From the moment Sheila Rubin wakes up, she talks herself down. “You’re a pig,” says the voice in her head, a voice to which the viewer of the comedy-drama series Physical listens in all the time, in a constant interior monologue. “You’re worthless, you can’t do anything, nobody likes you.” The voice lasts all day, forcing her to eat nothing, to exercise as much as possible, to starve herself. Until she gives up, drives to a fast food place, orders a couple of family bags of fries and burgers, eats them one after the other in a motel room, only to puke the whole thing. “You are so disgusting,” the voice says. “This was really the last time.”
There is a trigger warning for showing eating disorders visible for every episode of Physical – seen on Apple TV Plus, the second season aired this summer. The series tells of the insecure Sheila, who emerges as an aerobics icon, including popular video tapes and her own show on TV. But the trigger warning might just as well apply to the underlying truth that Physical shows about what we now call the ‘wellness industry’, or the ‘fitness business’. Sheila’s claim to fame it’s not so much in her dance moves or her shiny spandex, but in her idea of using her inner voice during the lessons. She is as strict with the participants as she is with herself. ‘You want to give up, don’t you? You think you are tired, but now you have to carry on. Come on, 5, 6, 7, 8.’
Essentially what you’re looking at is the invention of the multi-billion dollar industry that revolves around telling women they’re not good enough: not fit enough, not tight enough. An industry that basically consists of externalizing the voice that so many women internally hear all day, amplified by the endless stream of brands and marketers who, like Sheila, understand that you can make money creating self-loathing.
What started with aerobics videos has evolved into a ubiquitous tsunami of products and lifestyles all about being the ‘better version’ of yourself – a version that, of course, will never be realized. In the Netherlands alone there are countless types such as Rens Kroes, Sonja Bakker, Fajah Lourens, each with its own media offensive and associated revenue model. There are fit girls on Instagram, endless YouTube channels. ‘Discipline means liberation’, the motto of the real aerobics goddess Jane Fonda – who also suffered from bulimia – is now being fired at young women from all sides.
I wonder how Sheila will fare in the new season of Physical. Season 1 ended with a dubious triumph: She turned her precious obsession with food into a lucrative obsession with aerobics. “It’s so empowering,” she says of her own classes. She thus summarizes exactly the paradox that makes fitness culture so problematic: under the guise of emancipation and self-love, women are pushed even harder into a straitjacket.