Fitness culture, working out, even as the United States is not. Particularly fit nation and if anything in the past 75 to 100 years we look at in this course, americans have become more and more obsessed with the idea of working out as a symbol or signal of individual virtue and morality even as the ability to do so and having a fit body has become another symbol of inequality in this country. That is the overarching arc of the class. Today we turn to the 1980s. The name of the lecture is a quote from one of the oral histories i have done for the Book Research im doing, on which this course is based. It is i would have been a pe teacher. I will to you who said it tell you who said it. In another historical moment, the people who became architects of the Fitness Industry would have been physical education teachers is an important idea as we talk about the 1980s. I would have been a pe teacher, 1980s fitness culture in the United States. I want to talk about the united broad in the 1980s, strokes historical context. A lot of students, those of you watching on cspan, everybody has Different Levels of preparation and familiarity with u. S. History. I say american because even though i am a u. S. Historian, you all read jenny ellisons article about fat aerobics in canada. I am careful to bound my expertise in the United States, it is important throughout this class as we have been all semester to see which of these phenomena have become transnational. We will start with top level context for america in the 1980s. Then we go to talk about the making of an industry. This drawing on the article you read by mark stern about the rise of the Fitness Industry 1980, talking in detail of what that industry looked like and the way they shaped a workout culture. Then we will get to the quote which frames our talk today. We will talk about a path not taken, the physical education track and why a lot of these folks became important in the Fitness Industry of the 1980s, why didnt they become pe teachers . It is not nearly a result of individual decisions, but there are structural factors at work. I am ready to get into that intersection because it is one of those cases, i did not anticipate that aspect of the story coming up in my research, but it started bubbling up from oral histories and archival work. At the end we always conclude, so what, why do we care . Why is this more than just a foray into curiosity . It is about more than that. Lets get started. Lets recap what we talked about last week. There is a lot going on in the world. We talked about the 1960s and 1970s, an alternative perspective on what u. S. Historians refer to as Movement Culture, which is used to refer activism inlitical feminism, gayom liberation, against the vietnam war, progressive political. What we did in that same period was to look at the way that is conventionally understood, shaped unders shaped exercise and also expanded the definition of Movement Culture in the 1960s and 1970s to say lets talk about actual Movement Culture. What forms of exercise were taking hold in this time, and how were they shaped by that moment . One of the big things that transformed exercise in that era which will come up a lot is the introduction of what we know as cardio. Kenneth cooper published his book aerobics in 1968, he expanded the definition of exercise to be beyond weightlifting and callista next which is how it was calisthenics which is how it was defined before. That revolutionized the definition of what exercise was and who could anticipate in it. Also the bodies it would create. We talked a little bit, dove into a case study why the talking phenomenon and the idea of the open road, jogging as a quintessential form of cardio, seen as sort of objectively celebratory and helpful for the increasingly sedentary populace. We talked about the counterculture around that, jogging enthusiasts had about one person, one man and the open road, back to nature perspective, about a rejection of technology. This can be embodied by running. In a moment when exploration through mind altering substances was common, this idea of the runners high and the endorphins you could get naturally became part of jogging so to speak in that time. And then we talked about the simultaneous rise of studio fitness. Women forromoted by women, although that has changed now. In that same time of the late 1960s, 1970s, you see the flourishing of studio based fitness workouts. Things that we will talk about in detail today, jazzercise founded in 1969 although it takes hold in the 1980s. Workouts. Based the idea especially for women askance,ooked at alone in the streets, exercising, the studio exercises created some safer spaces for women to exercise in a moment when exercise for women was becoming more widely accepted. There are a lot of contradictions which i will not rehash, but which i think will come up a little bit. Going ahead. This was the last one last week. This connection of jogging in the open road to gentrification, this arc from something seen as countercultural and materialistic to become something that might be part of the materialistic form of culture it was trying to critique. If you remember from last week, this is an article from 1980 the los angeles times. The croissant culture swallowing up the ghettos. Guestt associate today croissants with exercise culture, at the time it was a way of saying the affluent upwardly mobile professionals were gentrifying africanamerican neighborhoods and bringing with them all of their cultural tastes, one of them being croissants and jogging. Anding is solitary, breakfast places and cappuccino cafes, allow us to be around people without talking to them. Fast forward they talk about the other consumer items associated with people who once considered themselves countercultural sought out these what is perceived to be rougher neighborhoods as a part of that countercultural politics. Now jogging and the rest of these things, whole roasted coffee beans, fresh flower, the clothing closing line is prescient urban neighborhoods are