 1.00

01:02:11.940 XYZ negative comment about my body. 1.00

01:02:14.800 And that's literally how women, like, it's been studied 1.00

01:02:17.060 again and again that that is how women bond. So I think if you're going to the gym and it is a 1.00

01:02:22.900 empowering and positive thing that you and your gal pals or pals of any gender are doing to take

01:02:29.100 care of yourselves, that's awesome. And so far that your group's whole thing doesn't become we

01:02:34.140 hate ourselves and therefore we need to modify ourselves and have the entirety of our social

01:02:39.500 lives rotate around trying to change how we physically show up in the world. I think things

01:02:44.560 get a little bit muddy there. Yeah, yeah. You're not like going out to coffee afterwards and being

01:02:49.640 like, I'm so bad for eating this. I'm so bad. And the other thing I'll say is that I got really

01:02:59.140 into hot yoga in the late 2000s when you know, like the time and I did I went every day in part

01:03:07.740 like I was in grad school then. And there was like a great student discount to like unlimited

01:03:12.780 memberships that get you with the unlimited membership, right? It's $99 a month. It was like

01:03:17.720 the biggest luxury that I ever experienced. This is in Austin, Texas. Like, can you imagine what

01:03:23.120 an unlimited hot yoga membership would be now? And it really did become like the the routineness

01:03:32.260 for me was incredibly useful as like a stress relief, as a place to go that even though it was

01:03:39.220 heated it was still like not as hot as outside this is so funny as a place where I saw people

01:03:46.080 who were not in my grad program and the thing that became unhealthy about it was not actually

01:03:53.360 anything to do with my body like my body felt strong I loved like seeing what it could do and

01:03:58.080 also it kind of cured me of my previous cardio addiction it's that it became an MLM like that

01:04:05.080 I was constantly being recruited into like, oh, you're like, you're good at yoga. Then the next

01:04:12.580 step is obviously go to these teacher trainings, right? And that to me, like, I think that's

01:04:19.080 another thing to be wary of. And that's the cult component as well as like, how do these become

01:04:25.220 profit centers by exploiting your desire to both discipline your body and also be like,

01:04:32.720 really good at something yeah exactly yes um is there anything else like i think the desirability

01:04:41.140 thing like why don't i some men do go to pilates but like why is this coded as something that like

01:04:46.900 is such like a hot lady hot rich lady thing yeah which is so funny this is one of the few instances

01:04:52.760 like when you actually look at the fascinating history of pilates which was invented by a man

01:04:57.080 in a concentration camp, a totally wild place for an exercise craze to begin, by the way,

01:05:03.780 which will definitely change any Pilates class that you go to after this. What is fascinating

01:05:09.740 is this is one of the few trends that started as pretty male-coded and then jumped ship.

01:05:14.260 I think, again, sort of looking at the boxes that it ticks, like so often exercise and health

01:05:21.700 trends that are marketed to women sort of create like open up a problem in the realm of particularly

01:05:29.680 feminine insecurities or like ways that you personally are failing as a woman whether it's

01:05:34.560 like the size usually it's the size and shape of your body and it's sort of the way for exercise 1.00

01:05:40.600 culture to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to shaming women because obviously you need

01:05:46.380 to be exercising constantly and that should be like the underpinning of your entire life 0.98

01:05:50.860 But also you need to do so in a way that makes you more legibly feminine to the rest of us. How dare you try to lift away you enormous cow, right? So it's sort of this way of like taking a more male coded language of altering your body in these specific ways, sort of like body building, but you just do it to look more like a ballerina. 1.00

01:06:11.480 And, I mean, again, it's, I think, kind of like random happenstance that ended up being Pilates.

01:06:18.280 Rather, there were just a few really key figures in the Pilates movement early on.

01:06:22.660 It really sort of took up primacy among women and because, like, a lot of dancers and, like, famous celebrities were doing it.

01:06:31.440 And because of how their bodies happened to look after doing Pilates, not because Pilates actually does lengthen your muscles in a meaningful way.

