I refreshed my Instagram feed again

and watched the little heart of approval reappear at the bottom of my screen. Another “like” – my 58th in just five minutes. All for a picture I’d taken of my own stomach, looking pleasingly taut as I lay sprawled on the grass after a workout. I’d written the caption:

“No pain, no gain. Feel like I’m gonna vomit, but it’s so worth it. #abtastic”.

There were also 16 comments asking what ab exercises I do, if I avoid gluten and one from a woman who said she was sticking me on her fridge for motivation. And each one brought a little hit of pride – smugness, even – the recognition from total strangers that not only did I look good, but I deserved to. However, a few minutes later, another comment appeared: “I agree! Tortured = toned. You’ve inspired me to hit the gym for the third time today.” I looked at the account – a girl who couldn’t be much older than 16. And suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so smug.
It wasn’t meant to be like this for fitspiration – a term that’s been knocking around the internet for two decades until finding its spiritual home in 2010 when Instagram and Pinterest launche
within seven months of one another; two virtual scrapbooks oering an infinite scope to post selfies, belfies (selfies of squat toned bottoms), healthies (any health-related selfie – usually Miranda Kerr in some crotch-threatening yoga pose) and more motivational mantras than Oprah would know what to do with.
Here at last was a movement that valued health and well being as highly as its physical results. It was the backlash to “thinspiration”, a term that had quickly become synonymous with eating disorders and internet forums filled with thigh gaps and teenage girls reassuring each other “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. It had curves and muscles. Its message was train hard, live well and feed your body, rather than starve it.
The fitspo abbreviation was born and, rapidly, so were its very own Insta-celebrities. Take Jen Selter (@jenselter), a twenty something New Yorker whose gym belfies of her Kardashian shaped behind has garnered her a following of 12 million. Australian PT and WH cover star Kayla Itsines (@kayla_itsines) started posting pictures of her clients’ transformations. Now she has a following of 9.4 million loyal disciples, lucrative workout
apps and a schedule that has her jetting around the world hosting live workout classes en masse. Meanwhile, Rachel Brathen (@yoga_girl), a Swede who teaches yoga in Aruba, has 2.1 million people regularly watching her downward dogging against an azur shoreline – more recently with her adorable toddler in tow.
“It’s a strange thing to put up a picture and know it’s going out to over a million people,” says Brathen, who started using social media as a way to advertise her yoga business and still finds the spiral into Instagram celebrity an odd one. “The numbers feel surreal, but I know I have a responsibility. I try to include images
of me with belly fat or cellulite or share the fact that I’m having a bad day so I’ve just had a big chocolate bar to make myself feel better. I want my pictures to be real – they’re meant to be an honest glimpse into my life.”

And right there is the bulk of fitspo’s appeal – the invitation to stare. It’s the socially acceptable version of scrutinising the best bodies in the gym. Endless, gaze-worthy images of pert bottoms and streamlined abs, all accompanied by the message that, “You! Yes, you! You can do it too.” As long as you’re willing to put in the
work, of course.

The dark side of fitspo

That is the ever-present message of fitspo – the idea that you get out what you put in, that fitness and its physical rewards are there to be earned. And what’s wrong with that? After all, it’s a message this magazine is built on. But with all things, there is a tipping point and the inevitable cacophony of voices in the virtual world means that those messages are easily mixed. So among the happy, innocuous posts of “Healthy is the new sexy” and “Nothing looks as good as healthy feels”, there are more vigorous messages of encouragement – that quickly spiral into the downright aggressive: “Don’t quit, you’re already in pain, you already hurt, get your rewards from it” and “If tomorrow’s workout will be harder because you ate too much today, then you’re a pig”.
Ouch. And once you’re into the realm of images of tiny midris emblazoned with the words “Are you sure you want that cookie?”, it feels like you’re straying into a far murkier hinterland. Although Instagram banned the term “thinspiration” and all its relevant hashtags back in 2012 already – and has been steadily adding to that list – Pinterest still delivers results. And if you’re searching “fitspo” rather than “thinspo” many of those same skinny limbs and teeny-tiny waists come up. Not surprising, then, that more than one leading expert has deemed fitspiration “thinspiration in a sports bra”. “The boundaries are definitely blurred,” says clinical psychologist Dr David LaPorte who led the first studies into fitspo’s potential eects. “We don’t know much about the eect
of fitspo yet – there’s no published data on it, but we do know thinspo sites are bad. In research we carried out, it took subjects only 90 minutes of looking at these images for their eating behaviours to change dramatically afterwards.” In another study by the University of Missouri, researchers found it took only one to three minutes of looking at waif-like bodies for women to feel more dissatisfied with their own.
And while jutting hips may have been replaced with rock-hard abs, there is still the same fetishising of body image; endless, scrolling pinboards of idealised figures. And when that’s the backdrop to fitspo’s favourite messages of control, discipline and hard work…? “That’s when it can become dangerous,” says LaPorte. “Because the message changes from ‘Work hard and you can change your body’ to ‘Work hard and you can get
this body’. But that’s a disservice to women. There are going to be plenty of women who will never get that body, no matter how hard they work.” And there’s nothing wrong with that.