Between personal body, and body-for-others

The emergence of a fitness culture in The Netherlands marks the popularity of commercial sport. This study (master thesis) investigates the questions of whether the Dutch fitness sector becomes less selective in the period 2001 to 2016, and what kind of motivations prevail in the choice to either fitness or practice any other sport, with specific attention to the effect of erotic capital in the choice to fitness.

Meijeren found that democratization did not occur within the period of investigation and is not expected in the near future. Evidence suggests that erotic capital is an important motivation for both young people and men to participate in fitness. Nonetheless, the scale for measuring erotic capital is not yet optimal. Future research should focus on strengthening this scale, to increase the reliability of the results. Lastly, this study assumed that erotic capital has the same meaning for every individual, irrespective of the layer of society he or she comes from. This uniform meaning is however not a given. Future research needs to investigate if different societal groups assign a different meaning to erotic capital.