Running, gyms, and trainers as mass middle-class practice barely existed before 1965

Evidence

So let’s remind ourselves of a really significant change in the life of the United States that has happened within the lifetime of at least some of the readers of this book: the rise of an “exercise culture” across the last half century. It is hard to overemphasize how new and how broad this change has really been. It will shock any American under the age of fifty to learn that, once upon a time, nobody in the United States “went running.” Indeed, you couldn’t go to the store and buy a pair of “running shoes” in, say, 1965—because such a thing did not exist. … But you didn’t want to “go for a jog.” Because “jogging” wasn’t a thing. … Unless they happened to be a powerlifter or a prizefighter. Because there were no “gyms” that welcomed ordinary go-to-work-on-Monday-morning professional adults. “Gym” was for high schoolers. Grown-ups of the middle class might go to a “club,” and they might play tennis or golf. But they certainly did not have a “trainer”—and taking a walk was understood to be “exercise.” — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 193

Categorization

• CANDY: The Chuck Taylor / no-running-shoes-in-1965 detail is a fun, self-contained conversation fact.
• XREF: Pairs with the file’s own use of exercise-culture as a case of sweeping lifestyle change; resonates with Naomi Klein-era accounts of manufactured mass behavior change.