Health clubs and body politics: Aesthetics and the Quest for Physical Capital

Leisure Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 161–175, April 2005

Health Clubs and Body Politics: Aesthetics and the Quest for Physical Capital MATTHEW FREW and DAVID MCGILLIVRAY Division of Media, Culture and Leisure Management, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 0BA, UK, (dmcg@gcal.ac.uk) Division of Media,Ltd Culture and Leisure ManagementGlasgow Caledonian UniversityCowcaddens RoadGlasgowG4 0BAM.frew@gcal.ac.uk Leisure& 10.1080/0261436042000300432 RLST100191.sgm 0261-4367 Original Taylor 2005 MatthewFrew 0000002005 00 and Studies Article Francis (print)/1466-4496 Francis Ltd (online)

(Received December 2003; revised August 2004; accepted September 2004) ABSTRACT At present, the western world wrestles with an obesity epidemic whilst, paradoxically, maintaining a fascination for the aesthetic ideal body. With the Scottish health and fitness industry providing the empirical backdrop, and drawing on the work of Bourdieu, this paper critically reflects upon processes of embodied production and consumption and the quest for physical capital and its referential symbolism. Using a range of qualitative methods across three case study facilities it is argued that as consumers seek to attain desired forms of physical capital, health and fitness clubs serve both to capitalize on and perpetuate cycles of embodied dissatisfaction. Although willingly subjecting their bodies to constant ocularcentric and objectifying processes, consumers are constantly reminded of their failure to attain the physical capital they desire. These processes not only mirror modern consumerism but also highlight a process of self-imposed domination. With external medical and media discourses exerting persistent pressure on the embodied state, desire for physical capital produces a self-legitimating and regulatory regime perpetrated upon the self within the internal environment of the health and fitness club. Therefore, as a venue for playing out aesthetic politics, health and fitness club spaces are anything but healthy as they oil the desire and dreamscape of physical capital, maintaining an aesthetic masochism and thus keeping the treadmills literally and economically turning.

Introduction In recent years, the associated health phenomenon of body management and its aesthetic construction has been matched by a growth in techno-dependency (Frew and McGillivray, 2002) and unheralded levels of reported obesity across the western world (Grundy, 1998). For many, the modern world has become one of fastfood indulgence (Campbell, 2000; Lawson, 2000), leisure passivity and dependence upon labour saving technologies that afford levels of convenience unheard of in previous generations (Mintel, 2001).

The response of the contemporary leisure environment has been an exponential growth in the health and fitness sector (Hickman, 2003) focused on cardio-vascular and resistance-based training (Mintel, 1998). Within the UK alone, the number of health and fitness clubs has expanded by almost a quarter within the last decade, and these clubs now cater for a membership of 8.6 million, generating an estimated ISSN 0261–4367 (print)/ISSN 1466–4496 (online)/05/020161–15 © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080/0261436042000300432

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£1.25 billion annually for the UK economy (Atkins, 2001; Hickman, 2003; Mintel, 2003). Even so, this expansion pales into insignificance when compared with the US, where seven out of 10 people are, or have been, members of health and fitness clubs (Abrahams, 2001). In both countries the health and fitness industry has expanded to target and service a core market of healthy and aesthetically conscious consumers. However, this paper focuses on the contested nature of the health and fitness terrain as it bridges the gap between the desire for a healthy and attractive body and the allure of modern ease, convenience and instant gratification. Furthermore, with attrition rates of up to 80% being reported across the industry (Atkins, 2001), its raison d’etre remains open to question, especially as evidence of significant public health improvements emanating from the growth in the industry remain scant. In a world of consumer consciousness it is worth considering the sustainability of an industry that appears to continually dissatisfy its consumers’ desires.

In critically evaluating these paradoxes, the paper takes as its theoretical base the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his writings on the incorporated or ‘physical’ form of capital (Bourdieu, 1980, 1985, 1998). Bourdieu illustrates how cultural goods, services and, in this instance, embodied states are reproduced as tradable assets carrying symbolic value within modern consumer markets (Bourdieu, 1984; Lee, 1993). For definitional clarity it is argued that, in the social space of the health and fitness club, the ‘toned, ordered and visible body’ is the desired form of physical capital. In this context, the ‘taut’ and ‘toned’ body represents the: …‘good body’ and the good body is indicative of the subjection of self to regimes of discipline…to practice healthy behaviour is to improve one’s ‘physical capital’ (Bourdieu, 1984) and therefore enhance one’s social and moral worth. (Hughes, 2000: 21)

It will be argued that, in the early 21st century, the health and fitness club is the principal space where the quest for, and attainment of, physical capital takes place.

