The Personal Is Professional: Personal Trainers As A Case Study of Cultural Intermediaries

ARTICLE
INTERNATIONAL
journal of
CULTURAL studies
Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
www.sagepublications.com
Volume 11(2): 211–229
DOI: 10.1177/1367877908089265
The personal is professional

Personal trainers as a case study of cultural
intermediaries
● Jennifer Smith Maguire

University of Leicester, England
ABSTRACT ● The article examines the discursive construction of personal
training as a case study of the characteristics of cultural intermediary work.

Based on an analysis of US personal training occupational texts from 1990 to
2000, the article employs a cultural economy perspective (du Gay and Pryke,
2002) to examine the importance of normative codes of professionalism, the
investment of personal resources and aesthetic labour, and the tension between
cultural and economic categories in representations of the work. Personal
training is a particularly revealing case because of its explicit tensions between
cultural factors (e.g. a professional, service-oriented ethic) and economic
parameters (e.g. the entrepreneurial aspects of selling services). In response,
trainers are encouraged to adopt a vocational attitude, suggesting how cultural
intermediary work more generally invokes particular dispositions, which are the
outcomes of negotiating between economy and culture, and the personal and
the professional, in specific occupational contexts. ●
KEYWORDS ● cultural economy ● cultural intermediary ● entrepreneur

● personal training ● professional ● vocation
Introduction
Much academic attention has focused on the development of consumer culture

and how this links to an increasing emphasis on individuals’ identity choices
and lifestyle projects (e.g. Ewen, 1999; Featherstone, 1991; Slater, 1997). One
theme within this stream of inquiry is the character and significance of the
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212 I N T E R N AT I O N A L journal of C U LT U R A L studies 11(2)
service class and, in particular, the cluster of occupations known as ‘cultural

