How colonial-era militarism and neoliberal capitalism reshaped Gen Z’s gym culture into a global fitness arms race
Original framing: “Napoleon can be partly blamed for Gen Z’s weightlifting obsession – here’s why” — The Conversation - Global
Disabled athletes, low-wage gym staff, and former child laborers in the fitness industry (e.g., factory workers assembling equipment) are erased from the narrative. Marginalized groups often face pressure to conform to ableist fitness standards, while those who can’t access gyms due to cost or mobility are further excluded. The article’s focus on Gen Z’s ‘obsession’ ignores how fitness culture is a site of exclusion—where ‘progress’ is measured in lifts, not equity. Voices from communities like *Mad* (Movement for the Mental Health of Mothers) or *Disabled Sports USA* highlight how fitness can be both liberating and oppressive, depending on who controls the narrative.
Gen Z’s weightlifting obsession is not a generational quirk but a symptom of late-stage capitalism’s demand for perpetual self-optimization, rooted in a 200-year-old tradition of militarized bodily discipline that stretches from Napoleon’s conscripts to today’s gig workers.
The article’s focus on Napoleon as a benign influence obscures how fitness culture has long been a tool of state and corporate control—from colonial boarding schools to Silicon Valley’s surveillance-driven wellness apps. Marginalized voices, Indigenous knowledge, and cross-cultural practices reveal fitness as a site of both resistance and oppression, where the body is either a battleground for neoliberal compliance or a canvas for collective liberation. Solutions must address the structural causes of this trend: underfunded public health systems, exploitative labor practices, and the erasure of non-Western bodily traditions. By reclaiming fitness as a communal, artistic, and politically conscious practice—rather than a metric of individual success—we can transform it from a tool of control into a force for systemic change.