  | ||
|
|
The Seventies in America Fitness Movement Definition: The growing awareness and practice of exercise and healthy diets Jogging and other forms of exercise became popular on a mass scale during the decade. New research in exercise physiology and preventive health helped to convince Americans of the need for daily maintenance of their bodies. Americans learned that daily exercise was a major component of health during the 1970's, but as awareness of fitness grew, the role of exercise in American lives expanded beyond health concerns and encompassed recreational pastimes. As new forms of exercise were created, fitness became a full-fledged lifestyle as Americans gave new meaning to "working out." While some saw it as a test of self-determination, others perceived exercise as an act of environmental symbiosis, political protest, or a cure for stress or other mental health issues. With new forms of exercise available, the physical appearance of one's body became more important: Visible musculature and thinness combined to create a new "fit" aesthetic. Jogging Jogging was arguably the most prominent fitness trend of the 1970's. Americans, inspired by exercise manuals published in the final two years of the 1960's, appeared on high school tracks and city sidewalks en masse during the decade. Most of those initially attracted to jogging in the first half of the decade took it up for reasons of health. Research by exercise physiologists and physicians, most notably Kenneth Cooper, had begun to point to the importance of cardiovascular training for disease prevention and weight maintenance. Jogging manuals also recognized that most Americans had little opportunity to engage in physical exercise in their adult years. Touted as a natural, inexpensive, go-anywhere form of exercise, jogging was popular almost instantly. By 1971, Cooper's Aerobics (1968), which outlined a basic jogging plan, had sold two million copies. Before research on the importance of cardiovascular training, most Americans had considered isometrics, calisthenics, tennis, golf, or team sports as appropriate forms of exercise. A number of factors differentiated jogging from other kinds of exercise that Americans had practiced prior to the 1970's. Taking up jogging did not mean simply beginning a new sport; because of its frequency (three times a week on average), starting a jogging program meant making a lifestyle change. Jogging was radically different from most sports because success was not defined in terms of wins and losses. Successful joggers were those who maintained a consistent routine, managing on a near-daily basis to choose movement over inertia. Length of time was the principal unit of measurement in jogging, with optimal health the ultimate goal; neither speed nor mileage were important in the pastime's infancy. By mid-decade, jogging--increasingly referred to as "running"--was part of the U.S. fitness landscape. Road races, especially marathons, had increased in number of events and participants. The New York Marathon, for example, expanded from almost three hundred participants in 1972 to more than eleven thousand competitors in 1979. Though the emphasis on racing would seem to belie the individual focus of running, most competitors took part to challenge themselves, rather than to be one of the top-ten competitors out of a field of thousands. Included in these growing statistics were a large number of women, many of whom took up sports for the first time. The women's movement coupled with Title IX--part of an act that focused on gender equality in sports opportunities within educational institutions--and jogging's emphasis on health helped to change opinions that women were too modest to sweat. Popular beliefs that women's bodies were not able to withstand long-distance running or that running was harmful for women's anatomy were made obsolete as women ran in increasing numbers. Americans found several reasons for running beyond the improvement of their health. While physical fitness was still part of the quest, many Americans engaged in running in the last half of the decade because they imbued it with political significance or spiritual healing or they made it a part of a project of self-improvement. In the midst of the gas crises and the environmental movement, some runners imagined their exercise as a way to get in touch with nature and prepare for a time when fossil fuels were depleted completely. Amid difficult economic times, running functioned as a way to exert some small measure of authority in one of the few areas where individuals still maintained a sense of control--their own bodies. Some mental health professionals even advocated running as a treatment for depression, alcoholism, or schizophrenia. Most runners, however, imagined running as a tool of self-improvement that allowed them to find small victories in mileage or speed increases. Aerobic Dance At the same time that the jogging movement was expanding, a number of individuals were working to combine principles of cardiovascular training with dance routines to create "aerobics." Aerobic instructors, usually former dance teachers and women, choreographed to music dance routines designed to raise the heart rate significantly for an extended period of time. Because most instructors were working independently, usually renting space in community rooms, school gymnasiums, or on military bases, little has been written on the early history of aerobics. The most well known of this group of aerobics pioneers includes Judi Sheppard Missett, founder of Jazzercise, and Jacki Sorensen, founder of Aerobic Dancing and one of the first fitness instructors to publish a book of aerobics routines. Their work, and that of other early practitioners over the course of the 1970's, created a new form of exercise, increased awareness of physical fitness, and paved the way for aerobics to become one of the primary fitness activities of the following decade. Bodybuilding and Workplace Fitness Programs Pumping Iron, a 1974 book and 1977 film documentary about a group of bodybuilders preparing for the Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe competitions, brought attention to the sport of bodybuilding and weightlifting in gyms in general. Featuring a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film made it clear that bodies were malleable entities to be sculpted at will. The film created awareness of what had previously been a little-known subculture and made visible musculature a desired goal of many men, and later, women. Over the course of the 1970's growing awareness about weightlifting--a sport in which athletes compete to lift the most weight--and bodybuilding--a sport in which athletes' developed bodies compete for best-developed and