Classed Classes: How Racism and Capitalism Appear in the Branding and Practice of Pilates

The practice of Pilates, from its inception, has been heavily oriented toward the goal of achieving bodily perfection. Though bodily perfection can be considered either a mental or physical state, it always ultimately circles back to the overriding concept of perfection. Joseph Pilates, the German founder of the practice, was an ill child who was determined to heal. He put in so much effort to perfecting his body that he eventually was used for anatomy drawings (Joseph Pilates). After bringing himself to a state of health through years of experimentation in exercise, he started Pilates as a way to rehabilitate wounded soldiers confined in the same prisoner of war camp where he was held in England (Pc-Admin). After the war, Pilates ended up moving to New York and opening a practice that primarily catered to dancers who needed to heal and prevent injuries (Pc-Admin). After ballerinas, the society ladies of New York City began practicing, and after them rich Hollywood stars took part thanks to a studio that opened in Beverly Hills hoping to achieve the same bodily perfection (thinness and tone) that Pilates and his ballerina clients demonstrated (Sopala). The practice has continued into the present day, and the practice is just as elitist as it was when it first came to the attention of the moneyed classes in the United States.

My research explores how classed and raced femininity appear in the marketing and practice of Pilates. Pilates history and present practice both include roadblocks to the practice for those who aren’t wealthy. Whether it be socially-encoded workout clothing, expensive classes, or simply intimidating social barriers to entry, the world of Pilates is not welcoming to marginalized groups such as people of color and those in the lower socio-economic class. Through my research I determined that white supremacy and classism are inextricable elements of the fundamental concepts and branding of Pilates due to its history and social and financial barriers to entry.

The literature on Pilates is sparse, so while I was able to find some sources specifically on Pilates as a brand of exercise, I primarily had to use sources on thinness, racism, and classism and apply them to Pilates through my own reasoning. Almost all of the literature I read on these subjects agreed that the concept of thinness is a raced and classed one that is deeply ingrained in our society. I will begin by using Rosalind Gill’s work, “Neoliberal Beauty,” which discusses how beauty relates to neoliberalism. Gill argues that current beauty and body standards connect to neoliberalism by making women view their bodies as a project to constantly work towards perfecting. Gill writes, “consumption and self-transformation are entangled with neoliberalism and are profoundly gendered, with women called on disproportionately to makeover and manage their bodies” (Gill 11). The word “manage” is very relevant to the work “The Pilates Pelvis: Racial Implications of the Immobile Hips” by Sarah Holmes, and is very important to my research as well.

In “The Pilates Pelvis: Racial Implications of the Immobile Hips,” Sarah Holmes looks at how Pilates instruction reinforces racist stereotypes surrounding the movement of the hips and pelvis. As Gill puts it, beauty and body standards today are focused on “managing” and controlling the body. I would like to extend Holmes’ research to add in my own words, “so that the European body does not resemble the Black or Latino body.” Holmes confirms this thought in her writing about polycentrism. Holmes writes, “with respect to movements of the core and torso, ‘Polycentrism (more than one center moving at one time) runs counter to academic European aesthetics, where the ideal is to initiate movement from one locus—the nobly lifted, upper center of the aligned torso, well above the pelvis’” (Holmes 2014 66-67). Holmes further elaborates on this point when she writes, “Pilates rhetoric dictates how the body ‘can’ and ‘should’ or ‘should not’ move,” which results in the hips being “stripped of extraneous movements” (Holmes 2014 67). Because of the immobilization of the hips, “the spine becomes elongated, and the body becomes more ‘regal’” (Holmes 2014 67). What all of these restrictions add up to, is a body that is as far from resembling the stereotyped movements of a Black or Latino body as possible. However, the idea of control doesn’t just apply to the body’s movements, it also applies to the thinness of the body and the inherent social value placed upon a thin body.