01:06:40.640 Or there's this idea of reductionism, which is like this or tart and targeted reduction that doing a specific exercise can, you know, eliminate fat around your thighs, around your abdomen.

01:06:52.500 That's not true.

01:06:53.260 Like your body just kind of will pull fat from wherever it wants to pull fat.

01:06:56.700 You can't just tell it to like only lose weight around the middle.

01:06:59.480 And so Pilates plays into this belief that we have that doing specific things will meaningfully shape your body in these specific ways.

01:07:07.660 And that's not to say that it won't change your body.

01:07:09.420 It will, just not always in the ways that it promises.

01:07:13.460 Before we get to our last question, I just want to quickly say that I have really been inspired by a more utilitarian understanding of exercise in terms of like how to do the other things that I really like to do in my life.

01:07:26.420 so my other hobby other than running is dahlia farming and it is very hard on the body and

01:07:33.540 i have like in order to keep my back strong to do my hobby i have to do core and so thinking of like

01:07:43.120 okay core as something to do like to make it so that i can do my other hobby instead of like the

01:07:49.720 i want britney spears's like four pack or whatever like it really is such a useful thought experiment

01:07:55.920 to me of like what exercises can I do to actually like keep my body doing the other things that I

01:08:01.840 want to do not for what it looks like but what it can do yeah exactly I think that's such a useful

01:08:06.660 way of looking at it of like again like would I still do this if it didn't change how I look

01:08:11.860 and instead asking yourself like what would actually make my life more livable more fun

01:08:17.280 more joyful again if going to Pilates makes it easier for you to um garden and to go out dancing

01:08:22.820 with your pals, incredible. Absolutely do that. But again, if you're just kind of trying to do it

01:08:28.040 to beat your body into compliance, that's where it becomes the issue. Okay, last question is going

01:08:34.260 to give us a lot to think about. This is another big picture one. It comes from Liz. I think the

01:08:39.300 problems are like half shrink it and pink it, but don't count out misogyny. If women dress for other 1.00

01:08:45.100 women, men work out for other men. So much of men's workout advice dovetails with traditional

01:08:50.360 ideas about masculinity, and so much of the manosphere overlaps with workout advice.

01:08:56.400 And so women's fitness splits in response online between women who work out in pursuit of traditional

01:09:01.980 feminine ideals and women who work out for like a feminism-adjacent prioritization of self.

01:09:08.900 So my question is, who needs to change first and who needs to change more, 0.50

01:09:12.860 the dudes or the ladies? If the men's fitness industrial complex could somehow divest from

01:09:18.280 the patriarchy, what would shift in the women's industrial fitness complex in response? 1.00

01:09:27.820 There's a good one for us to end on. I think for me, it's like if we go way upstream of this

01:09:34.140 question, what I'm seeing is that both of these anxieties, both on the masculine and in the

01:09:38.740 feminine size, sort of convert a systemic failure into an individual practice or a purchase. You

01:09:46.560 fail this cultural norm in some key way, and therefore it is incumbent on you to change who

01:09:52.440 you are so that you don't accidentally interrogate the cultural norm that made you want to do

01:09:56.500 CrossFit or ballet in the first place. I think that that's the really, really big one here,

01:10:03.340 is that people are always going, you can basically just tell people what to be insecure about. For

01:10:08.240 men, you will just tell them to be insecure that they are too small, that they are insufficiently

01:10:13.160 productive they are insufficiently masculine and they don't have enough crypto for women it's often

01:10:18.900 uh those sort of like tried and true traditions of feminine beauty and then also increasingly

01:10:24.900 fertility and because capitalism is going to capitalism we've started to bear the mantle of

01:10:29.980 that productivity as well and so all of these trends end up being a way of trying to tick

01:10:35.400 all of those boxes and so i really think that it's sort of that like the very far upstream thing is

01:10:42.880 that they are selling an aesthetic outcome dressed up as health. When you look at men and women,

01:10:49.120 health outcomes should not be radically different, and a lot of the interventions that were being

