This article is a philosophical examination of the social media culture of fitness and the behavior which most distinctly characterizes it. Of the numerous and varied digital subcultures emerging with the rise of photo-based social media during the 2010s, the culture surrounding fitness, or "fitspiration," stands out as one of the more notable. Research has identified the phenomenon as consisting to a large extent of users engaging in behaviors of self-sexualization and self-objectification, following, not unexpectedly, the inherent focus within fitness on the body, its maintenance and ultimately its appearance. Research also demonstrates that, for many, viewing and engaging in this behavior is linked to a deterioration of body-image, general self-perception and mental well-being. In this article, I analyze the phenomenon within a philosophical framework in which I combine the philosophical theory of Jean Baudrillard on media and the consumption of signs and the psychoanalytic perspective of Jacques Lacan on subjectivity, narcissism and desire. Using this framework, I discuss the body assuming the properties of a commodified object deriving its cultural value and meaning from the signs which adorn it, resulting in the "fitspiration" user imperative becoming the identification with an artificial object alien to the self, necessitating a narcissistically oriented, yet pernicious self-objectification. I argue that "fitspiration," as well as the photo-based social media which both enables and defines it, indulges narcissism, detrimentally exaggerating the narcissistic inclinations lying at the center of subjectivity.

Though the rise of social media has provided countless advantages and possibilities, both within and without the domain of sports, recent years have also seen some more detrimental aspects of these technologies come to light. In particular, the widespread social media culture surrounding fitness – ‘fitspiration’ – warrants attention for the way it encourages self-sexualization and -objectification, thereby epitomizing a wider issue with photo-based social media in general. Though the negative impact of fitspiration has been well documented, what is less understood are the ways it potentially impacts and molds moral psychology, and how these same aspects may come to influence digital sports subcultures more broadly. In this theoretical paper, I rely on the insights of Friedrich Nietzsche to analyze the moral significance of a culture like fitspiration becoming normalized and influential in structuring and informing self-understanding, notions of value, and how to flourish in life. Using two doctrines central to Nietzsche’s philosophy—The Last Man and his conception of the ’higher self’ – I argue that fitspiration involves a form of hedonism that is potentially harmful to the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing. Through fitspiration, desire is elevated to a central moral principle, underlying the way users both consume and produce its content, catering simultaneously to their desires for external validation and instant gratification. It thereby creates conditions which foster a culture in adherence to the ethos of The Last Man. In doing so, I argue it impedes the cultivation of the virtues and higher values which define the higher individual, regarded by Nietzsche as essential for human flourishing. However, drawing on the ethical framework of the higher individual provides the philosophical and psychological resources with which resisting and overcoming the more harmful temptations of these trends may be possible. 

Female empowerment has long been a prominent social concern in Western culture. With the rise of social media, the quest for female empowerment has become embodied in self-presentational practices, occurring conspicuously throughout the Instagram fitness subculture: ‘fitspiration’. Here, female empowerment is merged with the body-centrality inherent to fitness, and the self-sexualization that has become characteristic of both photo-based social media in general, and fitspiration in particular. Meanwhile, an extensive body of research highlights numerous detrimental effects of self-sexualization on women. Evidently, something seems awry with the implied proposition ‘sexualization as empowerment’. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of power and its relationship to human flourishing, this article aims to critically examine the conception of female empowerment expressed in fitspiration and to conceptualize a philosophically compelling reformulation of universal human empowerment. I argue that what is commonly conceived of as female empowerment in trends like fitspiration—delineated in its explicit relationship to sexualization—may be seriously flawed. Rejecting this understanding in favor of a Nietzschean universal alternative may prove beneficial to individuals both within and without the contemporary fitness culture. 

Epitomized in the bodily exhibitions of ‘fitspiration’, photo-based social media is biased toward self-beautification and glorification of reality. Meanwhile, evidence is growing of psychological side effects connected to this ‘pictorial turn’ in our communication. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche poses the question how ugliness and discord can produce aesthetic pleasure. This paper proceeds from an inverse relationship and examines why glorification of appear- ances and conspicuous beauty fails to do the same, and even compounds suffering. Drawing on the Apollo-Dionysus dualism undergirding Nietzsche’s aesthetic philosophy, I posit a deeper relation between the saturation of visual self-exhibitionism typified in fitspiration and its empirical effects. Concentrating on the med- ium and self-representational photograph, I argue that Instagram is primarily an instrument of Apolline artifice and that the pictorial turn which defines the present centers Apolline mediation to the detrimental exclusion of meaningful communion with its Dionysiac antithesis. For users immersed in this Apolline sphere of visual self- representation, a fractured existence beholden to conditions of the image ensues—comprising surface-level appearances, deification of the moment, and loss of existential sustenance through myth. By positioning fitspiration not as an aberration but as the logical conclusion of the medium’s intrinsic Apolline property, it becomes a litmus test of the entire visual landscape and illustrative of the implications that uncritical participation in it may bring.