In our society, it is very clear that the thinner a body is, the more value it holds. In “Creating Thin, Fit Bodies: The View from SoCal,” Susan Greenhalgh collects and analyzes essays from her students at UC Irvine to see how the values of thinness seep into people’s day to day lives, and where thinness may have gotten its more mainstream value from. Greenhalgh uses the specific example of former body-builder and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to make “fighting the obesity epidemic a personal cause” (Greenhalgh 46). Greenhalgh also writes about California's anti-obesity plan, “while noting that the epidemic affects everyone, it points out that obesity affects those of lower-income and minority backgrounds the most,” and, “heavy people are a burden on the state and the taxpayer; they are, the report implies, either irresponsible and/or poorly educated citizens whose understandings and behaviors must be changed” (Greenhalgh 46). Together, these quotes combine to say that fatness is seen as a lower-class trait, and that fatness can be blamed on a person’s lower-class status. When reasoned that way, the tangled web of classism, racism, and thinness becomes even more knotted.

Greenhalgh’s work connects to a second article by Holmes titled “Bodily Text and the Written Word of Pilates: A Theoretical Approach to How the Ballerina’s Body Concealed and Revealed Problematic Ideologies in an Exercise Practice,” which focuses on how the body of the ballerina was essential to creating what the ideal woman looks like today. While Greenhalgh is more focused on present day racism and classism in beauty standards, Holmes gives a historical background to the ideas we see today. Holmes writes,

“The emotive comportment and docile behavior of the ballerina was a ‘safe’ identity for white women, both physically and emotionally. Leisure-class women repositioned their Venus-like contrapuntal, sloping shoulders, ‘elongated’ their bodies (thereby squaring off their shoulders), and all the while did not ‘bulk’ or excessively tax their bodies” (Holmes 2018 7).

This quote helps explain how current beauty standards came to be what they are. Upper-class women trained in a way that masculinized their form by making them drop fat from their bodies, making them much more angular. However, this form came from practices done by ballerinas (who are the epitome of femininity), so thinness and angularity became associated with upper-class femininity and thus also whiteness.

In Maria Angelica Rodriguez’s thesis, Performing Whiteness: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Racism in Ballet, Rodriguez further explains how ballet helps to create these racist beauty standards. Rodriguez writes, “reproducing the harshness of the discipline, including authoritarianism, seems to be part of the tradition and necessary to achieve results” (Rodriguez 24). The ideas presented thus far connect to two of the six principles of pilates: centering and control. Ballerinas spend most of their professional lives focused on controlling and centering their bodies in order to fit into the “harshness of the discipline” of ballet. When ballerinas bring this to Pilates, they introduce the idea that the thinness displayed by those who practice Pilates is achievable only by those with the ultimate levels of self-discipline. This implies by association that the thin, rich, white women who practice Pilates are the most self-disciplined, and the rest of the population are lazy in comparison and that is why they are not thin.

To research how the branding of Pilates perpetuates the classed and racist origins of the practice, I looked primarily at articles from lifestyle, culture, and news publications such as Vogue, Elle, and The New York Times, online “Aesthetic Databases” such as Aesthetics Wiki, and social media posts from Instagram and Pinterest. I decided to use these sources because they give me a good view of how mainstream media views Pilates. This is an illuminating way to research classism and racism in the branding of Pilates because it reflects what the majority of the population who are not experts on the topic are being taught about who can practice Pilates and what it should look like.

The main takeaways of my research were that many of these publications preach an inclusivity that they don’t support with the products they promote, and almost all of the imagery surrounding Pilates is of extremely thin white women despite proponents preaching that Pilates is for everyone. A source that served as a jumping off point for my other data collection was an article from Elle titled “Your Comprehensive Guide to Achieving the Pink Pilates Princess Aesthetic a la Hailey Bieber.” The article includes images of Bieber from her Instagram, and links to various clothing brands she has been seen in such as Frankie’s Bikinis, the luxury swim and clothing brand based in Venice, CA. The article also mentions the expensive “Hailey Bieber” smoothie that can be bought at the California based luxury grocery store Erewhon, and getting coffee from another California luxury staple, Alfred’s (Gilchrist).

