A captivating blend of reportage and personal narrative that explores the untold history of women’s exercise culture — from jogging and Jazzercise to Jane Fonda— and how women have parlayed physical strength into other forms of power.
For American women today, working out is as accepted as it is expected, fueling a multibillion-dollar fitness industrial complex. But it wasn’t always this way. Seven decades ago, sweating was “unladylike” and girls grew up believing that physical exertion would cause their uterus to “fall out.” Most hid their muscle under sleeves and skirts. It was only in the Sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse. When they did, journalist Danielle Friedman argues, they were participating in something subversive: The pursuit of physical strength and personal autonomy.
In Let’s Get Physical, Friedman reveals the fascinating hidden history of contemporary fitness culture, chronicling in vivid, cinematic prose how exercise evolved from a beauty tool sold almost exclusively as a way to “reduce” to millions who have harnessed as a path to mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
