on oneself, one’s success, on having control over one’s life and happiness. Contemporary critics such as historian Benjamin Rader were already referring to a “new strenuosity” and the “strenuous life,” that is, an industrious and relentless lifestyle, one that Americans were once again being exhorted to embrace and that was subject to a new round of evangelization.80 Here Rader was alluding to one of the most famous speeches in US history, one that dates back more than a century. In 1899, New York governor and future president Theodore Roosevelt had called on Americans to embrace such a “strenuous life”: an indefatigable, industrious, physically active way of life that would equip them to survive in a globally competitive environment and the Darwinian struggle for existence. In Europe as well, achievement through physical training and healthy eating are not inventions of the 1970s, even if it was then that they entered a boom phase and ushered in the age of fitness. The history of fitness dates to the nineteenth century, and in fact we can trace it still further back.81
Notes
1 1. Gamper, “Radrennfahrer,” 197–202.
2 2. However, this also includes those who, for example, step onto the scales regularly. Around 20 percent of Americans are said to practice self-tracking in the narrower sense, with this figure referring to 2013. Not least due to the many different forms tracking may take, the numbers vary greatly; Fox and Duggan, “Tracking for Health.”
3 3. QS: Quantified Self: Self Knowledge Through Numbers – Deutsche Community, http://qsdeutschland.de/info/ (accessed May 9, 2016).
4 4. Rippberger, “Fitness-Apps”; Schmedt, “Fitness-Tracker”; Swan, “Quantified Self”; Crawford et al., “Our Metrics, Ourselves,” 490–4. For a summary, see also Duttweiler et al., Leben nach Zahlen.
5 5. Lupton, Quantified Self, 3; Lupton, “Self-Tracking Citizenship”; for a concept of citizenship that has been expanded in a particularly productive way, see Rose and Novas, “Biological Citizenship”; Honneth, Anerkennung; see also Cooper, Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference.
6 6. Volkwein, “Introduction”; Volkwein quotes from, among other things, 1996 guidelines issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Bauman, Liquid Modernity; Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life.
7 7. Volkwein, “Introduction,” xi, xv.
8 8. Bröckling, “Prävention,” 214. See also Bröckling, Gute Hirten führen sanft, 73–112, on prevention and “the power of prophylaxis.” On prevention as a “cultural technology of modernity,” see Lengwiler and Madarász, “Präventionsgeschichte.”
9 9. See Judith Butler’s performance concept, as explained in Butler, “Performative Acts.”
10 10. Biltekoff, Eating Right, 5–6.
11 11. Crawford et al., “Our Metrics, Ourselves,” 487. On the Microsoft ad from 2014, see Rubino, “Microsoft Band”; Mackert and Martschukat, “Introduction: Critical Ability History.”
12 12. Butler, Bodies that Matter. See also Bauman, “Postmodern Uses of Sex.”
13 13. See Metzl and Kirkland (eds.), Against Health; Guthman, Weighing In, which also addresses the debate on “healthism” and the normative elements in the pursuit of health; on this topic, see also Crawford, “Healthism.”
14 14. On participation under dictatorships and state socialism, see, for example, Lüdtke, “Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,” or Offermann, “Socialist Responsibilization.”
15 15. McRuer, “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness”; McRuer, Crip Theory; Mackert, “Writing the History.”
16 16. Anon., “Deutschland verfettet”; Froböse et al., Der DKV-Report 2018. On performance or efficiency as a modern paradigm, see Verheyen, Die Erfindung der Leistung.
17 17. There is a wealth of references to choose from, such as Saguy, What’s Wrong With Fat?, 107ff.; Gilman, Obesity; Biltekoff, Eating Right. See also, for example, Pollack, “A.M.A. Recognizes Obesity”; Bakalar, “Obesity Rates”; Anon, “Übergewicht in Deutschland”; CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, “Obesity and Overweight,” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm (May 11, 2016); “The State of Obesity – Better Policies for a Healthier America, Obesity Rates and Trends,” http://stateofobesity.org/rates/ (May 11, 2016); Hales et al., “Differences in Obesity.”
18 18. Kim et al., “Causation or Selection.”
19 19. See, for example, Gard, End of the Obesity Epidemic; Saguy, What’s Wrong?; Frommeld, “Fit statt fett”; and on “excess weight” and life expectancy, see Afzal et al., “Change in Body Mass Index.”
20 20. Wirtz, “Fit statt fett”; Geyer, “Fit statt fett”; for an early campaign, see Essen und Trimmen – beides muß stimmen, Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung (c. 1976), and Bundeszentrale für Gesundheitliche Aufklärung, Essen und trimmen, beides muß stimmen. On nudging, see Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge; Hildebrandt, “Stups zum Glück.” Just how paradigmatic “nudging” is to the governance of liberal societies becomes clear if one reads the book by Thaler and Sunstein together with Michel Foucault’s studies of governmentality: Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, and Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. See also Foucault’s remarks on power as decentral and as action that acts upon the action of others; Foucault, “Subject and Power.”
21 21. Sutton, “First Lady”; see also the website of “Let’s Move” at https://letsmove.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ (May 12, 2016); for a summary, see Martschukat, “On Choice.”
22 22. The UK, for example, introduced a sugar tax in 2016: Triggle, “Sugar Tax”; similar taxes have been imposed in the United States, for example in Philadelphia and parts of California; “Tax Soda to Help Fight Obesity,” Bloomberg Opinion, May 14, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-14/tax-soda-and-other-sugary-drinks-to-fight-obesity (accessed November 13, 2018).
23 23. Foucault, Society Must Be Defended.
24 24. Mollow and McRuer, “Fattening Austerity”; Scholl (ed.), Körperführung.
25 25. Mollow and McRuer, “Fattening Austerity”; Kreisky, “Fitte Wirtschaft”; Graf, “Leistungsfähig.”
26 26. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 15–50, quote on 21, “portfolio value” on 33, homo oeconomicus and politicus on 87.
27 27. Rose, “Molecular Biopolitics,” 11; Rose, Powers of Freedom; Rose and Novas, “Biological Citizenship”; Dean, Governing Societies.
28 28. Rose and Novas, “Biological Citizenship,” 451.
29 29. Pateman, Sexual Contract; Mills, Racial Contract.
30 30. Willard, A Wheel within a Wheel.
31 31. A change of this kind has also taken place in the cultural and social sciences, where malleability and performativity have gradually gained acceptance as paradigms, in the shape of “doing gender,” “doing race,”
