Pilates is having a moment. According to Women’s Health, Pilates has seen the largest uptick in its popularity within the last five years, where participation has grown from 9.2 million people to 12.9 million. It’s also become one of the trendiest workouts you can engage in on social media.
If you’re a single man who’s aware of this boom in the slightest, you might find yourself becoming more interested in a woman who does Pilates. It’s certainly a phenomenon some women are experiencing firsthand, but the discourse surrounding it is a little darker than you might think. And it all goes back to the manosphere, an umbrella term for an array of online communities that promote masculinity through misogynistic and anti-feminist discourse. Think of influential men who’ve experienced recent popularity, like Andrew Tate or “Clavicular” (Branden Peters), who’ve spewed rhetoric on social media to other young men.
For example: A few months ago, I wrote about a moment between a couple on the reality show Love Is Blind that went immensely viral online. A couple who initially had a lot of promise ended up in turmoil when contestant Chris told his partner Jessica that she doesn’t have the body he’s “used to” and was looking for someone who does Pilates.
Gen Z Men Want to Be “Obeyed” by Women
Along with other terrible statistics, a new survey shows that 33% of Gen Z men believe that they should have the final say in a relationshipMore recently, an episode of the hit podcast “Call Her Daddy” brought up a similar topic: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Jessi Draper reveals her soon-to-be ex-husband also had multiple conversations with her regarding a desire for her to do Pilates more. It sparked a viral post on X asking if the preference for women who do Pilates is driven by the manosphere.
Let’s get one thing immediately clear: Maybe you’re a man who wants to date a woman who works out regularly. There’s nothing wrong with having that particular preference. But there is a stark difference. A recent report from The 19th News unveils that, yes, there are certainly ties to “manosphere” men desiring women who do Pilates, and that’s a problem.
Unless you are a personal trainer who’s being paid to share this kind of information with a female client, telling a woman, no matter how well you know her, what workout you think they should be doing is controlling and weird. This doesn’t apply if you have a partner who simply enjoys doing Pilates for their own personal reasons and you don’t have weirdly strong feelings about it. It’s popular for a reason!
But The 19th raises an image of the “Pilates girl” that many of these male manosphere influencers promote: “A woman who engages in what they see as a feminine form of exercise, one that doesn’t result in bulky muscles. The Pilates girl doesn’t go to the gym where she might encounter other men. (They might look at her! She might look at them!) Instead, she opts for 50-minute classes that are assumed to be filled with other white, lithe women.” (The Pilates community has deeper controversy about who it often caters to, including race, body types, social class and even political values.)
The desire here is rooted in control and upholding a certain image. Why date a girl who lifts heavy weights and wears skin-tight clothes in a gym packed with — gasp! — other men when you could be with the Pilates girl? And it’s arguably better than going to the gym because men go there, and no man in the history of time has ever taken a Pilates class, right?
As the article also points out, social media often connects someone who does Pilates with a softer and slower aesthetic. To these men, their dream girl may opt for a quiet Friday night so they can get up and go to Pilates in the morning. They might have a “clean” or “wholesome” lifestyle. (I’m sure no one has ever gone to a morning Pilates class hungover or even still drunk with their makeup on from the night before.)
These lifestyle characteristics very easily mesh into ideals that many manosphere-centered men say they desire in a wife, and it’s all rather misogynistic: submissive, attractive and skinny by societal standards, willing to stay at home (maybe embracing a trad-wife lifestyle), and very feminine. But you can’t simply equate a woman who’s interested in Pilates with these other notions. The truth is that anyone can do Pilates, even people who, in a social media and manosphere lens, don’t “look” like they should or could.
It’s mentioned in the article from The 19th that “the manosphere has a ‘rigid conceptualization of what a woman should be,’” so really, this kind of generalization makes sense. What it really comes down to is the men who want their “Pilates girl.” In these instances, “Pilates” doesn’t just mean Pilates. It means something a little more disturbing.
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