intermediaries’, who are responsible for the production and legitimation of var-
ious images, experiences and lifestyles (Bourdieu, 1984: 359; also Lash and
Urry, 1987; Featherstone, 1991; Wynne, 1998). Cultural intermediaries are
taken as central in the promotion of consumption; not simply producing goods
and experiences for sale in the consumer marketplace, they are also, crucially,
involved in mobilizing and motivating consumers to connect specific aspira-
tions, fears and desires to particular product qualities, and to the realm of con-
sumption more broadly (du Gay, 2004; see also Miller and Rose, 1997).
Those involved in cultural intermediary work are thus mediators in a dou-
ble sense: they help to link consumers to specific cultural products and ser-
vices, and to a more fundamental consuming mentality. While the former
facilitates the reproduction of consumer economies, the latter dovetails with
an attitude of reflexive self-production, considered emblematic of high or late
modern capitalist culture (Giddens, 1991). Accounts of self-production stress
the ways in which processes of modernity have given rise to an increased
emphasis on identity as a lifelong task of ‘becoming’ oneself, accompanied by
a de-emphasis on traditional, ascribed categories of belonging (Featherstone,
1991; Slater, 1997; Ewen, 1999; Bauman, 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim,
2002). (Hence the interest – both everyday and academic – in the body, as both
a vehicle of self-expression and a key site in the process of self-production.)
Much as it raises the prospect for greater flexibility and self-determination, the
process of self-production is fraught with risk, insecurity and uncertainty, as
the responsibility for accomplishing an identity falls squarely on the shoulders
of individuals. Out of these conditions develop the ranks of cultural interme-
diaries and other therapeutic experts, who offer guidelines and reassurance
(as well as goods and services) to individuals in search of better selves (Lears,
1983; Rose, 1996).
This article examines personal training as a case study of cultural interme-
diary work, looking specifically at the discursive construction of the occupa-
tion in personal training texts. Paid to design and facilitate personal fitness
programmes on a one-to-one basis, personal trainers stand between their
clients and the larger fitness and exercise industry, helping to forge profitable
connections between consumers and health clubs, exercise equipment, fitness
media and other goods and services (Smith Maguire, 2008). In the experi-
ences of fitness that they shape and the images of fitness that they embody,
personal trainers help to educate consumers in a particular view of the body
as a vehicle of self-expression and a focal point for consumption.
On the whole, socio-cultural research on fitness, aerobics and the workout
has paid greater attention to participants than practitioners. Past research on
the discursive construction of fitness readers/consumers/participants has
examined various media representations, including those of fitness maga-
zines, manuals and exercise videos (Kagan and Morse, 1988; Duncan, 1994;
MacNeill, 1994; Markula, 1995, 2001; Eskes et al., 1998; Smith Maguire,
2002, 2006). This work draws attention to the tensions in fitness culture
Smith Maguire ● Personal trainers as a case study of cultural intermediaries 213
between ideal representations and actual practice, and notes the deep-seated
ambivalences for women between emphases on physical empowerment and
traditional, feminine bodily norms (see also Maguire and Mansfield, 1998;
Real, 1999). This article is an investigation not of the lived experience of fit-
ness instructors (see, e.g., Haravon Collins, 2002; Greenleaf et al., 2006;
Markula and Pringle, 2006; Smith Maguire, 2008) but of the discursive for-
mation of the occupation – the ways in which a series of statements (here, in
occupational texts) operate to make certain ways of thinking and talking
about, and carrying out personal training seem acceptable and appropriate,
while closing off other alternatives (Foucault, 1972; Hall, 1997).
Since its emergence on a mass scale in the United States in the early 1990s,
personal training has undergone a process of professionalization: attempts on
the part of individual practitioners and their occupational organizations to
standardize the criteria of the work, legitimate claims for greater social esteem
and remuneration, and control the possibility (and counter the public per-
ception) of malpractice-related problems. Professionalization thus serves as a
mechanism for the cultivation of authority and the management of risk.
Central to this process is an increase in the production of occupational texts:
specialized journals, manuals and newsletters addressing the professional
practitioner (cf. Ferguson, 1998: 630). IDEA, a leading US exercise and fit-
ness organization, began publishing a monthly newsletter, IDEA Personal
Trainer (IPT), in 1990; it became a 40-page full-colour magazine in 1994.
Another key US fitness organization, the American Council on Exercise
(ACE), first published its Personal Trainer Manual (Sudy, 1991) in 1991, as
the official companion text to the ACE personal trainer certification exam.
This article draws from a thematic text analysis (Fereday and Muir-
Cochrane, 2006) of the first ACE manual and IPT issues from 1990 to 2000,
which revealed the repeated themes of concern for the occupation – notably,
dealing with what counts (skills, certifications) as personal training; how to
best sell personal training services; how to motivate clients; and technical
knowledge on programme design and special populations. Such occupational
texts – written by and for personal trainers and trainers-in-training – are cen-
tral in the standardization and dissemination of an occupational identity,
code of conduct, and set of work practices and strategies; they are mecha-
nisms of socialization into a (quasi) professional identity, contributing to the
acquisition of particular dispositions, competencies and values.
While the article’s focus is on the US, it is important to highlight both that
commercial fitness and its accoutrements (such as personal training) are
global in scope, and that they are not globally homogeneous (e.g. Ginsberg,
2000; Spielvogel, 2003). Commercial health clubs around the world – from
Australia to Brazil, China to Denmark – may offer personal training, but the
particular character of that service will differ relative to the local context,
including established leisure and physical culture traditions, patterns in
the demand for and provision of personal services, and the degree of occupa-
tional development for personal training. A US case study thus offers to
highlight aspects of a phenomenon that may resonate with, but not directly
translate to, other national contexts.
The findings of the text analysis are considered here from a ‘cultural econ-
omy’ perspective (du Gay, 2004; du Gay and Pryke, 2002), revealing paral-
lels with other cultural intermediary occupations in fields such as advertising
and fashion. Reading personal training texts in this way casts light on the
importance of: normative codes – e.g. an appeal to traditional notions of pro-
fessionalism and a service-oriented ethic; ‘aesthetic labour’ (Witz et al., 2003)
– e.g. the encouragement to invest personal resources such as attitude, appear-
ance and belief in one’s work identity; and the tension between cultural and
economic categories in shaping representations of the work – e.g. the location
of personal training at the ambivalent intersection of cultural factors (a pro-
fessional ethic) and economic parameters (the need to sell services). This ten-
sion is resolved in the texts through an endorsed vocational attitude, shedding
light on how cultural intermediary work more generally involves particular
occupational dispositions, which are the outcomes of negotiating between
cultural and economic agendas, codes and constraints. The article proceeds
with an overview of the term ‘cultural intermediaries’ before turning to per-
sonal training and its problematic professionalization; the reliance on per-
sonal resources for occupational success; and the ways in which a vocational
attitude is deployed in the occupational texts to reconcile tensions created
when the personal intersects with the professional.
Cultural intermediaries
In Distinction, his analysis of the social dynamics of taste, Bourdieu charac-

