Training Bodies, Building Status: Health, Physical Capital, and the Negotiation of Difference in the U.S. Fitness Industry.

Abstract

Although individuals spend considerable amounts of time, money, and energy on their bodies, sociology has been slow to address the influence of embodiment in social life. I suggest that such efforts to change one’s appearance should not be considered mere indulgences in vanity, but strategic attempts to navigate status hierarchies. As such, the body represents a resource, a form of “physical capital” that individuals invest in with an expectation of a return on their investment. Nowhere is this buying and selling of physical capital more apparent than in the relationships between personal trainers and clients in the fitness industry.

Following a three-paper format, based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 26 personal trainers and 25 clients, as well as two years of participant observation, my dissertation investigates the following questions: 1) How does “physical capital” operate as a form of capital in contemporary social life? 2) How do clients and trainers use physical capital to navigate status differences around gender, age, and social class? 3) Why are personal trainers—relatively untrained semi-professionals—allowed to conduct healing work for clients that often goes beyond exercising?

In these papers, I build on and extend Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital by explicating the concept of physical capital and find that individuals trade on their appearance and physical abilities for other resources, including money, social connections, esteem, and access to cultural knowledge. Further, I find that investing in physical capital, which stands in for discipline and morality, allows personal trainers to traverse social differences between themselves and their higher status clients. Results also indicate that physical capital is a key component of explaining why personal trainers are “deputized” by physicians to carry out health work for clients, granting them a degree of medical authority. Thus, my dissertation identifies a powerful, yet under-studied, form of capital that intersects with already-existing hierarchies of social inequality