Sisterhood to Subscription: Blogilates and the Neoliberal Fantasy of Fit Community

Fitness has become a pronounced cultural movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. At its core, fitness culture is symbolic of broader economic shifts that are characteristic of the late 20th century. The rise of fitness culture has paralleled the establishment of what has been largely called neoliberalism. Additionally, the so-called “leisure” people experience while working out and getting fit dissociates fitness from a duty society tells us we must fulfill. Fit bodies not only idealize the role body image plays in society, but also yield substantial exchange value. In this paper, I examine Blogilates, a popular workout channel led by personality Cassey Ho. I aim to highlight the tension between app privatization and community through the unreliability of flexible labor conditions and the ideology that a fit body indexes self-fulfillment.

Cassey Ho Vinh is a social media enthusiast, award-winning instructor, and entrepreneur. Growing up, Ho had a burning passion for design and fitness, but was persuaded by her parents to study medicine or law. As she contemplated her future career, Ho began to take fitness classes and design yoga bags in her spare time. In 2009, Ho recorded a video for her Pop Pilates students in their class called “Popflex” and posted it to YouTube; this would be the beginning of her career. Ho resigned from her job, moved to Los Angeles, and used her free time to record even more fitness videos. She has more than six million followers on YouTube today and is a certified pilates instructor.

In 2011, Ho started selling Blogilates merchandise, including t-shirts, yoga mats, water bottles, and sweatpants. She eventually outgrew that fashion and ended her Blogilates gym equipment business for grander projects, such as partnering with Target in 2018 to sell premium quality gym equipment and nutritional powders. In a relatively short amount of time, Cassey Ho has been featured in Forbes, Good Morning America, The New York Times, and others, her story serving as an inspiration for young women and entrepreneurs.

Reeling from her early success on YouTube, Ho launched the first version of the Blogilates app in 2013. The app opens up with the quote “train like a beast, look like a beauty.” This comment marks the beginning of a different, revolutionary workout routine. It directly interrupts and agrees with the idea that women should only be beautiful and slim, not bulky with muscles. Saying "train like a beast” gives the impression that working out is inherently masculine, and we, as women, can be closer to our male counterparts in this way. However, by negating “beast” by inserting “beauty,” this quote highlights that the goal of the Blogilates program isn’t to just provide fitness, but it serves to also insert us into a community where women feel as though they are being empowered as a man would, yet they are still looking glorious. This concept, in 2013, came as a shock to women in the fitness industry.

Training, especially for women, used to be seen as a project of self-fulfillment. It was something that was almost a chore to do, but was necessary so that we could live up to the expectation of being “fit.” Physical fitness is often a predecessor of mental fitness, or stability. A core neoliberal idea is that we must have everything together at all times; if someone appears to be physically fit, then chances are they often have clear goals and financial stability to be the person society expects them to be. Therefore, training and getting fit was necessary to ease into society as a sane member.

The Blogilates app was spontaneous and made working out look colorful and fun, or rather, the opposite of a necessity. Followers of Blogilates immediately took a liking to this style of app, and many of them left reviews to show Ho their appreciation for making an app for “people like them.” A big part of my analysis was diving into YouTube comments on Blogilates’ videos to familiarize myself with the public’s opinion of her. One user, @feelitwice, commented “I already downloaded the app and I love it! I wanted to start a new routine [a]n[d] do more exercise but I didn't [k]now how to do it. With the app it is going to be easy and fun! Thaaank you sooo much!!! :).” One thing that I find interesting about this user’s comment is that it implies Ho’s app is a revolutionary way to exercise, that it will be “easy” and “fun,” two words that were typically not associated with fitness.

After the release of the app in 2013, Cassey Ho continued to create and release videos on YouTube, officially launching a Blogilates website later as well. Eventually, these workout videos became a sense of community for most, me included. Again, I went back to analyze YouTube comments from the year 2017, which is when I was most involved in the Blogilates community. I generally followed along with her videos for the better part of two-three years, as well as bought a few merchandise items off of her website. I genuinely felt a sense of community, not only through Ho’s encouragement, but also from others who were on the same workout regime. It felt tight knit and made the workouts bearable.

Feening for that sense of connection, I eventually ended up giving in to Ho’s premium workouts on the Blogilates app. I enrolled in a program called PIIT28 (Pilates-Intensity-Interval-Training). It was a seven minute video done four rounds a day. Ho made me feel as though she knew me and was proud of how far I had come. However, had I not paid for this service, I would not have felt that same level of connection. After I completed PIIT28, I recognized that things had begun to shift in the Blogilates world.

