Gender War Games Pt. 2: The New Purity Culture with Cadence Dubus

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4.8 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is wellness the new purity culture? In part 2 of Gender War Games, host Cristen Conger and trainer Cadence Dubus (@brooklynstrength) breaks down how body control, aesthetic discipline, and "clean" femininity are being sold as self-care—while reinforcing the same old patriarchal power structures. From the rise of Ozempic and disordered wellness trends to body shame masquerading as moral virtue, what happens when femininity and fitness become political battlegrounds where women are expected to be skinny, soft, and silent?

(00:00) Your Body Is a Battleground
(00:52) The New Right's Body Ideals
(01:23) The Wellness Grind
(03:16) Functional Strength > Weight-Loss Goals
(05:48) Women's Fitness Mirage
(11:13) The Ozempic Effect
(15:18) America's Health Hierarchy
(17:28) Politicized Exercise
(21:15) Class, Wealth and Commodified Wellness
(28:29) What's a Body to Do?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's a weird time to have a body.
0:07.0	This is what I do in the gym to feel lightweight and petite and in my feminine energy. Let's go.
0:11.0	Running is fight or flight so I wouldn't recommend.
0:14.0	July officially marks seven months that I've been psychosyncing my workouts.
0:17.0	One of the things that I'm doing because I believe in the holistic approach is
0:21.2	really paying attention to what I am eating. Three of my favorite teas that help me reverse my hormone
0:28.7	and balances naturally and lose 25 pounds. Body positivity is a scam. This isn't medicine and this
0:35.0	is poison. We need RFK more than ever. But why is everybody so obsessed with being skinny?
0:40.7	You should be cleaner, leaner, more disciplined and controlled.
0:48.0	And if you're not, well, fix your energies.
0:52.1	And today, what is fascinating to see is how the new right is also highly body
0:58.8	conscious. For men, it is gains, protein macros, biohacking. For women, it's soft lifting, clean diets.
1:10.7	And all of the raw milk, even though don't drink the raw milk.
1:15.2	I would say UFC fighter and ballet dancer are sort of the ideal binary.
1:23.3	All this kind of bait and switch is part of what I'm trying to demystify on gender war games.
1:30.0	I'm Kristen Conger, and this is episode two of a four-part miniseries,
1:35.6	investigating how femininity in womanhood is being commodified, aestheticized, and weaponized in today's culture, politics.
1:47.1	And even at the gym, this new purity culture, the wellness grind, can extend to our
1:53.4	workouts, sleep, supplements, steps, macros, because of course, peak wellness isn't
1:59.9	about being healthy, really. It's about looking healthy.
2:04.8	Even if you just want to go to the gym, that can also be a mind fuck. A recent study that came out
2:11.5	just earlier this year found that women in fitness spaces often feel like they're, quote,
	...

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