UCSF

Gym practices often naturalize masculinity. Many scholars debate exactly how men naturalize these practices. Some suggest that men internalize gym practices simply by working out. However, this angle often leaves questions about how men reconcile representations of masculinity with their actual practices and social location. Applying a cultural capital approach may, then, be the best way to explore these questions. Pierre Bourdieu suggests that individuals develop their preferences through deploying cultural capital, or cultural resources, within a given cultural field. Other theorists have applied this cultural capital framework to various fitness arenas, such as boxing gyms and fitness centers. However, since cultural capital develops over time, transfers to varying degrees across different cultural fields, and reproduces the social structure, any exploration of the concept must also take these components into account. How, then, do fitness practices reproduce masculinity and the social structure?

To study these three components of cultural capital in relation to fitness practices, I conducted an exploratory study that examines how men acquire and deploy cultural capital. To do so, I applied qualitative methods through in-depth interviews and applied a grounded theory design. I then interviewed 35 men between two different gyms. In accordance with grounded theory, I applied theoretical and purposive sampling to develop codes, categories, and themes of behavior.

Results showed that men acquire and develop fitness practices through early interactions with adults, peers, and early cultural fields, such as educational institutions. Results also revealed patterns among men in how the cultural field shapes cultural capital. These patterns include variations within a cultural field themselves (such as a football player) and crossover between differing cultural fields (an adult entertainer and a model. Next, I examined how cultural fields reproduce both social status and masculinity. By examining occupations, men reproduce three patterns of work: labor-intensive occupations, aesthetic-oriented occupations, and white-collar professions. These occupations affect how men deployed cultural capital and created differing body types. Finally, men of color internalize dominant standards of masculinity through navigating White-dominated cultural fields.

The current study puts forward a new concept known as fitness capital as a means of addressing the limitations in previous fitness studies’ application of cultural capital. Fitness capital provides a conceptual framework that has been missing from previous analyses of cultural capital. Fitness capital addresses how individual cultural fields reproduce masculinities in the context of social stratification. In the conclusions, I discuss how this concept and the findings have sociological implications for how individuals interact within a larger cultural field.