WOMEN AND MEN IN THE FITNESS CLUBS

Abstract

The process of focusing on the body is expressed in many ways and consists of many activities. Appearance is becoming more important and is treated as the external image of personality. It is also a way of defining ourselves in the context of others. Hence, a greater focus on body and appearance. The part of this process is using a variety of services. In this way the bodies are in the hands of experts and institutions. The fitness centers are, what Anthony Giddens called, expert systems and are in fact institutions specializing in specific services for the body. They are also specific social worlds, characterized by distinctiveness and validity of certain rules, rituals of interactions, including what Erving Goffman calls “the idioms of the body”. An important elements of interactions in the fitness center is the sex. Not only activity in a given space, but also who the other participants are seems to be very important. In the fitness center social actors act according to certain rules and some of them are related to gender. The empirical data of the article is taken from in-depth interviews with the fitness centers’ customers.