on the way to becoming homogenous with the suburbs we sweat. That is important. ,he way that privatization capitalism, a corporate ties ation corporatizt of these movements ends up destroying them, but they are still vibrant but which you cant deny are overwhelmingly privatized, available to private, those who can afford them, even if they will often introduce radical incident they were introduced with radical ideas in mind. Is realael top level top level. Understanding the United States in the 1980s. That is a picture from the 1990 movie a bonfire in the vanities, the famous book about new york city in the 1980s. If you dont know that book, the green novel, now is a good time to read it. Featuresgonist himself a master of the universe. He is married to a thin, white woman. He gets into a car accident ench and meshes which meshes him in an africanamerican neighborhood which points out hypocrisy and social inequalities that exist in new york city and other cities in the u. S. At that time. Unsatisfying description of the movie. But the key things that come out in that book, important to think about this era is the 1980s is a movement of backlash. It is a pendulum swing against the collective radical progressive politics which divine that era. Also when you both have on the level of government a kind of whereas atolicies, the same time a kind of widespread dont want to say acceptance, acceleration of individuals who can afford it. This was pointing out the hypocrisy. Some of you might know the movie wall street, the phrase greed is fat cars, cocaine, lifestyles of the rich and famous, i would show you all these video clips, thats a liberation of extreme wealth while at the same time social programs are being cut, that is very much part of the ethos as historians understand it. A lot of economics, social and racial inequality. Gender out on purpose because i want to talk about the way this time through fitness was a time when gender inequality continue to be challenged but also reinscribed by the fitness fascinations of the 1980s. Morning in america is ronald 1984 president ial campaign slogan. I put a question mark there because for a lot of people it was not morning in america. The ascendant political and cultural conservatism particularly in the hivaids, which Ronald Reagan was late to acknowledge at all, all of that was not count part of it was one of the darkest times in the United States. It is important when we see images like this one i have put up here to realize all of that glitz and glamour which today is very much sort of like being reinvigorated in a retro celebration of the 80s, all of that was part of an era in which a lot of people suffered because of these policies. The last thing on there, after we had that croissant culture headline last week, it came to my attention some of you dont know what yuppies are. It came in use in the 1980s to refer to young urban professionals and all the things they liked to do like croissants and jogging. I was reading another thing like triathlons became big. A little bit of a play on hippies. It is often, it was used mockingly. These are people who are individualistic, to climb the ladder on their own. They are not that into collective progressive politics but personal advancement through priming climbing the ranks. I am leaving a lot out. We did not even talk about the cold war. These are the cultural themes which frame our discussion of fitness in the 1980s United States. So we have talked a significant amount about president ial fitness in this class and what was considered kind of appropriate for a public figure to participate in in terms of fitness. This is from the 1980s magazine spread, turning Ronald Reagans first term. That is president Ronald Reagan working out on a novelist machine. Tilist machine. You can see his personal exercise program. We will not do a analysis of this, but you are welcome to zoom in at home. Right of reagan chopping wood, that is totally of a piece with what we talked about earlier in the 20th century with teddy roosevelt, getting out in the great outdoors, celebrating the strenuous life of manly sport like chopping wood and horseback riding. There is continuity. I could two things really highlight, this is a different era. There is a joke in the caption where reagan says pumping firewood is what the president calls the activity of him splitting logs. That is a joke about pumping iron. Bodybuildingg starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, we talked about from the first day of class, brought this weird subculture of muscle head bodybuilders to the center of american popular culture, such that even the socially conservative president is making jokes about it. Was shut down for morals charges in the 1950s. That is the world Ronald Reagan came from. He was around in california in those days. I should say he was a democrat back then. For another day. The main photo for the piece, reagan on an exercise machine in the gym. That is not traditionally masculine Theodore Roosevelt kind of imagery. 1983, working out in a commercial gym, a straight man, a leader working on his body in this particular way is considered not at all to question his masculinity but rather to uphold it. This is a piece that came out in a moment where it is very clear that to be someone who goes to the gym is a positive. This is supposed to reflect positively on the president , and it did. By 1983 fitness in general is becoming not controversial and a celebrated virtue of such that someone like Ronald Reagan can do it and the more cultural bodybuilding figures who were considered to be rather suspicious. Lets keep going. I could spend a whole lecture talking about the founder of nonlist. He is you have a lot of about the founding of it in your reading by jonathan black. One of the things i think is important in looking at this moment and at this figure is the machines shaped in this and the proliferation of exercise in the United States. When he went to i have a small issue right here. Sorry about that. When arthur joan, the