Does fitness have a look? Can you tell how fit someone is by looking at them? Horsham-based female personal trainer, Becky, discusses the issue…
I was recommended a YouTube video of a talk recently. One of the top comments read: “He looks a lot more fit than the last I’ve seen him.” Now, apart from the appalling syntax and grammar, I’m here to tell you why that person’s comment is incorrect and unfair. Buckle up for a rant…
This is an example of body shaming
The vast majority of us have likely body shamed someone, whether intentionally or not. For decades, a specific beauty standard has been perpetuated by both mainstream media and health professionals, latterly being joined by social media. Many people are beginning to understand that health is not one specific thing, nor is it a look or a shape. Health is rather a set of behaviours, habits, and a state of being. And commenting about someone’s body on the basis of how it looks is body shaming.
In this example, the shaming may not seem overt. Because the commenter is, after all, offering a compliment, right? They’ve said that the speaker looks “more fit”. But there are two key problems here: firstly, they are inferring that how the person previously looked was unacceptable; secondly, fitness isn’t a look.
What does fitness look like?
The thing is, there isn’t one way to look fit, even if you are a professional athlete and therefore are a specialist at one thing. Of course, people who perform the same or very similar activities do tend to look similar to each other. If I ask you to think about a rugby player, you’re almost certainly going to imagine someone larger, who has quite a lot of muscle and bulk. And if you think of a long distance runner, you’ll probably bring to mind a very different physique, likely someone very lean.
But those people – or other athletes – don’t have to look like they do in order to perform the way they do. It may well be a side effect of their training, but it’s not essential. Equally, if you took our distance runner and put them on the rugby pitch, or in a sumo wrestling ring, they might suddenly appear physically unfit. But is that due to how they look, or the fact that they haven’t developed the skills required to perform in those sports?
What’s the problem with judging fitness based on looks?
Well, apart from the fact that you’re technically incorrect, you’re also being unfair. Whilst some brands like to claim that they crown “the fittest person in the world” by organising a specific competition, what they’re actually doing is finding the person who’s the best on that day at that event. There is no agreed and universal definition of fitness, and that’s the beauty of it.
We can consider ourselves to be fit by defining that in any way we please. You can consider someone to have gotten fitter, or stronger, when they demonstrate an improvement in their performance over time, but you cannot assess that by watching a clip of them standing on a stage and speaking. By doing so, you reduce our opinion to aesthetics, and are perpetuating a false beauty standard, as well as ableist attitudes. Because what if that person, instead of losing fat and changing their physique, has developed a health condition, or suffered an injury that means that their mobility is reduced, or that they need to use a wheelchair? Has that person decreased in fitness due to requiring a mobility aid? I very much hope that you are not making the assumption that they are less fit.
How should we assess fitness?
There are many ways to assess fitness, and it comes down to an individual’s goals. If you want to become a faster runner, you’re going to take steps to measure and improve speed and stamina. If you want to get stronger, you’re going to pay attention to the amount of weight a person can lift, and continue to push this upwards over time. If you want to increase range of movement, you’re going to measure the starting point of a movement, and look to improve that over time.
Notice that none of these examples involves assessing a person’s weight or body composition.
Aesthetic goals are valid for those who wish to have them and are in a healthy position to do so. They aren’t an appropriate measure for everyone, and we shouldn’t make judgments based purely on someone’s physique out of context.
If you’d like to train with someone who vcalues your preferences and confidence, get in touch