It operates as a space where the promotion of a particular aesthetic comes together with regimented body work (Shilling, 1993; Hancock and Tyler, 2000) to form a moral reminder of the need for self-regulation.

Bourdieu and physical capital The introductory comments allude to the work of Pierre Bourdieu and, in particular, his discussion of capital(s). In this section, the appropriateness of this theoretical stance is clarified before the key Bourdieusian concepts employed thereafter are embedded in the health and fitness context. First, it is necessary to explain Bourdieu’s use of the term capital, especially the way in which the accumulation of its physical and symbolic derivative helps to differentiate social groups. For Bourdieu, various cultural fields (e.g. art, television and sport) provided a rich tapestry from which to explore the consumption patterns of various class groupings and to ascertain how these were constructed and reproduced (Lee, 1993). At the heart of these investigations was the relationship between structuring processes, represented in the durable dispositions of habitus (e.g. socio-economic status) and the ability of agents to exercise strategies that could alter their cultural trajectories.

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For this paper, the health and fitness club represents a contested sub-cultural field (of sport and recreation) where the possession of physical capital is traded for distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). As discussed, the principal capital of interest here is the incorporated or embodied form, namely, ‘physical capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986; Calhoun, 1995; Wacquant, 1998). This form of capital is increasingly important given a prevailing aestheticization of everyday life (Featherstone, 1991; Rojek, 1995), whereby visual, or ocularcentric, cultures exert more influence across various social spaces (see Virilio, 2002). Since the publication of Featherstone’s (1991) Consumer Culture and Postmodernism and Featherstone et al.’s (1991) The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, numerous investigations have focused on the benefits of the capital attained from gaining a fit and taut looking body (Bordo, 1993; Shilling, 1993; Tyler and Taylor, 1998; Sassatelli, 1999; Dale, 2001; Philips and Drummond, 2001).

Likewise, within the context of the health and fitness club, embodied forms of physical capital correspond well with Featherstone’s (1991) depiction of classical and carnival bodies. The carnival body is portrayed as the grotesque product of the copious consumption of fattening food and intoxicating drink. As an embodied state, lacking discipline and revelling in carnivalesque spaces (e.g. pubs, nightclubs, fast food outlets and restaurants), this body mirrors the negative representation of fat and flaccidity targeted within health and fitness club environments. In contrast, its ‘other’, the classical body, is promoted as the ideal and associated with symmetrical beauty. This is the aspirational and ascetic body, famously illustrated

by Michelangelo’s David and promoted, not only within the health and fitness club industry, but mediated across western cultures (Bordo, 1993; Grundy, 1998).

The quest for the physical capital of the classical body is increasingly important for enhanced work opportunities and social and sexual success (see Trethewey, 1999; Hancock and Tyler, 2000; Warhurst et al, 2001). Given this, it is understandable that the embodied state is now under a permanent social gaze, objectified through a host of mediums that drive bodily dissatisfaction and, consequentially, the desire for physical capital. In essence, the body has become a mainstream commodity (Miles, 2001).

However, the accrual of physical capital only has value within a wider symbolic economy. If specific elements of physical capital (e.g. possessing a six-pack or big biceps) are not recognized and given value by others, then it is not a tradable asset in the positional economy (Hirsch, 1978). The key point about trading in the positional economy is that it is always relational to the consumption patterns of others (Lee 1993). As the forthcoming presentation of results illustrates, achieving the honour of symbolic capital (Fowler, 2000) is as crucial within the health and fitness club context as its physical capital counterpart.

Although proposing that physical capital is ever more valuable in a visually conscious global culture, this does not mean that its possession is either distributed equally or unaffected by power relations. Instead, it is proposed that those possessing the appropriate physical capital seek distinction from others, subordinating and symbolically dominating those unable to attain such capital within the field (Bourdieu, 1984; Fowler 2000). In the health and fitness club, this is often achieved through displaying physical capital superiority (e.g. through wearing crop tops).

For Bourdieu, this contest of capitals can also be related to the struggle between

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different class fractions. He has argued that the manual working classes exhibit different attitudes to the body to those of the middle classes (see Jarvie and McGuire, 1994). Whereas the former react with strangeness (Flick, 1999) to the health and fitness industry, the middle classes tend to embrace it more readily, thus producing more individuals seeking to achieve a fit, athletic body, which demonstrates qualities associated with investment, restraint and deferred gratification.

