"Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia"
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Ehrenreich’s line is a Molotov cocktail disguised as a wellness tip: it takes something socially celebrated (exercise) and forces it to share a moral frame with something stigmatized (bulimia). The jolt is the point. She’s not claiming a one-to-one medical equivalence; she’s accusing a class culture of laundering obsession through respectable packaging.
Calling it “the yuppie version” names the 1980s-into-90s professional-managerial milieu that treated the body like a résumé: proof of discipline, self-control, status, and “good choices.” Bulimia is a cycle of compulsion and purification; Ehrenreich suggests that, for affluent strivers, the gym can function as a socially approved purge for the same anxieties - not just about calories, but about guilt, idleness, aging, and the fear of falling behind. You don’t have to be visibly unwell to be caught in a logic of punishment.
The subtext is classic Ehrenreich: a critique of privatized solutions to structural problems. When work is insecure, time is scarce, and health care is commodified, “fitness” becomes both coping mechanism and moral badge. Exercise stops being movement and becomes penance, a way to pretend control over a life shaped by boss schedules, consumer pressure, and relentless self-optimization.
It also skewers how the culture polices bodies differently by class. Affluent compulsions are rebranded as “discipline” and “biohacking,” while similar compulsions elsewhere are pathologized. The line’s cruelty is calculated: it exposes the hypocrisy of a society that calls one person sick and another “motivated,” depending on the zip code and the brand of their sneakers.
Calling it “the yuppie version” names the 1980s-into-90s professional-managerial milieu that treated the body like a résumé: proof of discipline, self-control, status, and “good choices.” Bulimia is a cycle of compulsion and purification; Ehrenreich suggests that, for affluent strivers, the gym can function as a socially approved purge for the same anxieties - not just about calories, but about guilt, idleness, aging, and the fear of falling behind. You don’t have to be visibly unwell to be caught in a logic of punishment.
The subtext is classic Ehrenreich: a critique of privatized solutions to structural problems. When work is insecure, time is scarce, and health care is commodified, “fitness” becomes both coping mechanism and moral badge. Exercise stops being movement and becomes penance, a way to pretend control over a life shaped by boss schedules, consumer pressure, and relentless self-optimization.
It also skewers how the culture polices bodies differently by class. Affluent compulsions are rebranded as “discipline” and “biohacking,” while similar compulsions elsewhere are pathologized. The line’s cruelty is calculated: it exposes the hypocrisy of a society that calls one person sick and another “motivated,” depending on the zip code and the brand of their sneakers.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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