“Competing personas”: aesthetic labor in the Chinese fitness industry

Abstract

AbstractGiven the proliferation of lifestyle consumption, industries such as the fields of fitness, fashion, and beauty and makeup have experienced rapid growth in terms of employment numbers, leading to fundamental challenges to working patterns. Based on ethnographic data concerning two fitness clubs in Shanghai collected over 13 months and 35 in-depth interviews with managers, fitness trainers, and customers, this article draws on the concept of aesthetic labor to examine how a “persona,” a combination of an ideal physique and a desirable personality in line with the aesthetic tastes of socioeconomically diverse clientele, is developed through the labor process of the fitness trainer. The author introduces the term “competing personas” to characterize shopfloor politics in the fitness industry. By understanding the process of packaging and selling their bodily, gendered, and affective resources as a “game,” fitness trainers draw symbolic boundaries to distinguish themselves from each other, thereby justifying their aesthetic competencies and self-identities. This article distinguishes three types of personas: advisor, friend, and idol, and these types are characterized by different corporeal and affective strategies. The article reveals how the exercise of agency by both male and female workers in the process of persona-building fuels the symbolic reproduction of class and gender inequalities by naturalizing the domination of an ostensibly legitimate taste.