To me, there is a clear shift in public opinion based on whether or not Blogilates had started charging for fitness; as I found out, other Blogilates followers felt the same way as me. I found a particular comment on one of Ho’s videos titled “Total Body Tone Fest | Best apartment friendly workout for butt, abs + arms!” The poster of the comment, @michellewisneske5483, said that she started with Blogilates when she first started working out and continues to return to her videos to remember why she loves working out in the first place. Another commenter, @musicismylife464, says that she loves the apartment friendly videos, as it is nice to be quiet and not disturb others while she is working out. There seemed to be an agreement amongst users that Ho was in the midst of building a community unlike anything we had witnessed before. Not only did we have a connection that felt real with her, but also with each other. Therefore, when Ho started charging for other aspects of her services, such as progress pictures and meal plans, in late 2020, we felt as though she had fabricated these relationships all along in order to make money.

Online fitness channels are often criticized or praised without an in-between. During the COVID-19 pandemic, society viewed virtual fitness classes and instructors as the Holy Grail, since quarantine made it increasingly difficult to get in our necessary physical activity for the day. Several researchers have cited the conjunction of quarantine and the decline of mental health to be the main predecessor of why people looked to virtual fitness. Researchers in China stated that the “imposition of lockdown and self-isolation across the globe has affected people's health badly and created poor people's health conditions, including obesity, anxiety and depression, impaired cognition, psychological or stress-related disorders, unusual eating and sleeping patterns, and a decrease in motor ability” (Liu et. al, 2022). Previously, virtual fitness was seen as the “easy way out,” or the “pathetic” way to get a good body. However, gyms have now since reopened, and the asking price for a membership is ridiculous. As more people realize this phenomenon, they prefer to play into the online fitness agenda, one of the most popular being Blogilates itself.

Since online fitness wasn’t as big of a deal in 2013 than it is now, the majority of people were unwilling to pay for the original Blogilates app and instead opted to continue working alongside Ho and her free YouTube videos. Ho realized this and, in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, revamped her app and named it “BODY by Blogilates.” Here, we introduce the idea of tension between privitazation and community. Cassey Ho is, ultimately, a businesswoman. She has to make money somehow, and to do so, she must market herself to people who share the same passion as her. Ho’s situation, while not as large, is pretty on par with the Oprah effect. She created a sense of real community and hid it behind a paywall. In order to sell the vision of self-improvement, Ho marketed herself and her brand as a safe space in which users could come together to work on being their best selves. And it worked pretty well… until the facade fell.

With the 2020 version of the app, users could upload progress pictures as well as access exclusive workouts and meal plans. This version of the app was better received because people were in desperate need of more community, shaken up from the lack of it during the pandemic. However, there were still lingering concerns about the change in the platform. This new app put more emphasis on the individual community, rather than community with Cassey Ho herself. The relationship no longer revolved around Ho because she had already become the icon of self-improvement in a fun, natural way. The sense of community was introduced to almost soften the blow that privatization brought along with it.

In the literature, there is the phenomenon of “mobile privatization” that was coined by Raymond Williams, a Welsh writer and academic, in 1974. Essentially, apps connect individual users to the “outside world” as well, mainly by facilitating network ties between like-minded consumers (Williams et. al, 2010). The focus of Blogilates within the privatization of wellness focuses on Ho’s app and compares it to apps of the health and fitness variety—a category of products that, broadly speaking, is about enhancing one's lifestyle through activities such as dietary monitoring and exercise tracking. The goal of these apps is to prioritize your own health and wellness and to “better oneself” on their own. One central idea of neoliberalism is essentially that, bettering oneself and indulging in self-care activities to take care of things in private. These apps are marketed as tools for achieving desirable health and fitness outcomes and are created for the central, neoliberal idea itself: personal empowerment.

Ho frames her app as peppy and colorful to emphasize her excitement for working out, and she hopes that this will translate into excitement for the viewer as well. On the Blogilates website, there are numerous uplifting quotes sprinkled throughout. One example is on the front page: “Find the joy in fitness.” Again, the lack of juxtaposition between “joy” and “fitness” is purposeful, as the “joy” signifies entering into a community of other people who are passionate about the same things as you, and the “fitness” entails the business part of it all.

In the early Blogilates videos, Cassey Ho over exaggerated the personal connection between her and the viewers in order to emphasize a different kind of workout video, one where the relationship is the center. I came across a research paper titled “A Classification of Illocutionary Speech Act and Its Characterization in Fitness YouTube Vlogger’s Motivational Speech: A Case Study of Cassey Ho from Blogilates Channel.” This study analyzed Ho’s speech during her workout videos, mainly focusing on the words she repeated the most. The researchers found that Ho’s language during her workouts consisted of personal language , such as, “you” and “we”, that allows us to feel connected to her.