Before exploring such processes, it is necessary to outline the set of research instruments employed in the empirical investigations conducted across a number of health and fitness clubs in Scotland.

Methods Bourdieu championed the use of a variety of research methods in his own empirical investigations. He was particularly critical of theorizing theoreticians or ‘untheoretical empiricism’ and ‘unempirical conceptualizations’ for their abstraction, and sought to challenge the dualism between theory and empirical work (Bourdieu quoted in Honneth et al, 1986: 39): In utilizing a range of quantitative as well as qualitative research methods, Bourdieu also challenges the crude formulations found in objectivity and subjectivity research debates. (Jarvie and McGuire, 1994: 185)

Hence, Bourdieu was interested in how social practices operate and how they act as processes through which individuals live out their daily lives. Empirically, he was particularly concerned with exploring how embodied actions structure how an individual thinks, feels and acts, how they become engrained in an individual’s psyche so that they act unconsciously and intuitively. In doing so, he tried to avoid attributing actions to either pole of fixed determinism or flexible elasticity (Jenkins, 2002).

The study from which this paper originates engaged with these criticisms and encompassed extensive fieldwork with three health and fitness clubs located in different locales across central Scotland from late 2000 to mid-2001. In order to reflect the range and quality of provision, organizational selection was premised upon the variables of size, location and market focus.

The first organization, Esporta, represented an established multinational, upper market brand in a suburban location and focused on older professional groups. The second organization, The Edge, formed part of a health and fitness chain of national scope with a preference for business and retail park locations, targeting young professionals and business workforces. The final organization, Energy Zone, represented a single entrepreneurial venture, located in a small town and focused on the de-conditioned market of its local catchment area. Coupled with these variables, geodemographic (Sleight, 1997) information from organizational databases revealed membership profiles that cut across the spectrum of age, gender, economic and occupational status. This enhanced the view that organizational selection provided a fair reflection of the growing health and fitness sector and its consumers (Mintel, 1998; 2001).

Within each organization, several innovative research methods were accommodated in the furtherance of this project, targeted at both the producers of the health

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and fitness club experience (i.e. staff) and its consumers (i.e. health and fitness club members). Firstly, a site visit was arranged to each club to conduct what Flick (1999) terms a textual analysis. Through digital imaging and observational notes, the interior of each club was recorded. The intention was to analyse both formal and informal evidence of the vision and marketing strategy each organization promoted. Formal evidence refers to those organizational elements directed to attract potential members and included membership campaigns, promotional packs, posters, flyers and merchandizing. Informal evidence refers to those takenfor-granted organizational elements, including décor, sound and vision, physical layout, equipment, service provision (e.g. beauty therapy, body combat or spin classes) and the embodied state of staff. The rationale here was that such elements form a text of an organization that promote associations that are aesthetic, embodied and provide distinction for members.

The second phase of research focused upon the management and operational delivery of health and fitness club services. In-depth interviews were conducted with facility managers and those staff responsible for the delivery of personal training and class-based services. For the management interviews, the themes explored were industrial trends in the health and fitness industry, the organization’s strategic vision, an analysis of consumer needs and staffing practices. At the operational, or ‘service interface’ level, a total of six interviews were conducted with staff responsible for the delivery of personal training and class based services. Here, interview themes focused upon daily operational procedures, including induction, programme design and delivery, personal history and attraction to the health and fitness industry, experience of consumer aspirations, application and levels of participation.

The third and final phase of fieldwork investigations was conducted with consumers drawn from each health and fitness club. First, focus group interviews (four to six members) were conducted with members from each health and fitness club. Although focus groups were composed of self-selecting members, care was taken to ensure each group provided a gender balance and age range representative of the membership base of each organization. It was not possible, at this stage, to account for the motivations of the attendees, nor how representative these might be of the organizations themselves. To stimulate discussion, a 6-minute video clip was played. This was a montage clip edited from various documentaries and films and represented an array of different body shapes. In placing body types along a somatotype spectrum (Burke and Deakin, 1994) and drawing parallels from those body types presented in the video, respondents identified and assembled an identikit or jigsaw body to represent their ideal body shape. This facilitated the ensuing discussion which reflected upon respondents’ influences, attitudes, perceptions and aspirations towards such body images and personal strategies for its attainment and maintenance.

A range of secondary sources also contributed to the study, including representations of idealized bodies found in the health and fitness trade press. These approaches build on the work undertaken by Sassatelli (1999) of the health and fitness club industry in Italy and other studies that have considered body image in the context of the health and fitness industry (e.g. Grogan, 1999; Monaghan, 1999, 2001).