01:10:54.160 sold shouldn't be radically different. Therefore, when you see a huge difference in the interventions,

01:10:59.720 that is primarily marketing and not science. My favorite hobby is looking at sort of the

01:11:06.480 packaging on different supplements for women versus men, because as men, it's always like

01:11:10.760 tactical nuclear gator juice and then for women it's always like sparkle puff muffin powder and

01:11:18.400 it's like extremely feminine and like even the flavors are somehow earlier which always feels

01:11:24.160 condescending like just like the protein drinks at whole foods it's like the font yeah yeah exactly

01:11:31.300 so i think that you know essentially again what what we're doing is we're trying to take this sort

01:11:39.140 of cultural anxiety and turn it into something that we as individuals now have to fix. And I

01:11:45.620 think that the listeners write in that it is a chicken and egg, but I think taking note of

01:11:50.720 wherever it feels like you are failing personally can be instructive to see as like, am I failing

01:11:55.840 personally because I'm failing? Or is it because I was set up to fail culturally in this specific

01:12:00.680 way of there is no way that I can look like an ancient Greek goddess while also working two

01:12:07.420 jobs performing child care caretaking for a parent and only managing to get to the Pilates class

01:12:14.260 twice a week yeah Kylie what do you think I mean I feel like I mean not trying to blame men but I

01:12:22.240 do feel like um women get a lot of pressure from men as well to look a certain way or like be a

01:12:30.360 certain wife etc and so i'm kind of inclined to say like maybe that side of things needs to change

01:12:37.720 a little bit more first i don't know if you guys have an opinion but i i mean i think that like

01:12:44.120 it's both and right and then i also think that the thing that's like again been running through

01:12:49.480 this entire conversation is that if we lived in a less precarious society where we weren't striving

01:12:53.960 and competing with one another all the time to try to like have more social capital and actual

01:12:59.280 capital, and if our system of capitalism wasn't on steroids, which is a fitting analogy for this

01:13:07.400 particular conversation, then both things would calm down a little, right? And that's not to

01:13:12.960 extract, that's not to not say that this is also about patriarchy, but it's also about patriarchy

01:13:19.400 under hyper-capitalism, right? Yes. Yeah, I think that's exactly the mechanism. And I think it's

01:13:25.540 always interesting and instructive to pay attention to how it plays out differently

01:13:29.540 because, I mean, kind of a weird place to end this conversation, but there's also a

01:13:35.260 lack of research around men and eating disorders and the particular ways that these aesthetic

01:13:40.480 pressures shape the lives of men. And increasingly, we're seeing that lo and behold, it is not

01:13:45.880 great for them. Patriarchy can be extremely bad for them as well and the pressures that

01:13:50.080 it puts on their bodies and on their sense of self-worth being tied to productivity as

01:13:54.620 well. And so I think that, you know, the system, even though the impacts can be disproportionately

01:13:59.900 spread and are always born worse by the most vulnerable members of society, potentially we

01:14:05.400 can get even more attention and bring more awareness when we're like, hey, guys, this is

01:14:09.800 also not great for you. Wouldn't it be nice to feel like you don't always have to look like Matt

01:14:14.500 Damon from The Odyssey? Follow me into the world of feminism and fitness. 1.00

01:14:19.880 Zoe, won't someone think of the men? 0.91

01:14:22.500 Like, well, let us know and not give any attention.

01:14:25.320 I'm so glad that someone finally had the courage to say it, that we should think of them more.

01:14:31.040 That is a great place for us to end.

01:14:33.420 If people want to hear more from both of you, where can they find you on the internet?

01:14:37.600 You can find us on Your Diet Sucks at yourdietsuckspodcast.com.

01:14:43.060 We're also on Instagram at yourdietsuckspod and find the podcast with that title

01:14:48.000 wherever you are listening to this amazing thank you so much this is really fun thanks guys thank

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Culture Study Podcast - August 05, 2026

The Women's Fitness Industrial Complex

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