Men enjoyed a lifetime of practicing how to use and trust their bodies - from childhood sports to military service to physically demanding careers and heavy lifting at home. Patriarchal myths like these reinforced the idea that women were the weaker sex. Doctors cautioned that exercise might even make their uterus “fall out,” as women recalled being told in interviews for my forthcoming book, “ Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World.” Growing up in the post-World War II era of rigid gender roles, many of these women had internalized the widespread beliefs that vigorous exercise would, as the running pioneer Kathrine Switzer recalled being told, turn them into a man - that is, they would grow hair in unwanted places or develop bulky muscles (God forbid). When aerobic dancing took off in the 1970s, it marked the first time many women had really moved in their adult lives. By assessing the movement not as a punchline but as a critical turning point, we can better understand how American fitness turned its back on this promise of empowerment and community and instead became a sprawling machine that capitalized on women’s insecurities and popularized the pernicious belief fueling the “wellness” industry today: A woman’s work on her body is never done. (Indeed, aerobics, like the rest of the exploding fitness industry, was overwhelmingly white - although several notable Black pioneers strove to change this.)Ī re-examination of aerobics also offers insight into our present. In addition to its evocative production design and Lycra-forward costuming, “Physical” is noteworthy for its unvarnished look at why middle-class white women in the early ’80s felt so desperate for the fitness movement’s refuge. The dark dramedy that premiered Friday on Apple TV+ stars Rose Byrne as Sheila Rubin, a self-loathing San Diego housewife who is wracked by bulimia and finds self-worth through aerobics.
#Aerobic dance video 1980 series
The new TV series “Physical” captures the early promise of aerobics with rare seriousness. But aerobics meant something monumental to my mom and many other women: It meant self-determination. Our culture has a depressingly consistent track record of dismissing the things women love as trivial.
In culture and the popular imagination, the 1980s aerobics boom is typically treated as little more than a neon-hued fad that was more about teased hair and leg warmers than it was about women’s empowerment. Aerobics, she realized, had become integral to her identity as a woman, independent from her roles as wife and mother. Taking in the ridiculous combination of her Lycra and tears only made her cry harder. She sat down at the kitchen table and wept. She was already in her leotard, tights, and sweatband when he called to remind her he had to stay for a meeting that night - she’d have to miss her class. One particularly challenging day at home caring for my older sister and me, she told me later, she was counting down the hours until my dad’s return from work, when she could leave for aerobics. She was intrigued at first by aerobics’ promise to help her lose the weight she had gained during her pregnancy with me, and then she found that she loved the music, the energy, the adult camaraderie. It offered a way for millions of women to feel proud of what their bodies could do, not just how they looked. Pulsing to the beat of Donna Summer and glistening with spandex, these fluorescent-lit rooms vibrated with the energy of career women and housewives bouncing in unison.Īerobics was liberation.
In the early 1980s, a seismic shift took place in strip-mall storefronts that smelled of sweat and Enjoli. With the release of Just Dance Now for cell phones, it joins the ranks of mobile exercise games and is more accessible than ever. Just Dance Unlimited offers a staggering amount of song options - over 500 - that can be a little overwhelming to sort through. If you're just starting out, and are using the game to get in a little home workout, here are ten great tunes that will get you moving in a hurry.Revolutions don’t always happen in the streets. The Just Dance series is the spiritual successor to the classic arcade game Dance Dance Revolution, and it has been around for over a decade across multiple platforms. RELATED: How Video Games Have Helped Us Workout Since The 1980s There are a number of options now across all platforms to get you sweating without giving up on precious gaming time. While dancing games are different from exercise games, they technically accomplish the same thing: you're both gaming and moving.
The Nintendo Switch has opened the door this year once again to home-based workout games, with the mega-success of Ring Fit Adventure and similar games.