Let's Get Physical by Danielle Friedman

A captivating blend of reportage and personal narrative that explores the untold history of women's exercise culture—from jogging and Jazzercise to Jane Fonda--and how women have parlayed physical strength into other forms of power.

For much of the twentieth century, sweating was considered "unladylike" and girls grew up believing physical exertion would cause their uterus to "fall out." It was only in the Sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse. In Let's Get Physical, journalist Danielle Friedman reveals the fascinating untold history of contemporary fitness culture, chronicling in vivid, cinematic prose how exercise evolved from a beauty tool pitched almost exclusively as a way to "reduce" into one millions have harnessed as a path to mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Let's Get Physical takes us into the workout studios and onto the mats to reclaim these forgotten origin stories--and shine a spotlight on the trailblazers who made it possible for women to move.

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Each chapter uncovers the birth of an fitness movement that laid the foundation for working out today: the invention of the barre method in the Swinging Sixties, jogging's path to liberation in the Seventies, the explosion of aerobics and weight-training in the Eighties, the rise of yoga in the Nineties, and the ongoing push for a more socially inclusive fitness culture—one that celebrates every body. Ultimately, it tells the story of how women discovered the joy of physical competence and strength--and how, by moving together to transform fitness from a privilege into a right, we can create a more powerful sisterhood.

Why I Picked It Up

I don't have many specific voices that I follow within journalism (on an avid level, at least) but I always enjoy Danielle Friedman's reporting on modern women's fitness. I've followed her on Instagram for a while, so I loved her take on this social history of exercise and how it involved feminism, economic changes, biological breakthroughs, and more.

I picked it up as a new release—bought in hardcover—which is rarer for me nowadays as a 26-year-old gal on a budget. In college, I was friends with such a high proportion of female athletes, and had a running (literally) joke that a requirement for membership in my sorority was a commitment to run the TCS New York City marathon after graduation. (I planned on running it myself in 2023 but got injured, so will attempt sometime soon.) The number of runners I track per year is absurd. Even those of us "NARPs," defined as non-athletic regular people, followed their lead; W&L was an athletic school overall, and you stepped up your game accordingly.

In the same way that we forget that changes in no-fault divorce and access to credit cards for women happened...pretty recently, we forget that only two generations ago, a commonly held belief was that running more than a mile would make a woman's uterus fall out. My grandma was totally in that boat, and practically stationary; when my mom signed her up for physical training sessions, she quickly figured out that she could get Beth (the trainer) to give her massages for most of the time instead. (Iconic, by the way.) If you've ever seen those scenes in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, you know what I'm talking about.

What It's About

Anyway, Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World charts significant developments in both co-ed sports and traditionally feminine athletics like pilates and jazzercise. (At summer camp, we adored step aerobics.)

Each chapter basically focuses on a different activity, including an overview, factors, and relevant figures involved in change. I learned I love that format thanks to Buzzed. It also makes a book like this easier to follow if you're not as frequent of a reader (or of nonfiction) and need an accessible goal like a chapter a night. For those planning on doing the 75 Hard or similar endurance challenges come January, this could be a pleasant pick for your 10-pages-of-nonfiction requirement.

Predictably, a lot of the origins and discoveries hover between the 1950s and 1990s, including impacts from plenty of social, labor, and economic roles changing adjacently. It's similar to Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating in that way.

As we've seen firsthand, developments in apparel—like it becoming more socially acceptable to wear activewear outside the house—were also important i.e. spandex. Plus, did you know that women's hairstyles changing was a force for boosting participation in exercise, rather than the other way around? Absolutely love tidbits and connections like those.

Tone & Voice

Admittedly, my focus drifted plenty. I found the tone dry at times, but I did overall enjoy how straightforward the book was. It's an overview more so than a hard-hitting exposé. It just makes the puzzle pieces click, and may appeal especially if you're a fan of women's sports. I don't have too much to say other than liked. It's clear, which is appealing, and I can see many enjoying it. Maybe in a book club setting too?

Overall Thoughts & Connections

I sometimes just love books for the sheer amount of fun facts they give me at my fingertips, and Let's Get Physical may be one of those. I now understand my grandmother's passionate dislike of Jane Fonda, for example. (I love her, but understand.)

Guy friends of mine were very interested when I told them that barre was one of the pioneering forms of women's fitness primarily because it was one of the few they were allowed to do when otherwise restricted by their husbands; instructors and studios pitched it as making women better at sex, which partners then encouraged. (The boys started to tune out when I mentioned the ovary/running fun fact, however—too far, maybe.)

Some of them think I am a die-hard feminist, and I absolutely am in the sense that I believe women and men are fundamentally equal and that a lot of society has been historically constructed to favor patriarchal power structures. And I think it's silly to have informal gender-based assumptions like men take the trash out / women do the dishes. (I just take the trash out if it's full.) We probably talk about feminism more often in my circle because of the military's reliance on traditional gender roles as pretty much the only way couples can keep afloat or accommodated within its structure (a conversation for another time) and I definitely fall on the liberal side of that.

Where I land, it doesn't matter whether someone's adhering to their "old-fashioned" task list so long as it is by choice in a partnership rather than because of outdated obligation—or the assumption that they can't flex other aspects of their identity; their sense of so-called duty should be related to willingness rather than supposed capacity, and no household duty is ever "less than" or "more than" just because of its perceived correlation to a specific gender. But I digress.

That's just a long-winded way of saying that I don't specifically read about gender theory often, or specifically seek it out. Rather, my emphasis on social history just means the lens is likely to pop up within a stack of books I have to read. For me, being a feminist just means...being a person and not seeing one sex as inferior?

Topics like fertility (and I absolutely want to read The Birth of the Pill), the traditional ideals of masculinity within certain social fabrics (ahem, military—I'm midway through What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars) and their intensification, and the physical limits of endurance (see: Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance) all entwine for me in thinking about aspects of my daily routine, like socializing on island or pairing up with a friend to exercise. And because it's me, I love knowing and complicating my understanding of how it's all intersected historically.

Overall, Let's Get Physical is good. It's solid. I don't feel particularly powerfully towards or about it, but enjoyed my read and could see it being a great select for many different (especially active women) readers.

For fans of:

Endure by Alex Hutchinson; Labor of Love by Moira Wengel; The Birth of the Pill by Jonathan Eig; Girly Drinks by Mallory O'Meara; Buzzed by Cynthia Kuhn, Scott Swartzwelder, and Wilkie Wilson; Sex at Dawn by Cacilda Jetha and Christopher Ryan; Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid; The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)