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Results The forthcoming results are drawn primarily from the qualitative research enquiries conducted. To maintain confidentiality, the participants cited in discussions have been assigned pseudonyms. Results are presented in three distinct sections.

The first highlights how the desire for the attainment of physical capital is constantly open to objectification in the health and fitness club. Of particular interest is how individuals appear to willingly place themselves in a space where desire for physical capital, simultaneously, involves an open and constant embodied penance.

The second section presents results indicative of the quest for physical capital as one of subtle rationalization, whereby mediatized celebrity bodies become a sought after accessory. It also explores how (and why) factors internal (the marketing of these spaces) and external (the role of the mass media) to the health and fitness industry fuel this process. The final section reflects upon the desire for physical capital and how it is continually frustrated by incongruous lifestyle demands, technologies and temptations. It draws on the voices of health and fitness club consumers to illustrate how they invariably fail to appreciate, or to practice, the stoicism required to achieve their dreamscape desires. Caught in a theoretical and practical vacuum, consumer desire for physical capital and its symbolic power becomes a body politic played out on the never-ending treadmills of the health and fitness club.

Desiring capital: open referential gazing The health and fitness club is a space where physical capital is not only constructed and celebrated but also undergoes a willing ocular consumption (Featherstone, 1991). In this space, gazing upon the body, scanning its taut curves and contours, is an accepted practice. For those in possession of the appropriate physical capital, such gazing (by one’s self, at one’s self and at others) is openly accepted and even celebrated – in an apparently asexualized and agendered way. The comments of the following personal trainers provide an illustration of this referential gazing: Everybody looks at everybody in a gym. You compare – it’s nothing unusual. (Callum, personal trainer, interview, May 2000) We’re in the body business. You go into a gym you check people out and likewise. Hey, there are mirrors everywhere and nobody can tell me they don’t look. It’s no big deal. (Nick, personal trainer, interview, May 2000)

This nonchalant ocularcentrism was identified across all of the health and fitness clubs by staff and consumers alike. However, bodies were also discursively compared and contrasted with a clear focus on the objectification of particular body parts; the ‘great legs’, ‘what about his pecs’, ‘have you seen her abs’, ‘now that’s a butt’. The following two health and fitness clubs members attest to this penchant for comparison as an essential element of the health and fitness club experience: You’re always looking. As soon as you’ve got a flat stomach you see someone else and say they are better than me. Then you think I want to look like that. (Linda, health and fitness club member, focus group, May 2000)

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I think it gives you a buzz…When you see a good build it can drive you on. (Mark, health and fitness club member, focus group, May 2000)

This process of bodily comparison and objectification is fuelled and legitimated through medical discourses that now extend into many areas of life (Hughes, 2000), including the health and fitness club. This medicalization was evident within each of the selected clubs, where consumers undergo processes of objectification which begin with the ‘basic induction’, including body measurement procedures such as blood pressure, weight, flexibility, dynamic strength and body fat percentages. It is through such bodily objectification that consumers formally countenance their level (or lack) of physical capital: Fitness testing is a standard procedure throughout the industry. Every customer goes through one when they come for an induction. (Kevin, health and fitness club owner, interview, April 2000) Our fitness profiling keeps them (customers) focused. It gives them a start point, helps them set personal goals that they can see on paper. (Tony, assistant manager, interview, March 2000)

Moreover, through periodic testing or personal fitness programming, which determine ‘customer progress’, objectification becomes a central tenet of the health and fitness club environment. The length of cardio-vascular activity, class participation, exercise forms and structure, number of sets, repetitions and weight all add to the objective evidence of a customer’s ‘commitment to their goals’. According to the health and fitness clubs this is a wholly positive process, part of a quality service that is often separately priced: Personal training services are another service we offer. They are usually one to one but more in-depth…testing more, working on diet more and fine-tuning programmes – well worth it.

(Callum, personal trainer, interview, May 2000) Our membership is a one-off payment, which gets you the gym, spin and any other class we offer. The only difference is personal training sessions where you have to pay a fee usually by the hour. It’s not for everyone but they get results and that’s why people want them. (Kevin, health and fitness club owner, interview, April 2000) There’s no two ways about it, trainers are expensive but they really kick your butt. If you really want to make a go of it you get the trainer. (Claire, health and fitness club member, focus group, May 2000)

