The Naked Truth About Fitness Barbara Ehrenreich Analysis

In Barbara Ehrenreich’s “The Naked Truth about Fitness”, she discusses multiple varying ideas from health vs. healthism, virtue redefining health, to social class impact on health (Ehrenreich, 2015, pp. 337-339). The ideology created from the obsession with extreme health defines healthism that produces a base for moral standards. Although healthism has a limit of rightness within it, it still produces judgment as an outcome. Individuals’ obsession to achieve virtue transforms health into healthism. People spend time on improving health to seem morally “good”. Taking time to exercise and eat right to improve health can sacrifice time with other commitments society makes. These commitments range from relationships, family, or even work. Ehrenreich states, “‘Commit to get fit!’ is the current slogan, the verb reminding us of the moral tenacity that has become so elusive in our human relationships” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 338). Individuals commit to physical health to achieve moral “goodness”. People sacrifice relationships with other individuals to
Ehrenreich proclaims, “Health is almost universally recognized as a kind of virtue” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 338). Based on the decisions a person chooses, society may not consider him or her morally “good”. Ehrenreich explains that society redefines virtue as health and argues that society has made health a moral issue (Ehrenreich, 2015, p.337). The redefinition of virtue puts health choices as the main reason whether an individual is “good or bad” instead of the individual’s actions and character. Consequently, health has become a moral issue due to its judgmental state. Ehrenreich declares, “To say we want to be healthy is to gravely understate the case. We want to be good” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 337). Society’s standards base if an individual has moral standards because he or she has physical