There have always been some wealthy people who seem eager for everybody else to know it.

They choose homes and cars and wardrobes that announce themselves as very, very expensive.

There have also always been some highly privileged individuals who choose more socially acceptable this place of wealth. They make big donations to charities they care about or invest their extra money

in priceless art. The quiet luxury trend is sometimes understood to be part of this.

Rich people who pay a lot of money for clothes

that resemble what the rest of us might wear, free of gaudy brand labels, but still recognizably

exorbitant if you know what to look for. Maybe the final frontier in this? Body. From KERA in

Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. Sometimes it's about having work done by a skilled plastic

surgeon to keep one's face looking decades smoother than it might otherwise. But increasingly,

my guest finds, people are using their workouts as a way of telegraphing how much time and money

and privilege they have available to them, as if it is reasonable to think the good health

associated with exercise is a luxury most of us can only dream about.

This bothers my guest, Kat Zhang, who writes about culture at the cut. Her essay about this is titled, We are Thinking About Fitness All Wrong.

Kat, welcome to think. Thanks for having me. You write that exercise has become a kind of mass obsession in this country.

What makes the current wave different from, say, the jogging trend of the 70s or the

aerobic praise of the 80s?

It's just so much more extreme and it's broadcast on social media.

So there's this heightened cosmetic or like aesthetic element of it. And then we also have so much more technology to track our

biometric data. There's like an added scientific element. And so, you know, people will spend, can spend tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars

to really optimize their exercise routines, but also other elements of their health.

And billionaires are getting on this too.

What made you start thinking your Apple Watch was a kind of symbol of the narcissism of fitness and wellness culture these days?

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