This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.

Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and our complicated relationship with fitness.

Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds.

And today you've got me, Shayna Roth, a podcast producer for Slate, including for the waves.

And today I'm joined by journalist and author of the new book Let's Get Physical,

Danielle Friedman. Danielle, welcome to the waves.

Hi, it's great to be here. I have been dying to talk about fitness and these sort of complexities

of wellness on the show for a while now. And your book is really interesting to me because it

attracts the evolution of women's fitness and different types of exercises that women haven't

always been able to participate in. And I've had a fraught relationship with fitness from

FAD diets to spurts of exercise followed by long stretches of not doing anything and then feeling

depressed. And what I loved about your book is that without being a sort of like raw raw,

let's all exercise and feel great book, it got me into that headspace.

You had a lot of different parts throughout where it just reminded me that exercise can just be

about me feeling good and not necessarily about looking good. I also think part of it was because

you brought up a lot of trailblazing women. I wanted to start off just by asking you what got you

thinking about fitness and feminism in the first place? So there was a pretty organic origin story here.

I am a lifelong runner but about five years ago and I'm always kind of a little bit sheepish to

tell this story but I was actually getting ready for my wedding. And so I decided to take my first

bar class to venture into a boutique fitness studio for the first time. And I was surprised by how

good and how strong the classes made me feel but I couldn't, you know, I'm a feminist journalist,

a women's health journalist and I couldn't kind of take my journalist hat off while I was there.

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