terizes cultural intermediaries as those in:
occupations involving presentation and representation (sales, marketing,
advertising, public relations, fashion, decoration and so forth) and in all the
institutions providing symbolic goods and services. These include the vari-
ous jobs in medical and social assistance … and in cultural production and
organization. (1984: 359)
Of particular note in Bourdieu’s portrayal of this group are the ways in
which the ‘new petite bourgeoisie’ are involved not only in the production
of styles, services and cultural forms, but also in the legitimation of those
cultural forms – for it is through such legitimation that they hope to con-
solidate their own social position, relative to (and against) the established
dominant, middle and working classes. Legitimacy, however, takes a dif-
ferent form than that wielded by the established dominant class and their
occupations; rather than the binding authority of the state or the rational
authority of traditional professions such as medicine and law, cultural
intermediaries employ appearances, attitudes and images to legitimate their
advice and exercise influence over others. This may be instrumental, but it
is also personal: cultural intermediaries do not just sell lifestyles, they sell
their lifestyles, making them ideal ‘need merchants’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 365).
Three provisos to Bourdieu’s depiction of cultural intermediaries are nec-
essary, and provide useful points of introduction to the occupation of per-
sonal training in the US. The first concerns the label of ‘new’. Cultural
intermediary work is not new; it is a manifestation and extension of middle-
class work more generally – work that intervenes between production and
consumption. While there has been an increase in Western societies since the
1960s in the scales of occupations involving information, images and knowl-
edge, these occupations are not necessarily new, nor are they uniformly
expanding in number (Nixon and du Gay, 2002: 497). Personal training
would appear to be an ideal example of new kinds of work associated with
the expansion of the market in services (and personal services more specifi-
cally) in the early 1990s. Indeed, the occupation considered itself ‘a new breed
of fitness instructor’ in 1991 (Sudy, 1991: xix). However, personal training is
actually a new version of an old job: physical educators, sport and athletic
coaches, drill instructors and military trainers are all examples of long-standing
occupations focused on exercise instruction. One-on-one trainers have also
existed in the past, if typically reserved for elite athletes or the wealthy.
The second proviso regarding Bourdieu’s portrayal concerns the use of a
single label – ‘cultural intermediaries’ – while simultaneously privileging occu-
pations that entail traditional, narrow notions of culture as elite, intellectual
and aesthetic (contrary to insights made by, among others, Raymond
Williams regarding culture as a ‘whole way of life’; see Negus, 2002: 504).
Cultural intermediaries are not a monolithic occupational class; they are
internally stratified along a number of lines, including income levels (and
associated levels of social prestige). For example, reflecting the internal occu-
pational split between full- and part-time work, personal trainers’ annual
income ranged from US$14,540 to US$55,020 in 2005. In comparison with
other personal care and service occupations, 2005 labour statistics place per-
sonal trainers (mean annual income of about US$31,000) somewhere
between manicurists and pedicurists (US$20,000) and flight attendants
(US$54,000).1 Cultural intermediaries are also stratified by the differing
forms and degrees of aesthetic labour and cultural capital required to work
as, for example, an advertising creative, journalist or accountant (Negus,
2002: 504–05; see also Nixon and du Gay, 2002: 498–99). Personal trainers
employ a range of cultural and symbolic forms of capital that have less to do
with elite cultural production and more to do with the typical resources of
personal service workers and aesthetic labourers (Hochschild, 1983; Witz et
al., 2003): appearance, physique, personality, demeanour and so forth.
The final qualification has to do with the sweeping claims made by Bourdieu
and others about cultural intermediaries’ role as the ‘transmission belt’ of a new
consumer morality that regards the ‘morality of pleasure as a duty’ (1984: 365,
367; see also Featherstone, 1991), and their status as the epitome of a post-
Fordist epoch and a new, ‘creative’ service class (Florida, 2002; see also Lash
and Urry, 1987; 1994). Tempering such grand claims is an emerging body of
empirical research addressing how such occupations are implicated in the
mutual constitution of production and consumption, economy and culture in
fields such as advertising (Soar, 2000; Nixon, 2003; McFall, 2004); magazine
publishing (Crewe, 2003); fashion design (Gronow, 1997: 105–11; Skov,
2002); music (Negus, 1999); and retailing (Pettinger, 2004). Broadly falling
under the banner of ‘cultural economy’ (du Gay and Pryke, 2002), this work
understands economy and culture as dynamic and mutually iterative, with the
interface between them being situational and accomplished through specific,
material practices. Economy and culture are not separated by a fixed, a priori
boundary: the market is always a cultural practice (Slater, 1993; Miller, D.,
2001; McFall, 2004). Indeed, it is difficult to insist on a static separation of pro-
duction and consumption in the face of cultural intermediary work (and service
work more generally), in which exchange and use overlap in time and space.
Cultural intermediaries are of particular interest because their work exemplifies
the negotiation between production and consumption, and between economic
and cultural agendas, knowledges and constraints.
As the following sections demonstrate, personal training, for all of its asso-
ciations with ‘new’ work, is, in fact, rather conservative, preserving a tradi-
tional professional, vocational mentality (Weber, 1946) and reproducing the
conventional (if increasingly inapt) opposition between professionalism and
entrepreneurialism. At the same time, this research affirms Bourdieu’s under-
standing of why cultural intermediaries make such effective needs merchants.
The strategies endorsed for occupational success require that personal train-
ers invest their private lives in their work roles – by making the personal the
precondition of their professional life, personal trainers are encouraged to sell
their own lifestyles.
Professionalization and its problems
Despite claims of a radically ‘new’ mode of work, there are deeply entrenched
normative practices and ‘occupational formulae’ (Negus, 2002: 510) shaping
cultural intermediaries’ work. For example, Moeran (1996: 60 in McFall,
2004: 72) refers to the ‘system of conventions’ through which advertising cre-
atives make sense of and coordinate with other advertising subgroups, such
as account managers (the ‘suits’). Processes of professionalization are of inter-
est in this regard: how and to what effect does such work become increasingly
codified, formalized and regulated as a (quasi) profession?
Three main factors differentiate occupations from professions (cf. Caplow,
1954; Wilensky, 1964; Pavalko, 1971; Larson, 1977; Abbott, 1988). First, a
profession is typically defined by mastery and monopoly of a distinct body of
abstract knowledge, the techniques for application of that knowledge, and
the courses of training through which mastery is produced and tested. The
emergence of various certifying bodies and training programmes for personal
trainers is significant for the establishment of a distinct body of knowledge