I also looked at an article by Rachel Strugatz for The New York Times titled “Is This the Most Expensive Pilates Class?” This article is about the Pilates studio, Forma, run by Liana Levi who is dedicated to creating the most exclusive Pilates space possible. For example, Levi says, “I’m trying to be in L.A., New York, Miami, Paris, London — in hot spots where my clients go to. I’m not going to Chicago, I’m not going to Atlanta, I’m not going to Canada,” showing exactly who her classes are and aren’t for (Strugatz).

Another large portion of my data collection involved looking at social media posts. For this portion of my research, I went on Instagram and Pinterest and created folders of the first 10 posts that came up under the following searches: “Pilates,” “Pilates Aesthetic,” “Pilates Princess,” and “Pink Pilates Princess.” I used these search variations because they were all terms that have been trending in relation to Pilates on social media recently. The results of this search were entirely what I expected them to be. All of my folders, regardless of the terms searched, featured images of thin, young, white women and images of things like luxury workout clothes, grocery hauls, and smoothies. I decided that the results of my searches weren’t changed enough by changing the keywords searched, so I will be analyzing them all together as opposed to differently based on the search terms.

My research supported the idea that Pilates practice and branding have created a space of exclusivity where only rich, thin, white women are made to feel like they truly belong. The exclusivity begins in the fact that Pilates classes are expensive. This is exacerbated by people like Liana Levi who strive to make the most exclusive space they can, based primarily on socioeconomic and cultural status of their clients. Strugatz writes, “Ms. Levi has three Los Angeles studios—on Melrose Avenue and Melrose Place in West Hollywood and in the original pool house—where two-to-four-person classes cost $100. Ms. Levi charges $500 for a private studio session and $650 for a house call. Eight-person reformer classes in SoHo cost $75” (Strugatz). However, the exclusivity does not end with the prices; the exclusivity is also based on location. As mentioned earlier, Levi says, “I’m trying to be in L.A., New York, Miami, Paris, London — in hot spots where my clients go to. I’m not going to Chicago, I’m not going to Atlanta, I’m not going to Canada” (Strugatz). All of these cities have wealthy people willing to pay for Levi’s services, what the latter cities have that the former don't have are populations that are significantly made up of people of color. What Levi says with the choice to not expand to cities like Chicago or Atlanta, is that she does not view Black or Brown people as having enough money or cultural clout to build the exclusivity and mystique of her practice. She claims that her clients aren’t there, but she has complete control over who her clients are. So, whether it is intentional or not, she is blocking Black and Brown people's access and increasing the racism seen in the exclusivity of Pilates.

With extremely daunting entry fees and exclusions, once you are in a Pilates class, there is the question of what to wear to a class. This is another area where price creates a barrier to entry. There has been an evolution in even just the past decade in how “experts” have been telling people they should dress for Pilates class. In 2018, Elle Magazine published an article titled “What to Wear to a Reformer Pilates Class” where the expert says you should wear “something that moves with you and doesn’t hinder you” (Chang). The expert mentions only that clothing should be able to be moved in, she never references any sort of luxury fabrics being necessities. However, in the section of the article where the Elle editors link clothing options, the links include $275 leggings, a $129 sports bra, and special, $17.50 grip socks (Chang). This article can be contrasted with the previously mentioned Elle article about achieving the Pilates Princess Aesthetic that focuses primarily on what trending brands help the consumer fit a very specific look (that look being the look of thin white influencers). The more recent article focuses significantly less on the ability of a person to move in an article of clothing. In this way, the popular image of Pilates has moved away from emphasizing comfort and function, and has moved more towards emphasizing a classed, consumer-culture idea and brand that excludes entire socio-economic groups.

