The first fitness industry

In 1897 a Prussian strongman who'd become the most famous body in the world published a book, Strength and How to Obtain It, and with it invented an industry. Eugen Sandow sold dumbbells, correspondence courses, and the idea that any man could look like him with enough effort. Two years later an American named Bernarr Macfadden launched a magazine called Physical Culture, and for the next fifty years he preached muscle, sunlight, fresh air, fasting and plain food to millions of readers, built a publishing empire, ran for president, and lived to eighty-seven.

They were showmen and salesmen, and some of what they sold was nonsense. But they were right about the main thing, decades before the science was: that the body thrives on strength training, outdoor light, air, simple food, and daily discipline, and that these things are available to anyone. Sandow's "Grecian ideal" was built on measurements of classical statues; Macfadden's magazine argued for women's strength training from its first years, when almost no one did.

I include them because they are the ancestors of everything you now see sold, and knowing the ancestor helps you see the pattern. Every fitness fad since Sandow is a version of the same promise: this body, with this method, in this many weeks. Sometimes the method is good. The promise is always the same, and it always sells, because the wish underneath it, to be strong and whole and seen, is real.

The key for the month of the Body is to separate the method from the sale. Sandow's dumbbells worked. Macfadden's sunlight worked. The timeline they promised was marketing. Take the method, forgive the salesman, and ignore the deadline. A hundred and twenty-nine years later, that's still the way to read any ad.