Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World
now AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK!
*A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2022*
A CAPTIVATING BLEND OF REPORTAGE AND PERSONAL NARRATIVE, LET’S GET PHYSICAL 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 many women today, working out is as accepted as it is expected, fueling a multibillion-dollar fitness industrial complex. But it wasn’t always this way. For much of the twentieth century, sweating was considered unladylike and girls grew up believing physical exertion would cause their uterus to literally 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 hidden history of contemporary women’s 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 reclaims these forgotten origin stories—and shines a spotlight on the trailblazers who led the way. Each chapter uncovers the birth of a fitness movement that laid the foundation for working out today: the radical post-war pitch for women to break a sweat in their living rooms, the invention of barre in the “Swinging Sixties,” the promise of jogging as liberation in the seventies, the meteoric rise of aerobics and weight-training in the eighties, the explosion 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 strength and competence—and how, by moving together to transform fitness from a privilege into a right, we can create a more powerful sisterhood.
Praise FOR LET’S GET PHYSICAL
“Danielle Friedman’s fact-packed but bouncy new book about women and exercise in 20th-century America … [recounts a] relay race of about two dozen female fitness evangelists and entrepreneurs, passing the baton of well-being to each other over the decades. … Her book is very much ‘pro’ exercise, but for the right reasons: not slimming down but mood management, community, spirituality in the corporal.”
”Canny and informative.”
“Friedman’s engaging stories of the women who created and transformed the fitness industry illustrate an evolution built upon strong female shoulders.”
“Fascinating . . . persuasively encapsulates the relatively recent history of women’s fitness and the wide-reaching impact its trailblazers had. Let’s Get Physical is packed with stories of people who come to classes because of how they want to look, but stay because of how those classes make them feel: strong, supported, engaged, and empowered.”
“Friedman takes a jaunt through the history of women’s fitness in her astute and entertaining debut. ... This zippy history is bursting with energy.”
“Friedman ultimately tells the story of how physical strength has brought power to the women's movement.”
“There are few areas of American culture as complicated—and as understudied—as women's exercise. Which is why I feel like I've been waiting for a book like Let's Get Physical for decades: something that takes the history and importance of fitness seriously, but is also incisive and curious and readable and fun.”
—Anne Helen Petersen, author of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman and Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
“Danielle Friedman's wildly engaging Let’s Get Physical answered the questions I didn't even know I had about the origins of women's fitness (Jane Fonda sold how many copies of her Workout?!), and left me with a huge debt of gratitude to the trailblazing women who had the foresight to do things like sneak into the Boston Marathon and invent the sports bra so that we could swan into the gym without a second thought. A fascinating, meticulously researched read that left me with a much greater appreciation for the burn of barre class.”
—Doree Shafrir, author of Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer and Startup: A Novel
“A fascinating and complicated history, masterfully shared. Let's Get Physical made me grateful to the women of the past and hopeful about the future of fitness. My favorite read of the year!”
—Kelly McGonigal, author of The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage
“It's easy to critique the class, race, and gender stereotypes perpetuated by many fitness industry advertising campaigns, but Friedman reminds us how revolutionary it was, not so long ago, to encourage women to do strenuous physical exercise. An engaging account of the complicated, unconventional individuals who pioneered today's fitness culture for women.”
—Stephanie Coontz, author of A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s and The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
“Friedman's study of modern fitness culture is as illuminating as it is enthralling. She reveals the wild characters, political agendas, and social movements that changed not only our exercise behaviors but our understanding of exercise itself. Behind every workout there is a story, and it's usually a good one.”
—Kelsey Miller, author of Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life
“This must-read book is an informative and entertaining read for any woman who has thought about getting fit.”
—Zibby Owens, host of the “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books” podcast
“Let's Get Physical is a delicious deep dive into fitness culture that features an eclectic cast of women who deviously ran men-only marathons in the 1960s, turned Jazzercise, aerobics, and barre into mainstream mega fads, and who power-lifted notions of femininity until they included muscles and strength. Author Danielle Friedman tracks exercise culture into the 21st century, debunking myths and delighting readers with diamond-sharp prose, wry humor and rigorous research.”
—Sarah Everts, author of The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration
“How did we get from the notion that exercise was unladylike, even dangerous for women, to the 1980s fitness craze and beyond that has totally transformed women’s lives? In this lively book, Danielle Friedman uses fitness pioneers and icons, from Bonnie Prudden to Jane Fonda to Lilias Folan, to trace how regular exercise became central to millions of women’s pursuit of vitality, confidence, and happiness. Full of fun and inspiring stories, Let’s Get Physical reminds us that this is not just a history of sports bras or leg warmers, but also of how feminism itself enabled and drew from women finding empowerment in the strength of their own bodies.”
—Susan J. Douglas, author of Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media and In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead
“Don't read this book because it's ‘good for you.’ Read it because it's an eye-opening cultural history of the fitness pioneers who put the ‘move’ into the feminist movement. Let's Get Physical reminded me of why feeling strong feels so good.”
—Brooke Hauser, author of Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman
“With lively writing and compelling storytelling … Danielle Friedman teases out the complicated relationship between exercise culture and feminism in this engaging exploration of modern fitness history. You'll want to hit the barre afterward.”
—Haley Shapley, author of Strong Like Her: A Celebration of Rule Breakers, History Makers, and Unstoppable Athletes
“It is all too easy to look at the history of women’s fitness as an unconnected timeline of fads and celebrities. In Let’s Get Physical, Danielle Friedman weaves together the cultural history of a movement that is nothing less than the story of the modern American woman—and she does it with fascinating and fun storytelling that will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered why thighs need to be mastered or buns should be made of steel.”
—Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World and Every Minute Is a Day: A Doctor, an Emergency Room, and a City Under Siege
Danielle Friedman is an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, the Washington Post, Glamour, Health, and other publications. She has worked as a senior editor at NBC News Digital and The Daily Beast, and she began her career as a nonfiction book editor at the Penguin imprints Hudson Street Press and Plume. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.
Follow Danielle on Instagram @DanielleFriedmanWrites