While workout clothes are becoming more classed and exclusive based on activity, the underlying activities are also becoming more inaccessible from the viewpoint of mental health. In a Teen Vogue article from September of 2024, four editors of the magazine compared how various workout outfits impacted their Pilates experience. This article focused much more on mental experience than any of the other articles did. On this subject, the author writes, “as fashion people, we understand how much an outfit can make or break something. So, while working out is the focus, feeling and looking good while doing so is always at the top of our minds” (Ishamel). It is positive that the mental as opposed to solely the physical (slimming) effects are being mentioned, however, it also places a burden on young women in the sense that they may believe that if they aren’t leaving a Pilates class feeling mentally rejuvenated they are doing something wrong. This idea creeps into the realm of neoliberalism in the sense that it is another realm for women to feel like they must constantly be improving. Gill writes, “Rather than representing a loosening of the grip of punishing appearance standards for women, it is an escalation – the additional move of beauty into the arena of subjectivity. This resonates with wider tendencies in neoliberalism which requires subjects who work on their characters and psychic dispositions, and follow appropriate ‘neoliberal feeling rules’” (Gill 15).
These ideas all joined together in the Instagram and Pinterest posts I investigated. One of the most glaringly obvious issues I found in the posts promoted on Instagram and Pinterest was the lack of diversity in the images. Of the approximately 70 posts I saw that featured women in them, only eight of those women were not white. The previously discussed connections between ballet and Pilates allows us to use Rodriguez’s thesis to investigate this phenomenon. Rodriguez writes, “Ballet also gives material expression to whiteness as an ideology. Whiteness as the background of the ballet institution shapes ideas of beauty and dynamics of inclusion/exclusion assigning privilege to certain bodies. In such a way, it is compliant with an exclusive approach to notions of beauty and presupposes racist attitudes and racist behaviors of various kinds” (Rodriguez 54). When applied to Pilates, Rodriguez explains that the lack of images of Black women in Pilates establishes an unspoken hierarchy. It would be easy to argue that there are fewer images of Black women doing Pilates because fewer Black women take part in the practice. However, this is easily challenged by the question, “why are there so few Black women practicing Pilates?” When all of the images of Pilates feature only white women, why would any non-white women view the space as somewhere welcoming or accessible to them?

The current social media imagery surrounding Pilates, not only excludes women of color, it also reinforces a very hegemonic idea of the nuclear family and traditional gender-roles, further ostracizing those who do not see themselves in that category. One of the first examples I found of this was on Instagram. A post came up of two thin, white women working out in unison with text on the screen that read “Marriage is scary. What if he doesn’t want to pay for my Pilates classes” (Miami Pilates)? The message of this post further ingrains classism in the practice of Pilates because of who it implies Pilates is for. This post says that the type of women who practice Pilates are coming from straight cis-gendered households with enough disposable income that the woman not only doesn’t need to work, but that her husband can also support her luxury pursuits. In addition to the family dynamic, the two women pictured are thin, white women, which implies that financial security is as inherent to these women as thinness and whiteness are. These women are achieving a peak level of femininity, and all other women who do not have lives that look like theirs are failing.

In this paper I have discussed the many ways racism and classism make their way into the practice and branding of Pilates. Whether it be through articles written for publications like Elle, or simply posts on Instagram, Pilates has become a space that is almost exclusively for thin, white women. Pilates is an interesting sociological study because it illustrates so many elements of “Neoliberal Beauty” in real life. For example, the constant need for self improvement, investment of financial resources into the self, and the belief that one's mental health must be constantly perfected are all at play in one singular form of exercise.

My research brought up a lot of questions for myself including whether or not I believe Pilates to be an inherently racist and/or classist practice. Initially I want to say (at least to the classist part) no, because of where Pilates came from. The seminal image of its original form depicts a simple mattress and springs. There were no clothing requirements, and anyone who was in the prison camp with Joseph could practice. However, once the practice moved to New York and took on a more peace-time, civilian format, I do think classism and racism became ingrained in the practice branded as Pilates, whether intentional or not. Joseph’s idealization of the ballerina’s body has played a crucial role in how Pilates and the women who practice it are seen today. If the Pilates-branded program of exercise had not become so strongly associated with such a hegemonic idea of femininity from such an early stage of its development I would believe that the racism and classism could be detangled from the practice, but unfortunately that is not reality.

None of this is to say that those who practice Pilates are racist or classist. I do think, however, that people who practice Pilates should on occasion reflect on why they want to participate. Is their goal health, fitness, or to get thinner? Where does their beauty standard come from? What are they trying to not look like? How do society's hierarchies play into why these people choose to practice this and not some other form of exercise, such as yoga, interval training, or dance?