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“The Person Inside has Experienced the Most Change…”: The Labour of Fitness, Positivity and Narratives of Suffering

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Working Women on Screen

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender ((PSRG))

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Abstract

This chapter analyses influencer Alice Liveing’s Instagram account in the context of a heightened exercise and fitness culture, a shift from self-help to self-health, and the emotional labours of positivity. This shift creates a number of contradictions, including (1) a need to engage in constant forms of work on the body and on the self while extorting the benefits of loving yourself just the way you are (Gill, Rosalind and Ana Sofia Elias. “‘Awaken Your Incredible’: Love Your Body Discourses and Postfeminist Contradictions.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 10, no.2 (2014): 179–188.), (2) the careful governance of negative emotions and affects, expressed in constant calls to ultimate happiness—either in the present (“I am happy now”) or the future (“I am working on my happiness”) and (3) the way these contradictions necessitate a blurring of public and private, through which all elements of intimate, private life become part of an entrepreneurial practice of self-branding (Banet-Weiser,.Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture, University of New York Press, New York, 2012). These contradictions are discussed through (Illouz,.Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2008) concept of ‘triumphant suffering’. In Liveing’s social media presence, the triumph in having overcome, among other things, eating disorders, body insecurity and an abusive relationship, provides the hook through which she is able to present her life work as the outcome of a positive mental attitude and herself as the ambassador of her own self-transformation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Fitness Equipment Grows 170% During Coronavirus Lockdown’, Research and Markets, https://www.researchandmarkets.com/issues/fitness-equipment-grows-170pct?utm_source=dynamic&utm_medium=BW&utm_code=m6djfc&utm_campaign=1386770+-+Fitness+Equipment+Sales+Grow+by+170%25+During+Coronavirus+Lockdown&utm_exec=joca220bwd.

  2. 2.

    ‘About Me’, Alice Liveing personal website, https://alice-liveing.co.uk/about-alice-liveing/.

  3. 3.

    Rachel O’Neill, “‘Glow from the Inside Out’: Deliciously Ella and the Politics of ‘Healthy Eating’,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 6 (2020): 1284.

  4. 4.

    Ibid.

  5. 5.

    Kim Chernin, The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994); Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

  6. 6.

    Kate Carnis and Josée Johnson, “Choosing Health: Embodied Neoliberalism, Postfeminism, and the ‘Do-diet’,” Theory and Society 44, (2015): 153–75; Sarah Riley, Adrienne Evans and Martine Robson, Postfeminism and Health: Critical Psychology and Media Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2018).

  7. 7.

    Sarah Riley and Adrienne Evans, “Lean, Light, Fit and Tight: Fitspo Blogs and the Postfeminist Transformation Imperative,” in New Sporting Femininities: Embodied Politics in Postfeminist Times, eds. Kim Toffoletti, Jessica Francombe-Webb and Holly Thorpe (Palgrave Macmillan): 207–30.

  8. 8.

    Rosalind Gill and Ana Sofia Elias, “‘Awaken Your Incredible’: Love Your Body Discourses and Postfeminist Contradictions,” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 10, no. 2 (2014): 179–88; Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill, Confidence Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020); Riley, Evans and Robson, Postfeminism and Health.

  9. 9.

    Mariusz Duplaga, “The Use of Fitness Influencers’ Websites by Young Adult Women: A Cross-Sectional Study,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 6360 (2020): 1–19.

  10. 10.

    Josie Reade, “Keeping it Raw on the ‘Gram: Authenticity, Relatability and Digital Intimacy in Fitness Cultures on Instagram,” New Media and Society 23, no. 3 (2020): 535–53.

  11. 11.

    Deborah Lupton, “Toward a More-Than-Human Analysis of Digital Health: Inspirations from Feminist New Materialism,” Qualitative Health Research 29, no. 14 (2019): 1998–2009.

  12. 12.

    Eva Illouz, Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

  13. 13.

    Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt, “In the Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work,” Theory, Culture & Society 25, no. 7–8 (2008): 1–30.

  14. 14.

    Melissa Gregg, “The Break-Up: Hardt and Negri’s Politics of Love,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 35, no. 4 (2011): 395-402; Rosalind Gill, “Mediated Intimacy and Postfeminism: A Discourse Analytic Examination of Sex and Relationships Advice in a Women’s Magazine,” Discourse & Communication 3, no. 4 (2009): 345–69.

  15. 15.

    Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

  16. 16.

    Melissa Gregg, “The Normalisation of Flexible Female Labour in the Information Society,” Feminist Media Studies 8, no. 3 (2009): 285–99; Kylie Jarrett, Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife. (London: Routledge, 2016).

  17. 17.

    Angela McRobbie, Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Cultural Industries (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016).

  18. 18.

    Brooke Erin Duffy, “The Romance of Work: Gender and Aspirational Labour in the Digital Culture Industries,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 19, no. 4 (2020): 441–57; Melissa Gregg, Work’s Intimacy (Cambridge: Polity, 2011); McRobbie, Be Creative; Gill and Pratt, “In the Social Factory”.

  19. 19.

    Crystal Abidin, “Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok: Exploring Attention Economies and Visibility Labours,” Cultural Science Journal 12, no. 1 (2021): 77–103.

  20. 20.

    Crystal Abidin, “Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online” (Bingley: Emerald, 2018); Arturo Arriagada and Sophie Bishop, “Between Commerciality and Authenticity: The Imaginary of Social Media Influencers in the Platform Economy,” Communication, Culture and Critique 14, no. 4 (2021): 568–86.

  21. 21.

