Masculine Aesthetics and Food Ascetics: An Autobiographical Exploration of Fitness Religion in Cape Town

This article explores how South African gym culture crafts racialised, gendered and classed identities through the aesthetics of the body (“bodywork”) and the discipline of diet (“foodwork”). Following various scholars who have conceptualised fitness regimes as religion, I conceptualise gym culture as a form of “wild religion”. Challenging mainstream literature on fitness and masculinity–which largely overlooks race and class dynamics–I draw on autobiographical embodied experiences within fitness spaces to reveal the power of this culture to function as a quasi-religious domain, with its own symbols, rituals and beliefs. This analysis exposes how ideals of masculinity are forged within these sacred spaces, underscoring the need to interrogate how race and class intricately shape these ideals in ways that are often hidden from view. By reframing fitness as a site where masculinities are not only formed but ritualised, this work calls for a new understanding of gym culture as a potent arena for exploring race, class and masculine identity in South Africa.