Elsevier

Body Image

Volume 32, March 2020, Pages 5-13
Body Image

Athleisure: A qualitative investigation of a multi-billion-dollar clothing trend

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.10.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Participants described a thin and overtly muscular body as the female body ideal.

  • Athleisure connotates adherence to “health” and “fitness,” akin to fitspiration.

  • A person’s body type determines their access to athleisure; larger = less access.

  • Wearing athleisure encourages adherence to the athleisure lifestyle and body ideal.

  • Participants experienced cognitive dissonance about athleisure and body standards.

Abstract

Clothes play a ubiquitous, yet under-appreciated social role. In the context of body image, clothes may both reflect and facilitate wearers’ ideals and anxieties about their physical appearance. Athleisure, referring to athletic-inspired workout apparel that explicitly accentuates wearers’ physiques, is a hitherto unexamined clothing trend worth tens of billions of dollars annually (and growing) in the United States consumer market alone. We conducted the first qualitative examination of athleisure by interviewing 20 women who regularly wore athleisure. Four master themes emerged from the data: (1) the athleisure lifestyle, (2) the conditional nature of athleisure, (3) athleisure embodiment, and (4) athleisure-linked cognitive dissonance. Our results suggest that wearing athleisure communicates to others an adherence to the lifestyles depicted in fitspiration – a class of social media imagery that glorifies thin-fit bodies. Participants articulated that athleisure encouraged them to feel more confident and athletic; athleisure also emphasized the women’s physiques, and whether they aligned with the thin-fit ideal. Thus, the act of wearing athleisure motivated participants to engage in fitspiration-based activities. Given the (a) massive public demand for athleisure, and (b) industry projections for continued growth in athleisure spending, our findings compel additional research on the connections between clothing and body image.

Introduction

Athleisure, a portmanteau of “athletic” and “leisure,” refers to casual clothing designed to be worn for both exercising and general use. Monikers for athleisure include activewear, athletic wear, and sport leisure (among others). Hereafter, we use the term athleisure to inclusively refer to these. Athleisure gained traction in the fashion world through the introduction of form-fitting yoga pants (Holmes, 2015; Segran, 2015). Since then, athleisure has emerged as a dominant fashion trend of the 21st century (Wilson, 2018). A traditional athleisure outfit consists of a form-fitting top and bottoms; the top often exposes a significant amount of skin (e.g., bra-like tops, tank tops, cut outs) or emphasizes a woman’s figure (e.g., “women’s cut” apparel) and the standard bottoms are leggings or spandex shorts. There is, however, a wide range of styles and the trend includes much variation (Cheng, 2018). Stated plainly, the intention of athleisure is to take women from work to the gym and to wherever else they need to go throughout the day, whether that be brunch with friends or a quick trip to the grocery store (DiBlasio, 2014; Segran, 2015). When athleisure began, the movement primarily targeted women and, as such, this study focuses on women and their experience with athleisure. We do note, however, that as athleisure has grown in popularity, the trend has expanded to also include men.

Athleisure sales have grown exponentially despite stagnant growth in other forms of apparel (Kell, 2016). Sales of athleisure accounted for 24% of total apparel sales in the United States in 2018 (The NPD Group, 2018). Worth 9.6 billion United States Dollars (USD) annually, athleisure sales are projected to increase despite zero or negative growth in the general apparel market (Cheng, 2018). Recent figures value the global athleisure market at over 44 billion USD (Roberts, 2017). Notably, there is a considerable price premium placed on athleisure: leggings often sell upwards of 80 USD, and some luxury brands sell leggings for as much as 400 USD (Holmes, 2015). Leaders in the market predict the trend will continue far into the forseable future (Kell, 2016). Market analysts have explicitly hypothesized that this trend is spurred, in part, by a growing cultural desire to appear “fit” and “healthy” (Green, 2017; Salpini, 2018). Here, we note that the athleisure trend shares commonalities with the fitspiration movement, which encourages individuals (particularly women) to adhere to attitudes and behaviors that reflect the thin-and-muscular body ideal, ostensibly in the name of fitness and wellbeing (Griffiths & Stefanovski, 2019; Griffiths et al., 2018; Jong & Drummond, 2016; Vaterlaus, Patten, Roche, & Young, 2015).

Clothes can be understood as an extension of the self. Theorists have proposed that clothes mark the ambiguous boundary between our biological bodies and the social worlds our bodies inhabit (Wilson, 2003). Our clothing choices communicate desired aspects about ourselves to others (Entwistle, 2000). For example, a woman who wants to look professional may wear a business suit to a meeting. Societal pressures also may influence our clothing choices when they demand that we appear a certain way (Kaiser, 1990). Gendered norms, for instance, encourage women and men to wear stereotypically feminine and masculine clothes, respectively. In the following paragraphs, we detail and synthesize various theories that link body image and clothing, drawing specifically upon athleisure in order to contextualize our study.

Kaiser (1990) proposes that clothes communicate symbolic meaning to others. When consumers select and use products, such as clothes, the products become associated with the attributes that consumers want to convey to others (Kaiser, 1990). Therefore, when people wear these clothes, they communicate these socially desirable characteristics to observers (Barnard, 1996). As previously noted, market analysts suggest that athleisure arose from a cultural obsession with health and fitness (Green, 2017; Salpini, 2018). Consumers who bought athleisure may have done so to identify with this broader “wellness” trend. They may wear athleisure to communicate to others their participation in this lifestyle.