In addition, consumers are surrounded by an environment that constantly promotes the physical capital of the youthful, aesthetic, trim and taut body. From the point of entry, consumers (or potential consumers) are perpetually subjected to the images of MTV or Cardio-Theatre screens, airbrushed posters of glistening bodies and staff, be they at reception, personal trainers or class instructors. Across the health and fitness industry, the design and maintenance of such environments is central to membership sales and the cycle of member adherence and attrition (Grantham et al., 1998). Staff actively promote such body images so that, in the health and fitness club, consumers are ever conscious of the flaws of their embodied state: I mean I never actually say to them ‘you’re fat’ but I make sure they (customers) know they are. You can’t hide the folds. (Callum, personal trainer, interview, May 2000)

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They know they’re fat…they come here to change, that’s why they come. (Samantha, personal trainer, interview, April 2000) Listen, by the time I’m finished with them (at induction) they’re whimpering to join-up. You get them to focus on how they look and how long it took to get that way. Then you put it to them how they’ll look in six months if they don’t do something now. (Hazel, personal trainer, interview, March 2000)

Moreover, in a similar manner to flight attendants (Tyler and Abbott, 1998: 441), the embodied labour (Warhurst et al., 2000; Hancock and Tyler, 2000) of health and fitness club staff appears to be a key reference point for consumers. Staff were fully aware that their physical capital acted as an marketing mechanism as well as an aspirational text: I’ve had guys say, ‘I want that six pack. I want to look like you’. It happens all the time. (Nick, personal trainer, interview, May 2000) I know they (customers) look at me. They see the body and want it and so it should be. If you want to motivate them you’ve got to look the part. Let’s face it, it’s a selling point. (Hazel, personal trainer, interview, March 2000)

As these working bodies reflected forms of physical capital idealized in the classical aesthetic (Featherstone, 1991) they were deemed essential for motivating consumers. However, although such embodied states appear to carry a performative power (Lyotard, 1984; Bourdieu, 2000), altering the perceptions or behaviour of consumer groups, some of the empirical evidence accrued suggests that the physical capital of staff might, paradoxically, represent a barrier to consumers.

Aspiring to ‘be’ the personal trainer may merely emphasize the unrealizable expectations of individuals ensnared by the magnetism of consumer capitalism.

Rationalizing the physical capital of mediatized bodies The preceding results illustrate awareness amongst providers and users of the desirability of physical capital and its potential to provide distinction within a range of fields. They also illustrate how individuals become attuned to the value ascribed to particular bodily segments. In other words, individual body parts contain their own ‘capital’, which is valued symbolically in both the production (e.g. work) and consumption (e.g. nightlife) fields. This relates to the promotion of the ‘ideal’, classical body by media celebrities in television, music and lifestyle magazines. The symmetry and tone of what Featherstone (1991) calls the classical shape, was clearly an aspiration for health and fitness club members, evidenced by the following comments: The body must be in proportion otherwise it just doesn’t look right. (Claire, health and fitness club member, interview, May 2000) The proportionate body: the body has to fit together. (Susan, health and fitness club member, interview, April 2000) Flatter stomach and thinner all round. (Carol, health and fitness club member, focus group, April 2000) Get rid of my pot belly. (John, health and fitness club member, focus group, May 2000) Broader shoulders so clothes look better on me. (Mark, health and fitness club member, focus group, May 2000)

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The idea of the toned, taut and proportionate body, represented by the mesomorphic shape (Burke and Deakin, 1994), most closely reflects the idealized image, especially for men. In contrast, the endomorphic shape is deemed overweight, out of proportion and least desirable. This was emphasized within the consumer focus groups, where the body identikits chosen reflected the aspirational associations of the classical (mesomorphic) body. Conveyed in various mediatized texts, it was clear that health and fitness club consumers arrived with pre-defined notions of idealized body shapes (and proportions). This is best illustrated by the following comments from personal trainers and consumers alike: Everyone has the idea looking for the Madonna arms or Jennifer Lopez butt and thighs. (Nick, personal trainer, interview, May 2000) Images are everywhere… they have an influence. That’s what brings a lot of them (customers) here. (Gillian, personal trainer, interview, March 2000) I want to get rid of the belly and the love handles. The Brad Pitt abs that’s what I’m looking for and so do a lot of guys if they’re honest. (Ian, health and fitness club member, focus group, April 2000) Well you see the folk in the magazines and the telly (TV). It’s natural to wonder if you could look like that. (Jim, personal trainer, interview, March 2000) I’d go for the Jennifer Beals type of body. The legs and bum will do me. (Fiona, health and fitness club member, focus group, May 2000)

This suggests that it is not only the embodied physical capital of fellow users and staff that operate as ever-present peripatetic mirrors from which others reflect upon their bodies. The physical capital displayed in media representations also conveys idealized aesthetic attributes to the general population, often amplifying anxieties about body image in the process. The health and fitness club consumers at the centre of this study were clearly susceptible to celebrity imagery, albeit they were sometimes oblivious to fact that behind the superficiality and glamour associated with celebrity bodies lurks the necessary evil of carnal body work. The final section presents results that relate to why participants consistently seem to fail to appreciate the frequency and intensity of body work necessary to attain that physical capital which is the focus of their desires.

