Fitness for upward mobility

You can find wisdom in the most unusual places, even “between India’s increasingly muscular legs”. Michiel Baas, in his book, Muscular India: Masculinity, Mobility, and the New Middle Class, uses the muscular bodies of fitness trainers as a prism to analyse middle class belonging and masculinity in a rapidly changing Indian society.

Baas’ book builds on a decade-long research engagement with male fitness trainers from lower-middle-class backgrounds, focusing on how the trainers use their bodies as capital to climb internal middle-class hierarchies — “characterized by a (newer, vernacular) lower middle class and (older, English speaking upper middle class)”. He attempts to answer the question, “what does it take to convincingly pull off the idea of ‘confidently’ belonging to the middle class?”

Baas transforms the muscular body into a book in itself; one that reveals the trials, tribulations, and desires of middle-class India. As India changes economically, culturally and socially, “the body enacts these changes and is changed by them too”. He credits the popularisation of the lean muscular body to Bollywood and fitness magazines. For example, Shah Rukh Khan’s “freshly baked six-pack abs” in Om Shanti Om (2007) led to an increase in gym memberships and demand for personal training. The muscular body now reads “discipline, professionalism, and cosmopolitanism”. Such a body is a severe departure from “the healthy potbelly of yesteryear’s middle-class male — once the signifier of prosperity and wellbeing”.

From this desire for that perfectly chiselled body and the growing realisation that one needs specialised training to achieve it emerges “the new middle-class profession” of fitness training. Trainers have come to approximate the body that Bollywood has popularised. They compete in bodybuilding and modelling competitions and provide personal training. Acting as “brokers in bodily knowledge”, they sell the promise of this physical transformation to upper-class English speaking clients. Their perfectly toned bodies thus “reflect the very promise of new India”, characterised by “change and limitless opportunities”.

 

Muscular India:

Masculinity, Mobility, and the New Middle Class

Author: Michiel Baas

Publisher: Context, Westland Publications Private Limited 

Price: Rs 699

Pages: 328 

 

This perfectly toned idea guides Baas on his journey to explore class in India. Acting as “currency”, the welled-muscle physique buys the trainers opportunities to accumulate cultural and social capital. He posits the class gap between the client and the trainer as one such opportunity. The men’s intimate interactions with upper-middle-class clients in the gym enable them to “improve their English and acquire knowledge of the kind of lifestyle they aspire to”. For example, Baas interviews Kishore, a fitness instructor from Chembur. Over ten years, he observes Kishore’s “English improve, his sense of style and fashion change and his general confidence in interacting with those belonging to different socio-economic strata grow”. Kishore also makes more money than his father did.

However, the idea of rapidly changing India does not neatly translate on an individual level. Baas argues that the body of trainers might grant them access to opportunities, but the “socio-economic distance between the [trainer and client] remains significant”. He claims that “[Kishore] is aware that his clients will never quite consider him their equal or make him fully a part of their private lives”.

Baas elucidates the significance of this gap throughout the book.  Take, for example, his interaction with Supriya, an upper-middle-class client at Bodyholics, a gym in South Delhi. Supriya has taken up the responsibility of improving the English of Amit, a floor trainer. Yet in her conversation with Baas about upward social mobility, Supriya claims that it is “indeed remarkable how good these guys are at mimicking middle-class behavior”. Baas points out that her use of the word “mimicking” indicates that she does not consider the trainers her equal despite her amicable relationship with Amit. In fact, Supriya acts as a “gatekeeper, someone who decides what is sufficiently middle class”.

This is where the revolutionary aspect of the book lies. While Baas relies heavily on academic theory (due to his background as an academic), he explicates class and embodiment through anecdotes embedded in everyday lives. These mundane instances of classism render complex theories comprehensible. The anecdotes also attach themselves to the memory of readers. Long after one has turned the last page of the book, this memory continues to colour our view of the world. Readers might find a Supriya in their gym or notice how language indicates class. Baas, thus, renders class exigent.

Despite the author’s ability to render complex academic theories  comprehensible, reading Muscular India can be a fragmented experience. 

Impossible to even summarise, the book covers a vast range of topics from sexuality to bodybuilding and wrestling, male modelling, the rural/urban divide, gender relations, sexual desires, homoeroticism, colonial masculinities, and so on. No facet of masculinity, mobility and middle-class belonging is left unexplored. While Baas’ knowledge of each topic benefits readers, the sheer number of facets explored can seem somewhat chaotic.

Muscular India is a unique read. It takes readers on a journey they never knew they so desperately needed to embark on. On the way, Baas gives the readers an intimate glimpse into the struggles, joys, ambitions, and desires of middle-class men in India. Such an intersectional analysis of class is rare in the form of a book that can appeal to both an academic and non-academic readership. A workout for your brain, Muscular India exhorts readers to confront the myth of progress and the malaise of middle-class India.