In addition, ambiguity often characterizes clothes and their intended messages, and this ambiguity can force observers to consider other context clues, such as a person’s physique, to guide their interpretation. Athleisure, in particular, may not convey a clear message because the clothes are athletic garments worn outside an athletic environment (i.e., in an unusual context) (Delaporte, 1980). Observers may rely on the wearer’s physical appearance to interpret athleisure’s message amid this ambiguity. Furthermore, research suggests that physical appearance impacts athletic impressions more than clothes do (Conner, Peters, & Nagasawa, 1975). Since athleisure consists of athletic garments, the body may impact significantly how people interpret athleisure’s message.

According to Boultwood and Jerrard’s (2000) individual ambivalence theory, wearing athleisure may mitigate people’s ambivalence about the thin-fit ideal physique. Most women cannot physically mimic this body ideal through healthy means; as such, they try to minimize this discrepancy through efforts to manipulate the body’s appearance with athleisure. Women may wear athleisure in order to resemble this impossible thin-fit ideal; the clothes may cover the body or facilitate exercise to create a more socially desirable shape. The real body, however, cannot mirror the ideal perfectly – because no real body can equal a figure that imagination and photoshop generate. This inability to achieve the ideal fuels a never-ending desire for its achievement, however. If this desire for the ideal body continues indefinitely, so too will the pursuit of the manipulation of the body’s appearance through clothes (Boultwood & Jerrard, 2000). This desire may explain why the athleisure market continues to grow exponentially.

Further, women may use athleisure to moderate any ambivalence they feel about the cultural obsession with health and fitness. Even if women personally feel no desire to engage in the trend, they may feel social pressure to do so. Athleisure may allow women to appear as if they emulate this obsession without fully engaging in it, especially if they wear these clothes outside the gym.

Theories of embodied cognition propose that cognitive representations reflect modal, perceptual content from the brain’s sensory systems for perceptions, action, and introspection (e.g., Barsalou, 1999, 2007; Glenberg, 1997; Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005). These physical experiences acquire symbolic meaning as they shape cognitive representations of these abstract concepts. The physical experiences, therefore, activate these abstract concepts through the symbolic meaning. Significant research supports this theory of embodied cognition (Huang, Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Guillory, 2011; Jostmann, Lakens, & Schubert, 2009; Liljenquist, Zhong, & Galinsky, 2010; Mussweiler, 2006; Schnall, Benton, & Harvey, 2008; Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988; Wells & Petty, 1980; Williams & Bargh, 2008; Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).

Adam and Galinsky (2012) argue that wearing clothes also can trigger associated abstract concepts and their symbolic meanings. When people wear the clothes, they “embody” the clothes’ symbolic meaning. Here, the link between the physical experience and its symbolic meaning is indirect – the clothes, rather than the physical experience alone, carry the symbolic meaning. Therefore, one needs to wear the clothes to embody their symbolic meaning. Two independent factors need to co-occur in enclothed cognition: the clothes need to embody a symbolic meaning and the person needs to physically wear the clothes. Adam and Galinsky (2012) found, for example, that people who wore a lab coat experienced increased ability to focus compared to people who did not wear a lab coat. Further, people who wore a lab coat described as a doctor’s coat experienced increased selective attention compared to people who wore the same coat described as a painter’s coat. The same people who wore the doctor’s lab coat also experienced increased selective attention compared to people who simply saw or identified with a doctor’s lab coat.

The associated psychological and behavioral processes that clothes trigger depend on the symbolic meaning that the clothes represent. As we suggested earlier, athleisure may reflect the cultural health and fitness obsession. Therefore, enclothed cognition theory proposes that people will embody this wellness trend when they wear athleisure. The act of wearing athleisure may trigger certain behaviors or feelings associated with the athleisure trend (i.e., exercise, eating patterns, feelings of athleticism, health, and confidence).

To date, the multi-billion-dollar (and growing) athleisure trend has not been examined in the context of body image, despite clear reasons to believe it may be intrinsically connected to evolving trends in body standards and body ideals, including, most notably, fitspiration and thin-fit body ideals. Therefore, we pursued the following research question: How do women engage with athleisure? Specific sub-questions that formed the basis of this inquiry included those that considered the meanings women ascribe to their own athleisure practices and to the athleisure practices of others, and how women’s perceptions of ideal bodies influenced the meaning they ascribed to athleisure. We expected that women would associate athleisure with the sociocultural wellness trend and the thin-fit ideal physique. Specifically, we expected women to wear athleisure in an attempt to identify with the cultural obsession with fitness and health. Further, we expected women to wear athleisure as part of their striving for a thin-fit figure, whether through physical transformation by diet and exercise or through the psychological processes described above.

Section snippets

Participant recruitment and demographics

Participant recruitment was facilitated via study advertisements posted to subreddits (e.g., r/xxfitness) of the popular Internet social networking website, reddit. In an attempt to reach participants with an interest in athleisure, we chose subreddits that emphasized discussion about fitness and fashion. The advertisements described a study about current body ideals and athletic wear trends in which the researchers wanted to learn more about why people decide to wear popular athletic clothes

Results

The main themes that emerged from the interviews were (1) the athleisure lifestyle, (2) conditional athleisure, (3) athleisure embodiment, and (4) cognitive dissonance. Summaries of these themes with examples from the women’s interviews are provided.

Discussion

This study sought to explore the ways in which women engage with athleisure. Four master themes emerged from the data: (1) the athleisure lifestyle and its “healthy” association; (2) athleisure access and associations as conditional on body type; (3) athleisure embodiment in wearers’ psyche and behaviors; and (4) cognitive dissonance between critiques of athleisure and participation in the trend.

Funding sources and declaration of interest

Scott Griffiths is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Early Career Fellowship (grant number: 1121538) and a University of Melbourne Early Career Grant (grant number: 603758). Sarah Lipson is supported by a Bolitho Fellowship and a Harvard College Research Program Scholarship (grant numbers: unassigned). The funders had no role in the design of the study, the collection or analysis of data, write-up of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for

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