Dissatisfied desire: the non-capitalization of physical capital Elsewhere, it has been argued that the health and fitness industry constructs desire for a particular body aesthetic by titillating, moulding and shaping the desires of individual consumers (Frew and McGillivray, 2002). Following this logic, it was suggested that, more often than not, these desires are left unfulfilled and remain constantly in the future. Instead, health and fitness club consumers are caught in a continual dissatisfaction of desire, which precludes them from attaining the bodily dreams sold to them by a host of social and cultural intermediaries. Staff were particularly aware of the dissatisfaction of desire within health and fitness clubs: You see the guys with the pot bellies and they always tell you how much they want tight abs.

But they never get it. (Samantha, personal trainer, interview, April 2000) They just can’t commit. They want to look good but it’s too much time and effort. (Nick, personal trainer, interview, May 2000)

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With the continual pressure to retain consumers, health and fitness club staff were fully aware of the contradictions between expressed consumer desire for physical capital and their inability to attain it. For example, several personal trainers talked about their consumers’ failure to distinguish between the aesthetic dream and the realities of body work: Very few understand what’s involved. They’re not prepared to work at it. (Samantha, personal trainer, interview, April 2000) It hurts and they don’t like it. They are going to have to go through the pain bit if they want to get there. (Nick, personal trainer, interview, May 2000) I keep telling them it’s not pain they feel it’s only discomfort. But they don’t want to hear that.

They want the body but they just can’t handle what it takes to get it. (Hazel, personal trainer, interview, March 2000)

Although able to remedy this to an extent, personal trainers talked of their powerlessness against the inability of consumers to control their dietary and exercise regimes. Investments in physical capital through ‘strict training’, advocated within the internal environment of the health and fitness club, tended to be undone due to counterproductive behaviour in the external carnival sphere. The frustration over this process is reflected in the following comments: You need discipline to get in shape. It’s a life thing. Most people don’t have a clue. You could be in here for weeks before you actually see results. It’s a continuous thing, long term, but they (customers) want it there and then. (Nick, personal trainer, interview, May 2000) Going to the gym is feel-good factor. They are more interested in being seen to be going than actually doing anything. (Gillian, personal trainer, interview, March 2000) It’s all about ‘I’ve just been to the gym’. They’ve only worked out for 15 minutes yet they’ve been there an hour. (Callum, personal trainer, interview, May 2000) They spend more time in the restaurant than in the gym. (Hazel, personal trainer, interview, March 2000) I’ve seen them leave here after a hard session and go into the chip shop across the road. It’s daft but what can you do? (Samantha, personal trainer, interview, April 2000)

From these results it appears that the health and fitness club industry occupies a unique position within the leisure industries. In this industry the final product desired by the consumer (i.e. physical capital) is seldom achieved, yet consumers return again and again. The forthcoming discussion section explores why the battle for physical capital continues to attract hordes of willing foot soldiers.

Discussion The preceding presentation of results demonstrates that, for those in possession of the appropriate physical capital, the body acts as a consumption experience in its own right. It represents an ‘embodied billboard’, as every curve tells a story, tantalizing the desires of fellow health and fitness club consumers. The body, endowed with physical capital, becomes a living movie that conveys and plays on the hopes and dreams of many. Furthermore, this physical capital not only brings honour and distinction (Bourdieu, 1984), but is itself also an ideal product invigorating and reinforcing modern consumer culture (Lee, 1993; Webb, et al., 2002).

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However, the cycles of procedural objectification which take place within health and fitness clubs also establish a panopticon (Foucault, 1977) process, whereby individual fitness checks and performance programmes become confessional and self-regulating technologies of the self (Foucault, 1986). By subjecting themselves to the confessional objectification and priestly instruction of personal trainers, it appears that consumers have dedicated themselves to the ‘techniques of self mastery’ (Moss, 1998: 3) advocated in the plethora of health and fitness paraphernalia that abounds. So, although no doubt willingly entering the sub-cultural field (Bourdieu, 1985; 1993) of health and fitness to offer their bodies to the ocularcentric gaze, they do not display an unwavering commitment to the values and practices of the field (what Bourdieu terms illusio). Consumers may be attracted by the physical capital that the sub-cultural field of health and fitness offers but, betrayed by the indulgent lifestyles of their carnivalesque bodies, they have not yet fully internalized the rules of the game (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992). So, rather than embody the disciplined stoicism required to attain physical capital and the virtuous purity it conveys (Leichter, 1997), consumers are constantly and objectively reminded of the inappropriateness of their carnival bodies.

