UM Professor Claims Physical Fitness Is a Tool of Fascism

UM Professor Claims Physical Fitness Is a Tool of Fascism

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A University of Michigan professor is facing intense online backlash after suggesting that physical fitness can serve as a tool for fascism.

Ava Purkiss, a women’s and gender studies teacher, made the claims during an appearance on NPR’s “Code Switch” podcast, according to the New York Post.

The controversy centers on Purkiss’s argument that the promotion of exercise and healthy living by powerful institutions carries historical and political weight. The backlash has been swift, with social media users questioning the academic logic used to link personal wellness to totalitarianism.

Fitness as a tool of soft fascism

During the October 16 podcast episode, Purkiss argued that the relationship between society and physical health is fundamentally fraught. She suggested that when institutions push fitness, the motivation may not be purely altruistic.

“We have an oppressive historical relationship to fitness,” Purkiss said during the podcast, as reported by the New York Post.

Purkiss expanded on this by claiming that fitness standards are often used to categorize individuals based on perceived moral or social value. She argued that these standards can be used to distinguish between those deemed productive and those deemed a burden to the state.

“So fitness has been and continues to be used to determine who is hardworking and who is lazy — that’s racialized,” Purkiss said.

She continued her critique by suggesting that fitness acts as a proxy for character judgments. Specifically, she claimed that physical condition is used to separate those with “self-restraint” from those viewed as “greedy and insatiable,” or those who “contribute to the national progress through sacrifice of their body” versus those who “take from the nation by getting fat off the government.”

Purkiss concluded that using fitness in this manner can serve as “a tool of soft fascism, maybe even actual fascism.”

Online users criticize academic perspective and PhD credentials

The comments have drawn sharp criticism from online users who argue that the academic perspective lacks common sense. Critics have pointed to Purkiss’s PhD as evidence of a disconnect between higher education and practical reality.

On the platform X, one user wrote, “That woman supposedly earned a Ph.D from an accredited institution of learning. Let that sink in, this is what passes as intelligence in institutes of ‘higher learning.’” Another commenter remarked, “Good grief. We’ve reached the point where NPR can apparently find fascism in a pair of dumbbells.”

The debate arrives at a time when several high-ranking U.S. officials are making physical health a centerpiece of their policy discussions. Both Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have been vocal advocates for Americans improving their physical fitness and reducing obesity rates.

UM Professor Claims Physical Fitness Is a Tool of Fascism

The tension between these public health initiatives and Purkiss’s academic critique highlights a growing cultural divide regarding the role of the state in personal wellness. While officials frame fitness as a matter of national resilience and individual health, Purkiss views the institutional push for wellness through a lens of social control and historical oppression.

Purkiss is the author of the 2023 book Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America.

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