As Margaret Talbot writes in The New Yorker, what we think about exercise today as being a good thing wasn’t always so. Here is an excerpt.
“For much of the twentieth century, as the journalist Danielle Friedman writes in her canny and informative new book, “Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise an Reshaped the World” exercise has not always been recognized as an unassailable good.
Friedman describes a 1956 radio interview in which Mike Wallace, later of “60 Minutes” fame, expresses incredulity at the vision set forth by the pioneering fitness advocate Bonnie Prudden. “You think there should be a formal exercise, a kind of ‘joy through strength’ period for husband, wife, and family when the father gets home from work at six-thirty at night, before the Martinis?” he marvels. “You think we should have a routine, all of us?””
- Jet Cannon