and expertise, and purportedly objective measures of skill and professional
credibility. ACE first offered a certification exam for personal trainers in
1990, combining knowledge from academic fields such as exercise physiol-
ogy, kinesiology, anatomy and biomechanics. In the US, there is no stan-
dardized certification required in order to work as a personal trainer;
regulation is primarily internal to the occupation. The development of IDEA
and ACE referral services is one example of internal regulation and monitor-
ing of the quality of service and qualifications. Certifications are a way to
judge quality, and, as the editor of IPT writes, ‘quality is a market issue as
well as a service issue’ (IPT, 1995 (July/August) 6: 34). That is, in addition to
supporting claims to professional status, certification creates a logic of career
advancement and a justification for fee structures (cf. Lloyd, 1996).
Second, as a result of their monopoly of a distinct body of knowledge and
skills (and in comparison with other occupations), professions are character-
ized by autonomy, in that they tend to have a high degree of control over their
work, as well as control over the production of fellow professionals (Caplow,
1954; Wilensky, 1964). The degree of autonomy, however, is dependent on
the conditions of labour. For example, some trainers are self-employed, mak-
ing autonomy a relatively unproblematic matter in terms of the external man-
agement of one’s labour. The majority of trainers, however, are employees of
fitness facilities; in such cases, a trainer’s autonomy is constrained by the need
to comply with the employer’s dress code, fee scale and demand for income
generation. Moreover, occupational research finds that 63 per cent of all per-
sonal trainers work part time, highlighting the flexibility of the work, as well
as its tenuousness: 30 per cent of full-time trainers and 57 per cent of part-time
trainers receive no employment benefits at all.2 The casual and precarious
aspects of personal training sit awkwardly with notions of professionalism.
Nevertheless, even as employees of health clubs, personal trainers retain a sig-
nificant degree of autonomy relative to other personal service workers because
their role as personal motivators (which requires adaptability and flexibility)
shields their emotional labour from being subjected to employer-set scripts
(Smith Maguire, 2001; see also Wharton, 1993; Leidner, 1999).
Third, and most importantly for trainers, professions are characterized by
normative codes that place service before self-interest and justify the prestige
of the profession by reference to a greater social cause. Such professional ide-
ology is written into codes of ethics, such as the one devised by IDEA in 1988
and updated in 1997 (IPT, 1997 (January) 8: 2), and is invoked in articles
addressing personal trainers as members of a community with the mission to
‘save’ those who have yet to realize the benefits of regular physical activity –
a mission painted as all the more pressing given escalating rates of population
inactivity and obesity (World Health Organization, 2004). The indoctrina-
tion into a service-oriented professional mentality is further reinforced
through the occupational texts, which refer to personal training as a caring
profession, like counselling or social work (Sudy, 1991: 375).
Personal trainers are encouraged to construct an aura of professional-

