Andrew Tate in a pink room, lying on a reformer? No, we’ll arrest you right away. It is not to sculpt their abs that the mascus start to fantasize about Pilates.
Because behind this sport, which has become very popular in recent years, lies a new masculinist reality, and the word “pilates” is not only mentioned in videos of young women testing the practice or talking about its miracles on the figure.
Where does this obsession with Pilates come from?
In the show “Love Is Blind”, Chris Fusco, a 33-year-old candidate, reveals, almost naturally, to his fiancée Jessica Barrett, that his “type” is a woman who “does Pilates every day”. For the media The Atlanticit illustrates modern misogyny.
In the latest episode of the hit podcast “Call Her Daddy,” reality TV star “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” Jessi Draper detailed the many issues she had with her husband before he filed for divorce last week. She recounts in particular having experienced psychological violence by her ex-husband, who allegedly asked her, among other things, to “start doing Pilates every day”.
This type of remark is not isolated. On social networks, some male designers go even further: “If your girlfriend does Pilates, marry her immediately,” explains @christianb.23 on Instagram.
According to the 19th Newsthis word now functions as a code. A shortcut to describe an “ideal” woman, that is to say docile, without having to detail the criteria.
La Pilates girl is the new tradwife
“If your girlfriend does Pilates, she probably stays home on the weekends so she can get up early and go to a class. And she will come back from Pilates class in a good mood because she went with her friends, no shady guys hit on her and she had a great workout,” (email protected). Behind a Pilates class hides another very specific reality: rooms without men (or at least very few), compared to weight rooms, but above all a certain healthy lifestyle.
The “manosphere” has a “rigid conception of what a woman should be”, explains Mariel Barnes, professor who has studied the masculine sphere and its political impact, interviewed by 19th News : “a traditional, submissive, stay-at-home wife, who does not challenge the man’s status as breadwinner and head of the household, and who corresponds to a certain aesthetic. I think the stereotype associated with Pilates has to do with that aesthetic,” she said.
“The concept of the ‘Pilates princess’ is something that the right has latched on to enormously,” says content creator Bryony Claire, who analyzes masculinist trends on her channel. “It has become a sort of sorting system to define ‘good women’.” An imagination that is reminiscent of that of “tradwives”, these women who demand a return to more traditional gender roles.
Be careful if its Hinge description is “Looking for Pilates Girl”
In 19th NewsMariel Barnes also emphasizes that the word “Pilates” today serves as a shortcut, as a sort of “code”. A logic that creator Bryony Claire deciphers head-on. According to her, these speeches contribute to “making women smaller so that men can feel more masculine, taller and more powerful”.
More than just an interest in your sporting practice, this type of speech can then become a signal. If your next match on a dating app, or your crush, seems to give a little too much importance to the sport you practice, to the point of pushing you towards Pilates, this may already be a red flag. Because if there is one thing to remember, it is that sport is a space that belongs to you, linked to your well-being. Not an injunction to correspond to a masculine ideal…
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