The relationship between Ho and the audience is related to the relationship between the teacher and the students. To put it another way, it can be interpreted that the fitness trainer perceives the same role as a teacher while teaching and explaining to the audience what they need to know and must do during the exercise (Soprom, 2021). Without these free videos, the personalization isn’t felt. There is less of a “we” concept and more of a “me” feeling; essentially, the shift from free videos to monetization mirrored, almost, a break-up. Consumers want to have a personalized experience from any influencer they follow along with. Cassey Ho’s initial willingness to communicate heavily without barriers seemed to be a facade, as her closeness with her consumers faded when she began to become a proper business. I think this can comment on the neoliberal self wanting to have everything together, while also being their most authentic self. It is incredibly difficult to be a functioning person in society alone, and the cohabitation of that, being a business and profiting, and having personal relationships with 6 million people, complicates the legacy of Blogilates.

Back to the YouTube comments, I then jumped to Cassey Ho’s latest workout series; she named it the “Glow Up Sessions.” This series was Ho’s last posted workout clips since 2022, and the comments on this video vary significantly from those in 2017. A majority of these comments focus on defending Blogilates from society, rather than focus on what she does best. From commentor @Grace69B, “I honestly don’t understand why a lot of YouTubers seem to be coming for Cassey… if you don’t like her workouts or claims then just move on.” Another commentor, @angeliquebalmes, states the following: “I miss your workouts Cassey!! There’s no YouTube fitness video like you. I hope you come back.” It is hard to pinpoint the exact shift in public opinion, but I assume it is because of the privatization of Ho’s services. I feel as though the comments left by these users highlight their devotion to Blogilates as what it used to be: a community. These comments, to me, show a longing for what once was, and an unwillingness to accept that Ho was in it for the money all along.

Another interesting point about Blogilates is that the entire business uncovers how the glorification of the fit-image and the privatization of the fitness market encourages society to spend large sums of money in order to achieve the body they dream of, which circulates the money back to the market at the end of the day. Users are lured into these money traps by the promise of a community and sense of belonging. This community then becomes tense, as the members either buy into the scheme or not. One paper that I read introduced the idea of “networked individualism,” meaning that app consumers are typically urged to partake in communities alongside their individual activity tracking (Millington, 2014). The main adjustment to the Blogilates app in 2020 was the ability to view others’ progress pictures and leave comments in the chat portion to encourage others to keep working out as well. To me, this represents a direct line to leave phantom wishes on other people’s posts.

For example, let’s say that I’m uncomfortable with my body, so I pay for the Blogilates app and begin to upload progress pictures of myself. Other users of the app comment on my pictures and encourage me to keep going, which makes me feel better about my body and justifies my decision to spend money on an app when there are free workout videos available. On the flip side, someone feels bad about their body and then comes across my post and all the nice comments saying how good I look; this person, then, sees the community pouring love out to someone that doesn’t look the way they do, and will eventually end up paying more to move in silence and achieve the body that they want.

The Blogilates app is a perfect example of the privatization of fitness because it requires numerous investments from its users. First, one would have to purchase a smartphone in order to even access the app, then download the app which would probably cost around 99 cents on the appstore. Next, users have to enter their personal information and pay for specialists to analyze what services would be best for them. These fitness apps rationalize neoliberal values by saying it’s okay to develop strategies in which the user is not only becoming their “best self,” but is paying for it as well. The central idea is to be connected and cosmopolitan as a neoliberal self, however, these apps complicated this idea. By masking community behind privatization, Blogilates is actively contributing to the market buyout by cancelling out her monetization and providing community to her loyal followers. It’s hard to be a business woman and a leader all in one.

Another neoliberal idea that Ho contributes to is the unreliability of emotional labor. She is constantly expected to be peppy and upbeat for the community she has created. In Ho’s case, she is unable to show that a workout may be challenging for her because that disregards everything that she preaches. This phenomenon, in turn, makes her videos feel almost repetitive. If Ho were to show that she was struggling during her workouts, the audience would be able to sympathize with her more. However, the lack of emotion makes her followers (especially the one who have been with her since the early years) feel as though they are just part of a business scheme.

One time, I was doing a leg workout with Blogilates, and I thought the routine was challenging, but it looked easy for her. About 10 minutes into the workout, Ho’s legs started visibly shaking, and, for some reason, I felt a bit embarrassed for her, even though I love doing her workouts and know that she’s in great shape. I fell victim into thinking that she always had to be at the top of her game and not let the viewers know she was struggling. I felt guilty at this realization, like I was somewhat calling her out on her behavior. I know she’s human and these workouts are designed to be challenging, I just never thought I would have allowed myself to discredit her in this way. This realization made me tap into my own neoliberal self: did I feel this way because I felt more fit than her at this moment? Did my own idea of my fit body transform into a form of self-fulfillment that made me feel superior to her in some way? These are questions I still have yet to answer.

Blogilates is the perfect example of putting community behind a paywall. Users develop an initial connection with Cassey Ho and are sucked into a sisterhood of people trying to better themselves in ways that work for them; they then are left paying for services that are ideally free, but are too attached to the routine and peppiness of Blogilates to let go. The longing question that I am left trying to answer, then, is what does it mean to be part of a community that you paid for?