    Influencer Marketing Hub, The State of Influencer Marketing 2023: Benchmark Report, https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report/.

  22. 22.

    Christopher Kastenholz, “The Importance of Influencer Marketing In the ‘New Normal’ Digital Sphere,” Forbes (2021) https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/03/02/the-importance-of-influencer-marketing-in-the-new-normal-digital-sphere/?sh=20f42fa21448%20.

  23. 23.

    Annelot Prins, “Live-Archiving the Crisis: Instagram, Cultural Studies and Times of Collapse,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 23, no. 6 (2020): 1047.

  24. 24.

    Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work (Yale University Press, 2017), 11.

  25. 25.

    Jarrett, Feminism, Labour and Digital Media; Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid.

  26. 26.

    Brooke Erin Duffy and Megan Sawey, “Value, Service, and Precarity Among Instagram Content Creators,” in Creator Culture: An Introduction to Global Social Media Entertainment, ed. Stuart Cunningham and David Craig (New York University Press, 2021), 135–42.

  27. 27.

    For example: Abidin, Internet Celebrity; Arriagada and Bishop, “Between Commerciality and Authenticity”; Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid.

  28. 28.

    Mari Lehto, “Ambivalent Influencers: Feeling Rules and the Affective Practice of Anxiety in Social Media Influencer Work,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 25, no. 1 (2022): 201–16; Sophie Bishop, “Anxiety, Panic and Self-optimisation: Inequalities in the YouTube Algorithm”. Convergence, 24, no. 1 (2018): 69–84.

  29. 29.

    Eva Illouz, Saving the Modern Soul.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 156.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 173.

  32. 32.

    Riley, Evans and Robson, Postfeminism and Health.

  33. 33.

    Angela McRobbie, Feminism and the Politics of Resilience (Cambridge: Polity, 2020), 7.

  34. 34.

    Bordo, Unbearable Weight; Amelia Morris, The Politics of Weight: Feminist Dichotomies of Power in Dieting (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

  35. 35.

    Illouz, Saving the Modern Soul, 171.

  36. 36.

    Adrienne Evans and Sarah Riley, Digital Feeling (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023); Riley, Evans and Robson, Postfeminism and Health; Sarah Riley, Adrienne Evans and Martine Robson, Postfeminism and Body Image (London: Routledge, 2022); Riley and Evans, “Lean, Light, Fit and Tight”.

  37. 37.

    Gill and Elias, “‘Awaken Your Incredible’”.

  38. 38.

    Sarah Banet-Weiser, Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (New York: University of New York Press, 2012).

  39. 39.

    Orgad and Gill, Confidence Culture.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 48.

  41. 41.

    I use ‘food restriction’ and ‘excessive exercise’ because although Liveing discusses her weight loss on Instagram and in other media, during the period of data collection she hasn’t defined herself in relation to or disclosed a medical diagnosis of anorexia or orthorexia. She uses the term ‘addiction’ regularly in relation to past exercise, which I refer to as excessive exercise. Exercise addiction is not currently listed in the DSM-5. Furthermore, while excessive exercise is problematic, and is part of the behaviours that co-occur with medical diagnoses of eating disorders, I do not want to add further to the individualising and medicalising pathologies that ignore how these are shaped by the contexts of patriarchy and the control of women’s bodies.

  42. 42.

    Gill and Elias, “‘Awaken Your Incredible’”, 184.

  43. 43.

    Riley, Evans and Robson, Postfeminism and Health; Riley, Evans and Robson, Postfeminism and Body Image.

  44. 44.

    Adrienne Evans and Sarah Riley, “Immaculate Consumption: Negotiating the Sex Symbol in Postfeminist Celebrity Culture,” Journal of Gender Studies 22, no. 3, (2013): 268–81.

  45. 45.

    Evans and Riley, Digital Feeling.

  46. 46.

    Riley and Evans, “Lean, Light, Fit and Tight”.

  47. 47.

    Rebecca Coleman and Mónica Moreno Figueroa, “Past and Future Perfect? Beauty, Affect and Hope,” Journal for Cultural Research 14, no. 4 (2010): 357–373.

  48. 48.

    Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, Duke University Press, 2010): 29.

  49. 49.

    Gill and Elias, “‘Awaken Your Incredible’”.

  50. 50.

    Illouz, Saving the Modern Soul.

  51. 51.

    Reade, “Keeping it Raw on the ‘Gram”.

  52. 52.

    Banet-Weiser, Authentic; Reade, “Keeping it Raw on the ‘Gram”; McRobbie, Feminism and the Politics of Resilience.

  53. 53.

    See for example Garcia Ashdown-Franks and Jannelle Joseph, “‘Mind Your Business and Leave My Rolls Alone’: A Case Study of Fat Black Women Runners’ Decolonial Resistance”, Societies 11, no. 3 (2021): 1–17; Marsha Saxton, “Hard Bodies: Exploring Historical and Cultural Factors in Disabled People’s Participation in Exercise; Applying Critical Disability Theory,” Sport in Society 21, no. 1 (2018): 22–39.

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    Article  Google Scholar 

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Adrienne Evans

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  1. Adrienne Evans
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Correspondence to Adrienne Evans .

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  1. College of English and Media, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

    Ellie Tomsett

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

    Nathalie Weidhase

  3. College of English and Media, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

    Poppy Wilde

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Evans, A. (2024). “The Person Inside has Experienced the Most Change…”: The Labour of Fitness, Positivity and Narratives of Suffering. In: Tomsett, E., Weidhase, N., Wilde, P. (eds) Working Women on Screen. Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49576-2_2

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