symmetrical musculature--helped to increase the popularity of gyms for average Americans. Fitness programs in the workplace also came into existence in the 1970's. Originally targeted at male executives who were considered at risk for heart attacks, the programs were started after companies began to assess the financial costs of decreased productivity because of employee illness or death. Corporations such as Xerox and Pepsi installed workout and locker room facilities for employees, and more ambitious companies hired staff to teach nutrition and exercise and sponsored exercise incentive programs. Business publications such as Forbes and Business Week began to run articles on the fitness programs of top executives and politicians. These kinds of articles reinforced the perceived link between productivity and physical fitness. By the end of the decade, the media was reporting on overweight individuals who had difficulty finding employment because prospective employers imagined them to be lazy and not properly representative of the company's image. Diets Concerns about diet and obesity had mounted throughout the previous decade. Though a slender body had long been established as ideal for women, the 1970's saw the appearance of men's bodies become equally important in their quest to find mates. The lean, lithe bodies created by physical regimens became the new ideal, as did the newly muscular bodies of gym aficionados. "Love handles," "thunder thighs," and paunches, once considered the natural result of a lifestyle of abundance, were now viewed as a mark of moral lassitude. Diets, particularly those created by physicians, were popular. The controversial low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, developed by Dr. Robert Atkins, was launched in 1972. Touted as an antidote to heart disease, the Pritikin program, which advocated whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and low fats, was launched in 1977 when it was featured on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network's 60 Minutes. The Scarsdale diet, another popular low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet, was introduced in 1978. Impact Part of the reason Americans paid so much attention to fitness in the 1970's was because they began hearing from medical professionals that their health was their own responsibility. Preventive medicine became important as studies increasingly revealed that obesity, high cholesterol, and stress were risk factors for many diseases. In addition, Americans were aware of changes in the medical profession and had come to doubt that doctors were the best caretakers of their health. Over the course of the decade, physician prestige fell as Americans began to sense that medicine was a business rather than a healing art. As a result, interest in alternative medicine, such as chiropody and acupuncture, rose dramatically. Exercise, perceived as a kind of self-care, was part of this shift. Moreover, the federal government promoted the self-care message. With the nation's economy in a tailspin and the health care system particularly in turmoil, preventive health programs, which included exercise, appeared to federal lawmakers to promise an easy solution to reduce costs. In 1976, Congress enacted the National Consumer Health Information and Health Promotion Act which, among other things, allowed for funds to create an office within the Department of Health, Education, and Health Promotion to implement health maintenance programs. The surgeon general's 1979 report, Healthy People, which encouraged Americans to exercise as a way to cut federal health expenditures, was the culmination of a decade of exercise promotion that placed the burden of good health on the individual. Further Reading Cooper, Kenneth. Aerobics. New York: M. Evans, 1968. Cooper is credited with beginning the fitness movement. Updated versions of the title continued to appear throughout the 1970's, including The New Aerobics and Aerobics for Women. Combined sales for the Aerobics series total more than ten million copies. Eisenman, Patricia A., and C. Robert Barnett. "Physical Fitness in the 1950's and the 1970's: Why Did One Fail and the Other Boom?" Quest 31, no. 1 (1979): 114-122. Argues that interest in physical fitness during the 1970's proved more enduring than in previous decades because of its personalized and voluntary nature. Engs, Ruth Clifford. "The Third Clean Living Movement, 1970-2005." In Cycles of Health Reform. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. Argues that health reform movements in American history occur in a cyclical pattern, usually in the wake of renewed interest in religion. Fixx, James F. The Complete Book of Running. New York: Random House, 1977. The work most often associated with the fitness movement. Primarily a training manual, it offers insight into the motivation of exercisers in the 1970's. Gillick, Muriel. "Health Promotion, Jogging, and Pursuit of a Moral Life." Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 9, no. 3 (1984): 369-387. Argues that the jogging movement, with its focus on the individual, functioned as a restorative force for the social upheaval created by the turbulent 1960's. Goldstein, Michael S. "No Pain, No Gain: Exercise and the Health Movement." In The Health Movement: Promoting Fitness in America. New York: Twayne, 1992. Contextualizes the contemporary fitness movement with a historical overview of exercise trends in America. Luciano, Lynne. "A Culture of Narcissism." In Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001. Provides an overview of running during the decade and describes the growing importance of being attractive and looking fit. Rader, Benjamin G. "The Quest for Self-Sufficiency and the New Strenuosity: Reflections on the Strenuous Life of the 1970's and the 1980's." Journal of Sport History 18, no. 2 (Summer, 1991): 255-266. Views interest in exercise as part of a middle-class quest for success and improved appearance. Seid, Roberta Pollack. "The Health/Exercise Ethic Emerges." In Never Too Thin: Why Women Are at War with Their Bodies. New York: Prentice Hall, 1989. Details diet and weight-loss trends during the 1970's. Explains how body shape ideals that had prized thinness were reoriented to fitness. Shelly McKenzie See AlsoFads; Food trends; Health care; Human potential movement; "Me Decade"; Medicine; Our Bodies, Ourselves; Self-help books. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If you need help with products and ordering, setting up a new account or working with this website, please give us a call or email:
I Love Lucy, 3-D, Flying Saucers,
 |
SALEM PRESS, INC. · 131 North El Molino Avenue · Pasadena · CA 91101 © Salem Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |