prevention as an approach to good health fully weirded people out- even the scientific community. But Ken was a man on a mission,
setting up the Aerobics Centre in Dallas – a complex containing
a 40-room hotel and laboratory, designed to attract champagne-
guzzling business executives who needed to learn the value of
cardiovascular fitness or die. As for the Regular Joe, they could
work out on their own. And they did. By the ’70s, gyms were packed
with fellas. But where could a lady go to get her fitness fix?
Once again, a woman would change the game – only this time, she
wasn’t a fitness expert. It was Academy Award-winning actress
Jane Fonda, aka Barbarella, aka the daughter of Henry Fonda, aka
Hollywood royalty, and a woman who would later reveal her intense
and enduring struggle with bulimia. Exercise was how Jane coped
with shit in her life (and attempted to keep her eating disorder in
check). But after injuring her foot on the set ofThe China Syndrome,
the sex symbol was unable to perform her regular ballet routines.
A new workout was required, and she found it in a Californian gym
run by Leni Cazden, who used long-duration exercise to battle
her own addiction to smoking. Jane didn’t just dig Leni’s aerobics
routines – she literally bought in. By 1979, they’d opened their own
fitness centre in Beverly Hills, Jane and Leni’s Workout, where Jane
herself would lead classes.
By the time she’d releasedJane Fonda’s Workout Book, which
spent two years onThe New York Timesbestseller list, she’d
become America’s biggest name in fitness. But she was about to
get bigger. It was the early ’80s, and a new technology was just
beginning to enter homes: the VCR. Not everyone had a player (Jane
didn’t even know anyone with a VCR at the time), but a New Yorker
called Stuart Karl was determined to get more videotapes into the
market. “Filling the gap betweenJawsandDeep Throat” was how
he described his operation – his range included tapes about homeimprovement and how to perform CPR. One evening, while taking a
stroll, Stuart’s wife stopped in front of a Jane Fonda Workout Book
display and wished she could get fit without having to contend with
the (mostly male) crowds at the gym. Instantly, Stuart sprang into
action, hustling Jane for a video – and talking politics at the same
time. They believed in the same things, so Jane agreed to take
part, bringing her trademark aerobic routines and ballet-inspired
aesthetic to the small screen (hence the leg warmers).
The original cassette sold 200,000 copies in its first year, and held
the number one spot on the Billboard chart for 145 weeks. Jane
Fonda workouts became the biggest-selling videos of all time,
cumulatively selling 17 million copies (that’s a lot of landfill). But
it changed how people exercised. Like Mary Bagot Stack’s fitness
revolution some 60 years earlier, the public once again had access
to rhythmic exercises set to music – and they bloody loved it.
Women felt empowered. Jane even received letters from people
in Guatemalan mud huts. And aerobics instructors leapt onto TV
screens worldwide. In 1990s Australia, Aerobics Oz Style became
essential viewing – particularly if you were a young lady-liking gent
discovering your sexuality, or a dude in prison (the main sources of
oneOz Styleinstructor’s fan mail).
Today, aerobics endures in so many forms: spin classes; step
classes; aqua aerobics; interval training; Carmen Electra’s
striptease aerobics (which is very popular in Sweden, by the
way). Then, of course, there’s competitive aerobics, a sport unto
itself. Kenneth Cooper is still going strong in Dallas, running long
distances while yelling, “Yay for aerobics!” (not his actual words),
and the Women’s League of Fitness and Beauty still operates under
the name The Fitness League. True, there aren’t so many G-string
leotards these days, but just wait. If aerobics has taught us anything,
it’s that you should always anticipate a comeback.Photo
Getty Images
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