father of nautilus, started lifting weights, he was horrified by the lack of efficiency in lifting traditional barbells. He set to work. He did not have much money back then. He set to work devising what he thought was a more efficient way all health and fitness. What came out of that, a guy who was deeply skeptical, only had a ninth grade education himself, phds was as good as two today, he built the machines and engines, which are those machines, in order to increase weights, you would take out a little pin, put them in and raise the weight by putting the pin in different places. As you read in your text by jonathan black, he peddled this around at different tradeshows and it became the standard in gyms. That is important, making them the places where more people would exercise than hardcore bodybuilders. So this was a blessing to people because you did not have to heave around all of these plates. It revolutionized exercise. We have got to give him that. At the same time as you gathered from your reading as well, this is the part of his life i could spend so much time on, i did not whento assign this reading we were in the height of tiger king, but he was a very joe exotic kind of figure. He was in to collecting big game. He had hundreds of elephants, reptiles, i believe he had bears. He was not a big cat guy, but he had hundreds of wild animals on his property in ocala, florida. He was a guy with contrarian ideas and was not afraid to share them. I will send around the link, but it is objectionable language. He had six wives until the end of his life. He continued to get married and get divorced. Married all of these women he called his fourth wife an old bag when she was 24. One interview, someone asked about he said i think they are great, everyone should own several of them. He had several really offensive ideas. Unfortunatelyhim today a bit of a folk hero among some hardcore mens Rights Groups who see him as a guy speaking truth to power early and refused to bow to emerging ideas of what was not yet called Political Correctness but which came to be so. I could go on with lots of examples. For the mens rights, people celebrate him for those ideas. In fitness circles, in spite of spite of those ideas, he is still celebrated as well. Some people will have the t. ,nder of h. I. Highintensity interval training. Heroee the focus on this in the Fitness Industry, without focusing on the objectionable things he said and did. Common in writing the history of any kind of period to focus only on the famous people. People call it a great man history. The focus on jones and his nautilus machines can err in that direction. One of the things i have been doing is asking people, how did not list change your life nautilus change your life . To, asked i talked not to be included, but she became very famous in the fitness space and she started off selling machines for him because they are the best in the market. But actually when she went to visit him at his ranch in byrida, she was so horrified his racism and language that she actually left as a Sales Representative and left a lot of money on the table. Out on theu work machines with the pins, it has this history you dont know. His son went on to develop hammer strand which is even more widespread brand you will see around. I dont believe his son shared those ideas. I will only attribute them to senior. Nautilus. Nted he comes from this macho background which is funny. He got in a lot of conflict with the traditional bodybuilders who saw this fancy new hightech machine as getting in the way of barbell heavy lifting jims. He had gyms. He was somebody who did not have any kind of progressive positive ideas as part of his mission at all. At the same time, the Fitness Industry is expanding in a different way. We talked about the founding of jazzercise and how this dancer went to a ymca to get her fitness level tested. The witness they were shocked that just a dancer could be such a powerful so strong. She goes on to create jazzercise, dance cardio format, which has an interesting business story which is not told. Jazzercise, dance cardio, it is mostly women, it is meant to enable women who might be self conscience selfconscious about taking time for themselves to exercise, to free them from all that and move together for health and fitness. Business side is interesting. I will have to go back to that one. Jazzercise becomes a franchise. It means individual people rather than working for shepardse, inc. Or judy , would go and pay a fee to start their own jazzercise businesses. By 1984, you can see by this clip, jazzercise is the second fastest franchise after dominos pizza. They might go handinhand. Quite a few fast food things are on there as well. One of the reasons this is important, the franchise model continues to be an important form of growth for the Fitness Industry and has been for a long time. But jazzercise franchisees are almost 100 women. So are the participants. It becomes part of this growing Fitness Industry where women are some of the prime movers here. I have interviewed people in and around the jazzercise world. These people say they were women who were staying at home with their kids, or women between jobs because their husbands work or other family commitments. This allowed them to have economic selfdetermination and community sense of while they attended to these other commitments. That falls out of the picture when we just think about leotards, legwarmers and the acidic of that period which was cool. Static jones not the only guy who made exercise equipment but judy shepard was not the only one doing dance cardio exercise. Jackie sorenson, the same year, creates something similar called aerobic dancing and becomes popular on the east coast and and allses at ymcas over the place. One of the things that is interesting about how these businesses came about some of they were living adjacent to military bases. Judy shepard relocated to San Diego County near the military base there. A lot of her students were military wives. Their husbands