Cult of wellness | Pilates was never for hot girls
What do you actually know about the method and it's history?
Guess who invented pilates? This guy. The fact that that this is the creator of the method that so many women opt into out of fear of getting “bulky” from strength training is the definition of irony.
Joe was mega strong, no doubt. He also notoriously did weird shit like exercise in the shower and make a bed for “working out” and use pilates chairs as the actual furniture in his apartment so he could whip out an exercise at any moment. He had some great concepts, and I’ll always be grateful for feet in strap leg circles (IYKYK), he was FOR SURE not a good role model on how have a healthy relationship with fitness. Yet, even WITH his unrealistic obsession with working out, he still mysteriously never developed long, lean lines?? Yes, he was freakishly strong and ripped into his very old age, but his body was a far cry from the supermodel pilates evangelists we see touting its transformative effects. Archive photos are a great reminder that while pilates does great things for you— it’s not a tool to magically turn you into a 6 foot tall model. When you think about it, if it really were that easy, wouldn’t we all be admiring at our very own Karlie Kloss-like reflections already?
Let’s rewind a bit, shall we?
Joseph Pilates was a German boxer and circus performer. Pilates lore says he created the method while interred at Knockaloe Moar camp on the Isle of Man during World War I because he say so many sick people around him and we wanted to help them improve their health. (This is at least the story we’re all told in every certification program, but I recommend checking out Caged Lion, a recent biography written by one of his close friends that pokes some holes in that theory).
An avid boxer, Joe’s new workout plan incorporated principles of martial arts, yoga, dance, strength training and breathwork. He moved to NYC eventually and opened his studio, becoming a hit with the modern dance bigwigs like Ruth St Denis, Martha Graham, Ted Shawn and the like. Why such a hit with dancers? Well, dancers are prone to getting injured. The supine nature of pilates, plus the assistance of working with the apparatus lent itself to keeping injured dancers active, strong, and helped rehabilitate them faster. It took off.
I’d be remiss to omit the reminder that dancers have always had a reputation for taking…let’s just say…extreme measures to maintain their size. Keep in mind that this is way, way pre the “strong is the new skinny” discourse of the early aughts (which is, for the record, equally problematic). The most influential classical ballet choreographer of the 20th century, George Balanchine, quite famously liked his dancers not just thin, but frail. This was also the 50s and 60s—an era where a healthy diet consisted of cabbage soup, speed, and ripping ciggs. A generous portion of his dancer clientele also likely had a genetic predisposition to be thin which contributed to their success in dance in the first place. These clients looked that way before they started doing pilates. So did the models and Instagram baddies claiming they have a program to get you their body.
If you’ve never heard the ol chestnut that correlation is not causation, here’s an example that makes it makes sense:
“People are more likely to swim and eat ice cream in the summer. As a result, as ice cream sales go up, so does the rate of drowning. This doesn’t mean ice cream causes drowning, it just means higher ice cream consumption and drowning opportunities are happening at the same time.” The same is true for thin people and pilates.
Furthermore, it wasn’t even Joe’s intention for pilates to be a weight loss method. Sure, he often spoke of “sculpting” his students bodies…but not in the framing we think of it today. English was his second language and he relied heavily on hands on corrections to get his students in alignment…literally manually placing them into correct form.
One of my favorite anecdotes from Caged Lion was a story of a woman knocking on the door of the original pilates studio, and Joe answering it by asking “Why are you here?” to which she replied “ To get rid of the bulge in my lower abdomen.” Joe’s response was to slam the door in her face and declare “We don’t do that here.” Days later she returned , and he asked her the same question, but it was only when her reply changed to “I want to learn your method of exercise” that he welcomed her into the space.
Egotistical and a bit arrogant? Yeah…but a hell of a lot better than the “earn your dinner” rhetoric we get from so many fit pros these days. This isn’t to say that he was a champion for body neutrality or body acceptance…there are plenty of other problematic anecdotes from the book, trust. It is, at the very least, a good reminder that an effective movement practice should be designed to help you feel and move better, not get closer to a beauty ideal.