Moreover, as health and fitness club staff float past, consumers find themselves gazing at the much sought after prize of physical capital. In this sense, the embodied labour (Warhurst et al., 2000; Hancock and Tyler, 2000) of health and fitness clubs operates to accentuate consumer desire. Staff act as ‘a material expression’ or ‘medium through which the (health and fitness club) is itself personified’ (Tyler and Abbott, 1998: 441). Their bodies are referential texts or marketing mediums to be read by and influence consumers groups. They are the physical manifestations of the idealized classical body (Featherstone, 1991), being fat free, toned and in proportion, qualities synonymous with purity and success (Bordo, 1993; Shilling, 1993). Meantime, the fat and flaccid (carnival) body signifies weakness and lack of moral virtue, emphasizing the visible and literal ‘sins of the flesh’, which must be eliminated.

From the empirical enquiries conducted, it was evident that the classical body and the capital that it evokes was often an abstract hope, as opposed to an attainable reality for many health and fitness club consumers. This paradoxical situation is further problematized as other discourses extend into the sub-cultural field of health and fitness. Just as the internal health and fitness environment legitimates procedural objectification under the guise of medicalization processes, so an expansionist global media has re-animated the quest for physical capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1993).

In these circumstances, desire for the classical form of physical capital becomes, crucially, a mediatized phenomenon, fuelled with associations of personal success and sexual prowess. ‘Celebrity bodies’ provide dreamworld associations (Rojek, 1995), offering individuals levels of acceptance and recognition comparable with their mythical heroes. Television and cinema screens overflow with these fantasy bodies, perfectly maintained whilst (apparently) enjoying the consumptive excesses of celebrity lifestyles. They give the impression that physiological truths can be reversed and the mandate for discipline can be rejected in favour of the mandate for pleasure (Williams and Bendelow, 1998). In so doing, they earn (or rather acquire) admiration for their beauty and success, cashing in their (often sculpted) physical capital chips for lucrative record deals, screen roles and endorsements.

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Often, this media-generated imagery (e.g. Lara Croft) eliminates imperfection, brushing out unwanted flaccidity in favour of valuable firmness and tone. Moreover, the demand for this idealized body has produced not just the body-double but also the body-part double (e.g. Brad Pitt’s leg double for the movie Troy). As the results of this study illustrate, in this rationalized process, individual body parts carry their own capital, as the body must be in proportion and befitting participants’ celebrity idols. Both producers and consumers of the health and fitness club experience acknowledged the pervasive effect of celebrity bodies upon their practices. For producers, this was apparent in their approach to membership marketing, class promotions and visual fixtures and fittings, such as Cardio-Theatres and ‘plumbed in’ MTV. However, consumers were also more than willing to construct physical capital in ‘Frankenstein’ fashion with aspirational body parts cut from the carcasses of celebrity icons. With the saturation of mediatized celebrities the idealized body of consumers becomes an abstract and rationalized collage that appears to increasingly ‘buy into’ and accentuate the dreamworld associations of celebrity bodies. More importantly, this pick-n-mix approach reveals a misunderstanding among many consumers, namely, that physical capital is accruable without the need for disciplined stoicism, sacrifice or denial. As discussed elsewhere (Frew and McGillivray, 2002), such a ‘knowledge gap’ between expectation and reality creates a continuous cycle of dissatisfaction of desire for those seeking to attain their idealized body.

In the sub-cultural field of health and fitness, the quest for physical capital only provides distinction for the few, whilst also serving as a perpetual reminder of aesthetic frustration and the dissatisfaction of desire for the many. Rather than providing satisfaction for the aesthetic desires of consumers, many health and fitness clubs simply act to create and reinforce discontent. Formal processes of objectification and mediatized imagery, as well as the embodied labour of staff, often work to frustrate rather than enable the attainment of physical capital.

Ironically, there is a contradiction between the social status acquired by many health and fitness club consumers and the achievement of their ‘dreams’ in aesthetic terms. Ultimately, the excesses enjoyed in carnivalesque spheres are not conducive to achieving the aesthetic perfection revered as a means to create distinction. Given the cutting comments of many of the personal trainers interviewed, it is clear that dissatisfaction in the attainment of physical capital is bound to lifestyles lived in a carnivalesque culture of techno-dependency. This is all the more bizarre as consumers freely assert to a self-imposed embodied assault on their fat and flaccid state.

