Although many people may be unfamiliar with the term “athleisure,” and there have been debates around the proper usages and definitions of the term (Wilson 2018), it can be argued that the athleisure trend has become a symbol and central component of twenty-first-century Western Culture. Athleisure is generally understood as an umbrella term incorporating more familiar categories of “sports-gear,” “activewear,” “gym gear,” and “casual wear.” Peter Cowgill, executive director of Britain’s JD Sports, summarizes athleisure writing somewhat comically, “It’s the type of gear you can use in the gym and walk to the pub in” (Armstrong 2016, n.p.). Incorporating the yoga pants people wear at the grocery store, the bicycle shorts Kim Kardashian struts in around Los Angeles (Carder 2018), the tracksuits worn on fashion walkways in Paris (Yotka 2017), and the wrapped tops seen in boardrooms in Canada (Richard 2015), athleisure is so omnipresent that it has even been parodied by the famous American television Show, Saturday Night Live (SNL) (Low 2018), and Australia’s well-known YouTube group, Skit Box, in their “Activewear” YouTube video that has amassed over 6.2 million views (SkitBox 2015). The SNL skit is a three-minute parody of a Nike commercial advertising “pro-chiller leggings” with the tag-line “Designed for endurance, but used for what most women actually do in leggings: setting up shop on their couch” (Low 2018). Similarly in the Skit Box video, women are seen in activewear performing their daily activities: “Waiting for the bus in my activewear, buying activewear in my activewear, smoking on the street in my activewear, doing literally nothing in my activewear” (Skit Box 2015).
While these skits are parodies of activewear (and particularly women wearing activewear outside of
fitness or sporting spaces), they highlight an important cultural shift in Western
cultures: the rise and expansion of the athleisure
phenomenon.
Media articles recognize this shift with the following headlines: “Athleisure trend booms as sweatpants leave the gym” (Townsend and Rupp
2014); “Athleisure is not just a trend—it’s a fundamental shift in how people dress” (Green
2017); and “Athleisure: the emerging fashion statement that is becoming the new normal” (Hanson
2017). Yet the entire athleisure
phenomenon is much more than simply casual
clothing designed for physical activity. It is a complex entanglement of branding,
marketing, fabric, skin, sweat, fat,
muscle, consumption, capitalism, environmentalism,
gender, sexuality,
social media, healthism,
neoliberalism, and more. This chapter explores the athleisure
phenomenon, seeking to contextualize the popularity of activewear among women. In particular, we ask:
What has been the catalyst for this cultural shift?
Why are women primarily targeted in athleisure campaigns?
What are the embedded discourses and political underpinnings that support this international phenomenon?
How does the language of athleisure reflect discourses of neoliberalism and healthism?
These questions serve as the inspiration for the following discussion, explaining how activewear has become the uniform for many women in the twenty-first century. When a woman pulls on her yoga pants in the morning and steps onto the street, she is telling the world that she is going to (at some point in the day) take ownership of her own health and well-being and to participate in some form of physical activity. In cafes, train stations, bus tops, urban streets, supermarkets, and universities, her body—sometimes clothed in form fitting attire—is read (often subconsciously) by others as self-disciplining, a body “in control.” Whether she exercises that day or not is beside the point. Specifically we adopt a feminist approach to explore the connections between athleisure and discourses of neoliberalism, healthism, and consumerism.
The Athleisure Phenomenon
As discussed, there are varying definitions of the term “athleisure” and just as many ideas as to when the trend started (Rhone 2014; Wilson 2018). While it could be argued that athleisure started with the nylon tracksuits of the 1980s, the athletic apparel industry has seen expansive growth since 2010, particularly toward form-fitting clothing designed for physical activity (Rhone 2014). Since 2010, the sales of athletic apparel have outpaced all other apparel sales with an estimated 50% growth by 2020. More than halfway through this projection, apparel sales are still increasing with the trend evolving and continuing to gain popularity, especially among women (Salfino 2017). Women have been a major contributor to the success of the athleisure trend with women’s markets outpacing men’s markets, such that major companies are investing billions into their women’s departments.
Despite its gendered nature and intense presence in most Western societies (and Asian markets such as Japan, China and India), relatively little academic work has focused on athleisure from a socio-cultural perspective and its connection with prevailing neoliberal-healthist discourses, especially regarding how the language of athleisure contributes to these pervasive ideologies. To date, most academic research on activewear has focused on the material properties of the clothing (including claims about increased athletic performance) (Cox 2017; Hanhel 2017) and the business/marketing tactics used by athletic companies (Hyo Jung et al. 2015; O’Sullivan et al. 2017). When examining the material properties of sportswear, research has tended to use quantitative approaches to both explore claims made by companies as well as to study the use of athleisure for non-sports-related practices; for example, Hanhel (2017) explores the performance claims of clothing by testing a random selection of common activewear clothing items regarding their moisture management claims (wicking, quick dry, stay cool, breathability, water resistance, and wind resistant claims). In the field of sport and exercise science, Brophy-Williams et al. (2015) explore the effects of different sizes of compression clothing on athlete performance, while Bowles et al. (2011) examine the various features of sports bras that make them more or less appealing to Australian women.
Along with examining the material properties of athleisure clothing, research within marketing has examined the crossover between athlei...
