Actors’ workouts and diets have become an integral part of the superhero journey – but is our idea of a healthy body becoming skewed as a result?
Today’s fitness culture means that yesterday’s super-bod is even more attainable – which means actors’ transformations need to be even more dramatic than they once were. “Superman seems less impressive, and perhaps less worth the ticket price, if his body is indistinguishable from any guy you might see lifting at your local gym,” Mehlmenn Patrazela says.
As more of Hollywood becomes folded into Marvel’s design, and as our superheroes multiply, growing bigger and more profitable, it seems imperative to measure the impact these on-screen bodies are having on our psyches. Are men feeling more pressures to become thinner and more muscular? Or is the swell of the superhero body merely an expression of today’s fitness norms?
“I don’t know if we can identify a cause and effect between what we’re seeing in the media and what people are doing through exercise, but they’re certainly happening at the same time,” says Dr Dan Jolley, lecturer inat Perth’s South Metropolitan TAFE. “People want an exhausting workout, and to really push themselves – that’s far more prevalent now than it was probably 15 years ago.”
The popularity of functional or high-intensity interval training has shifted the goalposts for the industry, Jolley says; people are wanting to become bigger, stronger, fitter than ever before. The last 15 years has also bulked demand for the workout supplement industry – pre-workouts, nutritional supplements, recovery aids – engineered to boost training and promote recovery.
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