1. The word fit meant appropriate or well suited in the 15th century.
2. Like something may be fit for a king, or not fit to be repeated.
3. In time, fitness found a moral impression — to mean worthiness.
4. Fit's modern sense, of athletic capacity, came in the 19th century.
5. First as a description for animals: racehorses, camels, then men.
6. Fit became fashionable, like feeling very fit, only in the 1890s.
7. By the 1920s, keep fit became an expression; to activate the body.
8. Thereafter, the age of hyper-individualism gave fitness a new form.
9. Fitness became a tool for a world that's trying to pit all against all.
10. So fitness evolved into an obligation — of the precarious worker.
11. Weak body of the tortured employee = symbol or crisis of society.
12. Which led to a fitness craze: 70s invention of jogging to 80s Viagra.
13. These days there's almost nothing that doesn’t impinge on fitness.
14. Everyone's required to take supplements, appify their sleep etc.
15. All so the obedient worker maximises next day's work productivity.
16. Self-care is useful, but militarised regimes that push heroism isn't.
17. An irony in all of this is gym culture: products of Arnie and Stallone.
18. Their extreme torsos are art, but not what we desire as fitness as such.
19. In other words, they're monstrous, and in a profound sense, useless.