Barbara Ehrenreich The Naked Truth About Fitness Summary

The Injuries of Healthism
Healthism cannot replace ethics. If one substitutes healthism for ethics, then one’s worldview centers around health instead of morality and virtue. Barbara Ehrenreich observes in her essay “The Naked Truth about Fitness,” that fitness becomes an idol to some. She poses that healthism can lead to a change in one’s thoughts; one may veer from striving for morality to desiring improvement of the body. Therefore, healthism distorts one’s perception of morality.
Initially, many confuse healthism with morality. Maintaining sound health is beneficial for the body, however, many exercise excessively to replace the morality in their lives. Ehrenreich explains that “… there’s a difference between health and healthism, between health as a reasonable goal and health as a

Healthism distorts a person’s worldview to a point where rational thought diminishes. Ehrenreich discloses a story of a friend’s sister’s struggle with cancer. Her “…friend confided ‘I’m sure she’s been working out.’ Not quite enough was the implication, however, despite even the frailest connection between fibroids and muscle tone” (Ehrenreich, 2003, p.349). This example shows how healthism flaws one’s reasoning. Healthism alters Ehrenreich’s friend’s worldview to where she makes connections that do not exist. Lastly, healthism is impossible to live out in full. Ehrenreich concludes that “If we believe that health is a sign of moral purity and anything less is a species of sin, then death condemns us all as failures” (2003, p.350) Mistaking moral purity for health produces healthism. If healthism becomes prominent in one’s worldview, it develops into a lens that one understands the world through. Since death is inevitable, striving for health instead of morality will leave one with a distorted view of his/her accomplishments at the end. Healthism will overcome one’s rational thoughts and warp one’s