The obsession with the muscular body has become a quasi-social project. Loic Artiaga, a historian and professor of cultural history at the University of Limoges, is the author. Rocky’s revenge of the white man’s dream. He sheds light on this phenomenon, which is more relevant than ever after the epidemic.
We communicate
Contextual Mismatch While gyms were closed during Covid, women, men, parents, teenagers found themselves playing sports in their living rooms, on networks, live. As a result, after being in detention, the gym became a place for the whole family to go out. For around twenty euros a month, people go there every day, before work or at cocktail hour.
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Even before the development of sports activities such as football and boxing, there were already sports halls in the 19th century.e century. However, society at that time was predominantly male and bourgeois. The muscular body is an envelope of social dominance that must be read even in outline. Gradually, states recover the political instrument of sports activities, extending it to the wider society, which begins to engage in sports as a discipline. This is how school sports were born, the forefather of physical education with physical education, team sports such as volleyball and handball.
We are pushing our limits
Ladies, it wasn’t until the birth of bodybuilding and aerobics on the American West Coast that muscle was considered a measure of beauty, including among women. The practice is personalized and feminine, and now it is associated with well-being. The gym is also a symbol of this personalization of practice. There we sweat alone, we work different parts of the body one after the other. We explore the limits of our own bodies. After rigid bodies like Stallone and Schwarzenegger marked the late 1990s and early 2000s, in-house practice is no longer a male prerogative. The rooms offer fitness classes, a modern version of what aerobics was in the XXe century. Democratizing the rooms extends the practice to everyone. In addition, social networks are developing and along with them, the political power of empowerment. While Kate Moss’ thinness was a sign of an advertising image in the 2000s, twenty years later, she is no longer successful. There are countless accounts of muscle influencers on TikTok who share nutrition tips and exercises, followed by guys and girls.
We remove stress
From fed primary school to campaigns on the need to eat well and move, young people have digested the message. They become the best apostles of the saying “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. Relax? It is incredible. In their ministerial schedule, the “room” box appears in yellow Stabilo.
In a notoriously rigid society, bodies are put to the test even more. The room is therefore also the place where one comes to unload the accumulated stress. If the game side is less visible than in team sports, the therapeutic, outgoing side is more. “Working on the body, concludes Loic Artiaga, we test this fine line between body and exterior.”
Rocky’s revenge of the white man’s dreamby Loïc Artiaga, Editions Amsterdam, 260 p., €18.
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Source: Le Figaro