There is the possibility that pilates could change your appearance, but I wouldn’t hold your breath, nor would Joe have wanted you to approach it that way. Not everyone displays visible muscle definition, no matter how much they work out, it doesn’t mean the actual tone of the muscle isn’t improved. The tone rant is a rant for another day… but daily reminder that muscle tone means the amount of tension in a relaxed muscle, and has nothing to do with your appearance. The modification of your appearance is dependent on so many variables, as a matter of fact, that I find it pointless to even factor into an equation if when you say you wanna workout to get healthy, you actually mean healthy…and you’re not just trying to figure out a PC way to say you want to be thin.
There are, however, other things I CAN promise pilates definitely will do:
Increase body awareness
Strengthen your core
Encourage mindfulness
Release stress
Help you regulate your nervous system
Sleep better at night
There’s also a chance you’ll have what they call a “core-gasm” and I mean, really, if you need some motivation to workout that is ALL YOU NEED
…plus so much more. Might that come with increased visible muscle definition? Perhaps. Do I believe in it as a creative, mentally stimulating, athletic, empowering, grounding, mood-boosting option to increase your overall well-being? Absolutely! Unfortunately, that’s a harder sell than fear mongering and fat-phobia and we get stuck with a lot of “10 days to washboard pilates abs” videos popping up in our feeds.
This is where I usually start to lose people when I post about this on Tiktok and start getting comments like “Not true, it worked for me!”. To which I think, great! If you found a way to move that feels good for you that happens to change your body and that’s a goal of yours, then that sounds like a success for you and for you specifically. The issue with this line of thinking, however is the following:
a) It lacks the nuanced understanding that one’s body shape can’t be controlled as easily as the fitness industry would have you think. There are so many RDNs and exercise scientists out there who can explain this to you in science-y terms but all you really need to know is the “even if we all ate and exercised the same, we’d still look different”. Just because your friend lost 10 pounds doing pilates and hot girl walks doesn’t mean you will—though you should definitely try it if you in fact ENJOY pilates and hot girl walks.
b) The expectation is that exercise only “works” if it shrinks what you want shrunk/builds what you want built. Some people get stronger physically but might not notice a ton of visible difference. That doesn’t make it a waste of time. So many of the benefits of exercise can’t be seen with the naked eye, but they’re arguably more valuable than getting marginally closer to a beauty ideal you physically cannot ever reach by it’s very design.
c) Thinking of exercise as a tool for editing your appearance can encourage a disordered, transactional relationship with it. You might miss out on all the positive mental health benefits if you’re too busy beating yourself up for your body not doing what the Youtuber with butt implants does. Exercising and eating “clean” purely because you hate your body is just as unhealthy as never moving and subsisting solely on Pringles. This mindset also makes you more likely to dread working out, making it a vicious cycle that repeats each time you see a new fad diet/program.
Conclusion
It has not been proven that pilates gives you long lean lines. In the back of your mind you know this. If you are anything like the average American, you’ve been on many diets and tried many different gyms. Chances are you still have things you dislike about your body. Please don’t let me discourage you from trying a method that brings me a great deal of personal joy… just go in with realistic expectations and a body neutral mindset to get the most bang for your buck. With pilates, you might see more muscle definition! You might not! One is not better than the other. Pilates is not for hot girls. Pilates is for everyone.
If I haven’t totally discouraged you from getting into pilates, and you are indeed looking to get stronger, more relaxed, more energized, more dropped into your body, more connected to your pelvic floor (you know what that means!), more mobile, less achey, more YOU, you can try my online workouts for 10 days, totally free and find more info about the membership over on Helen Phelan Studio.
Recommended reading: Caged Lion: Joseph Pilates & His Legacy by John Howard Steel (Bookshop affiliate link)