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My last writing covered a Polyester Podcast episode I heard that discussed the adoption of Pilates by right wing Manosphere. The hosts, Ioni and Gina, were discussing the way that the Pilates Girl has become a coded way of signifying thin, affluent, feminine, white women and how coercing or shaming women to go to Pilates has become a recurring theme for a certain kind of bro. I also laid out a brief history of Pilates, and how we arrived at this moment.

This week I want to explore the physiological fallacies in this characterization—what Pilates can actually do for your body vs. what is promised—and why this mismatch is both damaging and dangerous for people who are drawn to its false advertising.

Pilates can be a highly effective, useful modality. Unlike traditional weight lifting it works all planes of movement through a full range of motion and focuses heavily on the pelvis, rib cage, and spine. This is one of its great gifts, since much of the “core” work in weight lifting only loads the torso in a neutral position.

Because the resistance is generally low or bodyweight, most Pilates movements are building muscular endurance (light loads with high reps). This is why dancers, gymnasts, and other bodyweight athletes are such big fans since this is the exact kind of strength that they need for their movement base.

Pilates is also excellent for mobility. For people like me who have much more passive range of motion than active, Pilates can help to shrink that gap by building end range strength and control. For people who struggle with flexibility, Pilates can expand that end range in healthy ways.

It is great for posture, breathing, balance, recovery, and it can potentially elevate your heart rate, depending on the pacing of the workout. Many Pilates instructors also have experience in injury rehab and it pairs beautifully with almost any other fitness modality for cross-training.

As you can tell, I’m a big fan of Pilates and I love both the practice and teaching for its effectiveness and versatility. When taught with the intention of promoting physical sovereignty it is a powerful tool to improve communication with your body and feel more in control of your physicality.

Enjoy this short clip from a longer interview with Brooklyn-based Pilates instructor Sofia Engleman where she discusses a more liberating, inclusive approach to instruction and practice. I put the entire interview at the end of this article.

Pilates will not give you a “Pilates Body”.

Let’s get technical about this body type. The Pilates ideal is someone with a low body fat percentage, defined muscles (they are small but you can see them because there is no fat over them), and a large range of motion.

Yes, Pilates can help you build muscles and range of motion. What it wont do is make you skinny.

It is very difficult to get skinny by exercising. Our body fat percentage is largely determined by genetics, hormones, and age. Certainly diet and exercise play a role, but our cultural tendency to equate thinness with a healthy lifestyle is just fallacy.

Weight loss is not a direct adaptation to exercise. We have clearly proven methods to increase strength, muscle size, range of motion, cardiovascular capacity, and muscular power. We do not have that for weight loss. Weight loss is a potential side effect of exercise that will take place only when other factors are also in place.

Bottom line: no form of exercise is guaranteed to make you skinny because skinny is not one of the body’s adaptations to exercise. It is a potential side effect.

The lean and “toned” (small but defined muscles) body associated with Pilates is more correlative than causative. Because Pilates’ early adopters were dancers, and the dance world has already screened for a certain body type, Pilates has become associated with the dancer body. The stereotype has been propagated over the following decades by a plethora of marketing specifically by and to women with that body type.

I don’t blame women for wanting the stereotypical Pilates body. It is lauded in every form of media and none of us are immune to societal pressures, and to the stigma when you fail to meet this standard.

But most of us can do Pilates until the springs fall off the reformers and we will never have that type of body because we aren’t built that way, and Pilates can’t change that. So if marketing and the language used in classes touts that body as the expected end goal, we have set up a large percentage of our students for failure.

This creates the distaste for Pilates that I heard in that episode of the Polyester Podcast. Ioni and Gina sensed that if they went to a Pilates class that they were potentially walking into a trap, one that is all too common in a society that consistently misunderstands the relationship between body type, fitness, and health. We posit thinness as the only desirable end goal of a process that does not actually drive weight loss and then fault people for being unable to achieve it.

When aesthetics becomes the marker of success, it also becomes the marker of belonging. For some studios and brands this is the goal—conveying exclusivity is part of the draw. If you don’t look the part, you aren’t welcome. It is portrayed as an exclusivity born out of hard work and dedication, but it is actually just a group of genetically similar, likely young, and mostly affluent people.

Elitism deters people from enjoying the benefits of Pilates listed above. It also becomes a driver of the right-wing adoption of Pilates as both a tool and a symbol of a kind of supremacy that is antithetical to helping as many people as possible find benefit in fitness and movement.

Beyond that, tying success and belonging to thinness is dangerous. In a world where the global prevalence of eating disorders increased from 3.5% to 7.8% between 2000 and 2018, and eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness just behind opiate addiction, the pressure to be thin can be fatal. Even in its less extreme forms, disordered eating can lead to poor health outcomes, reduced fitness levels, and long-term consequences.

I feel strongly that elitism must be countered, in no small part by understanding and being honest about what Pilates actually has to offer.

Fortunately there are so many amazing instructors and studio owners doing just that.

In the last post I promised an interview with my dear friend Lulu DePina, founder of Common Ground Pilates, to discuss the ways that she has created a welcoming and diverse chain of Pilates studios here in LA. Turns out that running four studios keeps her very busy so we haven’t had a chance to chat yet, but I’m hoping to have that for you by next week.

In the meantime, here is the full interview with Sofia Engleman, which is definitely worth a listen.

if you are a Pilates instructor or student I’d love to know your thoughts. What has been your experience been with Pilates and elitism? Do you resonate with this idea or is your experience very different? If you haven’t been to Pilates, what is your impression and has the perception of elitism been a deterrent? I’m so curious!

Thank you all for reading, and as always… happy bendings!

Kristina