Pilates is a great time. According to women’s health<\/em>Pilates has become most popular over the past five years, with participants increasing from 9.2 million to 12.9 million. It has also become one of the trendiest workouts you can participate in on social media.<\/p>\n If you are a single man who is even slightly aware of this craze, you may be interested in women who practice Pilates. While this is certainly a phenomenon that some women experience firsthand, the discourse surrounding this is a little darker than you might think. And it all goes back to the manosphere, an umbrella term for a series of online communities that promote masculinity through misogynistic and anti-feminist discourse. Think of recent popular and influential men like Andrew Tate and “Clavicular” (Branden Peters). They spewed rhetoric at other young men on social media.<\/p>\n Example: A few months ago I wrote about moments between couples on reality shows love is blind<\/em> <\/em>It became very widespread online. The couple, who initially had a lot of promise, ended up in turmoil when contestant Chris told his partner Jessica that he was looking for someone to do Pilates with because he was “not used to” his body. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n A similar topic was recently discussed on an episode of the popular podcast Call Her Daddy. The secret life of Mormon wives <\/em>Star Jesse Draper has revealed that she and her soon-to-be ex-husband have had many conversations about her desire to do more Pilates. This sparked a viral post on X asking whether women’s preference for doing Pilates is driven by the male sphere.<\/p>\n Let’s be clear right off the bat: You’re probably a man who wants to date a woman who exercises regularly. There’s nothing wrong with having it that<\/em> I especially like it. However, there are clear differences. A recent report from 19th News revealed that there is indeed a connection to men in the “manosphere” who desire women who do Pilates, and that is a problem.<\/p>\n It’s one thing if you’re a personal trainer and get paid to share this kind of information with your female clients, but it’s another thing to tell a woman what kind of training you do, no matter how well you know her. think<\/em> What they have to do is dominant and weird. This isn’t the case if you have a partner who simply enjoys Pilates for personal reasons and doesn’t have any weirdly strong feelings about it. There’s a reason why it’s so popular! <\/p>\n But the 19th episode takes on the image of the “Pilates girl” promoted by many of these phallic influencers, saying, “A woman who engages in feminine exercises, things that are supposedly not going to make her muscles grow. A Pilates girl doesn’t go to the gym where she might run into other men. (They might be looking at her! She might be looking!) Instead, she chooses a 50-minute class filled with other white, lithe people.” (There are deeper debates in the Pilates community about who Pilates is often aimed at, including race, body type, social class, and even political values.) <\/p>\n Desire here is rooted in control and maintaining a certain image. Why date a girl who lifts heavy weights, wears skin-tight clothes, and looks breathtaking in a packed gym? \u2014 Are there other guys when you can be with a Pilates girl? And it’s definitely better than going to the gym because it’s a gym that men go to and no one in history has ever taken a Pilates class. <\/p>\n As the article points out, social media often associates people who practice Pilates with a softer, slower aesthetic. For these guys, their dream girlfriend might choose a quiet Friday night so she can wake up and go to Pilates. They may have a “clean” or “healthy” lifestyle. (I don’t think anyone has ever attended a morning Pilates class hungover, or drunk and still wearing makeup from the night before.) <\/p>\n These lifestyle traits mesh very easily with the ideals that many manosphere-centered men say they want in a wife, all of which are quite misogynistic: submissive, attractive and thin by societal standards, willing to stay at home (presumably accepting the traditional wife lifestyle), and highly feminine. However, women interested in Pilates cannot simply be equated with these other concepts. The truth is everyone can <\/em>Even people who, from the lens of social media and the manosphere, don’t “look” like they should or could do Pilates, do it. <\/p>\n An article in The 19th states that “in the male sphere there is a ‘rigorous conceptualization of what women should be,'” and in fact, this kind of generalization makes sense. After all, it’s men who are looking for “Pilates girls.” In these cases, “Pilates” doesn’t just mean Pilates. That means it’s a little more messy.<\/p>\nmeet the guide<\/h3>\n
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