They enter the health and fitness club conscious of (even as a sign of) their indulgent failure, yet still clinging to the hope of attaining physical capital, its symbolic derivative and the dreamscape distinction they believe it will bring.

These contradictions reflect the irrational outcomes of an obdurate belief in modernist progress and emancipatory politics (Bauman, 1992). Modernist technological ‘advances’ have generated a world of ease in which convenience is valued over physicality and instantaneity replaces deferral (Virilio, 2002). This has left the atomized self unable to countenance denial, sacrifice, forfeit or discipline.

The gloss and glamour of health and fitness clubs, fitted out (at great expense) with TV monitors, shiny resistance and cardio equipment, does not detract from the physiological reality that carnal body work is a necessary evil in the attain-

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ment of the body beautiful. In order to achieve the classical body, a knowledgeable and consistent application is required; one that resists the temptations so readily encountered in the world of the carnivalesque. In a Bourdieusian sense, the desire for physical capital demands an adjacent institutional capital (Bourdieu, 1980; Jenkins, 2002); an embodied state lived both within the internal health and fitness club environment and the external social world. Surface appreciation of physical capital and its symbolic worship demands a substantive appreciation of the knowledge, level of effort and regime of discipline necessary if physical capital is ever to be attained and, more importantly, maintained.

Conclusion In this paper it has been argued that the health and fitness club represents a political space, or sub-cultural field, within which a desired state of physical capital and its symbolic derivative is sought. However, it was also suggested that, although this capital functions to provide its owner with distinction (Wacquant, 1995, 1998) it also perpetuates a continuous cycle of dissatisfaction.

Throughout the paper, health and fitness club consumers have been seen to be in pursuit of forms of physical capital that are increasingly mediated through iconic celebrity bodies and the efforts of the health and fitness industry itself, each of which helped form a legitimating network of objectification. These influences permeate and resonate within the internal social space of health and fitness clubs.

Consumers actively chose to place themselves in these spaces of aesthetic and ethical-political regulation, spaces where the critical gaze was ever present and selfimage under constant scrutiny. Like temples, the consumers in this study willingly entered these health and fitness clubs keen to worship an aesthetic purity hoping to attain the robes of physical capital and its salvationary symbolism. However, with the priestly pronouncements of personal trainers, objective attendance, testing, and programmes, they essentially subjected themselves to an endless embodied penance where every sin was laid bare.

In some respects the health and fitness club becomes a site of aesthetic masochism as the experiences therein appear, ironically, anything but ‘healthy’. This provides a challenge to the status of the health and fitness club as a neutral social space where (re)creative experiences are consumed openly and freely. Instead, it has been argued that these spaces resemble factories of fear, where endomorphic fatness and flaccidity (celebrated in the carnivalesque sphere) are controlled and contained in the quest for the more mesomorphic symmetrical and sculpted physical capital of Michelangelo’s classical body. Moreover, as bodily dissatisfaction and its reciprocal cure are increasingly rationalized and segmented into specific body parts that convey symbolic associations, embodied states spiral into infinite subjective projects.

At the macro-level, it was argued that the physical capital sought in the health and fitness club typifies the market cycles of modern consumerism. As consumers pursue physical capital they occupy the consumer role of pseudo-sovereignty, believing in the subjective attainment of capital, yet, naïve or ambivalent towards the mechanisms that drive and promote its consumption. The body beautiful becomes a rationalized and idealized image that is constantly displayed but, even

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for the few who attain it, an embodied state that is enjoyed ephemerally. Tantalized by, and desiring physical capital and its dreamscape symbolism, consumers find themselves caught in an aporia of capital. They become the modern day Sisyphus, where any physical peak and symbolic honour is quickly met with a return to dissatisfying desire.

More importantly, the quest for such physical capital, paradoxically, demands the embodied bodily difference of fat and flaccidity. Consumers displaying a lack of physical capital, who willingly locate themselves within the health and fitness club, in repentant acknowledgement of their sins and dreaming of physical transformation, provide the essential substance of physical capital. Through their quest, physical capital and its symbolic derivative becomes, not only desirable, but also perpetuates a process of domination that is, essentially, self-imposed. It is this political play of embodied difference that perpetuates the apparently universalizing dream of physical capital and, thus, keeps the treadmills literally and economically turning.

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