As a college student, taking care of your mind and body is essential for your mental health. So, why do so many of us avoid it like the plague?
Turn to Runyon Canyon, a popular hiking trail in Los Angeles, offering scenic views of the city and rocky terrain. In recent years, it has become famous not only for the intensive fitness experience and stunning landscape but also as a hotspot for celebrity and influencer sightings. This media attention transforms what should be an inclusive space for well-being into a judgemental, exclusive environment centered around vanity.
At Runyon, surveillance is taken to an extreme, resulting in performative fitness that emphasizes aesthetics. Tana Mongeau, influencer and podcaster, recently shared that she always puts on a “cute” workout set and makeup before going to Runyon, knowing that social encounters and cameras are almost guaranteed.
This performance makes fitness daunting for newcomers and doesn’t reflect healthy motivations — the meditative, anxiety-reducing, and healing effects of movement. Instead, it prioritizes trendy outfits and glamorous makeup. What should be a health-oriented space is turned into a performance venue, alienating those who don’t fit the aesthetic mold that social media promotes.
When and why did we begin to feel self conscious about working out? While there are many factors, one contributor is the rise of social media and focus on appearance while exercising. Fitness is a valuable component in living a happier and healthier life and is, in theory, quite accessible. However, current narratives around fitness place heavy emphasis on appearance — working out means being already toned, sporting a matching outfit set, and having a pristine slick back hairdo.
On social media, vain gym content is impossible to ignore. “#gym” has 319 million posts on Instagram, most of which look quite similar: already very fit influencers wearing expensive brands, framed by well-lit mirrors and strategic camera angles. While the content may seem centered around fitness, the deliberate posing and polished editing sends a message that people who work out have “athletic” body types and look the part.
When this covert messaging enters the gym, places for exercise become sites of surveillance. With mirrors covering every wall and the panoramic layouts of most gyms, it’s even easier to internalize social media’s emphasis on physical appearance. The result is a heightened sense of self-consciousness for gymgoers and an uninviting environment for newcomers. As social media turns gyms into sites of scrutiny, fitness becomes exclusive to those who match social media’s projection and creates barriers for those who don’t.
However, when fitness spaces remove surveillance, comfort and inclusivity prevail. Actress Jameela Jamil runs a fitness festival called Move For Your Mind. The festival’s workout classes feature low light and no mirrors in order to remove the pressure of perception. In this environment, people of all different body types and abilities are able to participate comfortably. Jamil even describes participants in wheelchairs crying with relief, saying it was the first time they were able to immerse themselves in fitness without worrying about perception. Just as social media brings in the element of vanity and subsequent surveillance, removing those elements reverses their exclusionary effects.
If vanity continues to dominate fitness, movement will serve only the people social media deems as active: the able-bodied and already fit. Exercise should not be solely about appearance; rather, it is and still can be about healing, joy, and wellness. While we can’t shift an entire generation’s perspective, we can individually change the way we approach and talk about fitness to make the gym a more supportive environment. Social media can taint these efforts, but we all are ultimately striving for happier, healthier lives.
For fitness to truly be accessible, we must shift our framing from vanity and aesthetics to compassion and community.
