ABSTRACT
Despite the emphasis on physical efficiency and individual choice, despite its proclaimed pluralistic attitude to body shape, the legitimation of the gym is bound to a strong normative vision. First of all, the ideal of fitness calls into play the idea of ‘nature’ and is based on specific notion of how the body can be transformed in a ‘natural’ way. Straddling commercial culture and physical discipline, fitness, gyms occupy a highly significant cultural space. The practices and discourses of body control, health maintenance and the promotion of physical efficiency may serve the need of western nations to regulate an ageing population, but they are increasingly delivered by the private market of goods and services. Fitness enthusiasts are not simply invited to choose the body they prefer, but to work diligently and, as it were, with humble determination, towards their own goals, in short to choose to discipline themselves.