ism through such means as certifications, annual meetings, monthly
newsletters, stipulated re-certifications, codes of ethics and so forth. This
aura, however, is problematic, because occupational success does not
rest on professionalism and certifications alone. Like health clubs that
are often indistinguishable on the basis of equipment, certified personal
trainers are largely interchangeable in terms of their technical knowl-
edge. The difference – between health clubs, personal trainers and con-
sumer businesses more broadly – lies in service, as a 1992 IPT article
suggests:
[C]onsider that in this business, selling knowledge is a given. The difference
between trainers is service. … Outstanding service means that you: remem-
ber a client’s particular health concern, and bring an article addressing that
issue …; provide wake-up calls …; meet with a client and physician or phys-
ical therapist …; develop a strong resource support system for your clients
…; take clients to look at and test exercise equipment that you recommend.
(IPT, 1992 (September) 3: 2)
In addition, other IPT authors suggest such service strategies as sending
clients birthday and thank-you cards, leaving motivational messages on
clients’ answering machines, or faxing clients workout instructions when
they are away on business trips (e.g. IPT, 1993 (January) 4: 1–3; IPT, 1992
(July/August) 3: 6; IPT, 2001 (February) 12: 28–37). These are not pre-
sented to IPT readers as expressions of an organic, professional care for
others, but as instrumental means to making a living. Thus, in addition to
those work roles and duties that affirm their professional identity, the entre-
preneurial components of personal trainers’ labour – soliciting clients, set-
ting fee rates, negotiating contracts, maintaining client loyalty – undermine
or contradict an ethic of service.
Thus, personal trainers straddle two worlds, typically considered mutually
exclusive: the service-oriented world of the professional and the self-inter-
ested, instrumental realm of the entrepreneur. The normative codes of pro-
fessionalism direct personal trainers to acquire intellectual capital, espouse a
service-oriented ethic, and regard themselves as one of a family of ‘caring’
professions. Occupational success, however, rests with a trainer’s capacity for
recruiting, motivating and maintaining clients. These entrepreneurial aspects
of the work are generally linked in the occupational texts to the deployment
of ‘personal’ resources – personality, attitude and appearance – as the fol-
lowing section explores.
Putting the ‘personal’ in personal training
Recalling Bourdieu’s notion that need merchants ‘sell so well because they
believe in what they sell’ (1984: 365), cultural intermediaries appear to use
their personal lives, bodies and tastes as crucial occupational resources. As

such, Nixon and Crewe (2004: 131) note that cultural intermediaries tend
to disrupt ‘established divisions between “work” and “leisure” ’, thereby
raising particular tensions for negotiation. This is not to posit a rigid sepa-
ration of work from leisure; work and leisure do not exist as mutually
exclusive, dichotomous terms (Elias and Dunning, 1986). Rather, the
boundary between work and leisure is one that is accomplished in the con-
text of an individual’s particular roles, obligations, desires and aspirations.
For example, a fashion designer’s own lifestyle, house décor and wardrobe
are featured in fashion magazines, in turn investing their clothes (the actual
product) with symbolic value (Rocamora, 2002: 350). The cultural inter-
mediary’s personal taste, cultural capital and lifestyle are necessary for their
production of cultural goods, bestowing legitimacy on both the specific
products they endorse, and their general authority as arbiters of taste and
style. A cultural intermediary may experience the occupational necessity of
living an appropriate lifestyle during non-paid hours as a negative
encroachment of work into their leisure time, but they may also experience
it as an advantage of their chosen occupation, and an opportunity to
‘expense’ leisure pursuits; or they may draw the line between work and
leisure in a different manner altogether.
For personal trainers, there is a persistent exhortation to bring non-work
life into line with one’s work role. Personal trainers are encouraged to regard
themselves as role models, their personal lifestyle and physical form serving
as recommended templates for clients. This is reflected in the lived experience
of trainers and other exercise instructors, who regard their body shape and
attitude as key elements in helping others to live fitter lives, and even, possi-
bly, in challenging the dominant consumer body culture with a more empow-
ered, mindful approach to the body (Haravon Collins, 2002; Greenleaf et al.,
2006; Markula and Pringle, 2006). The work of being a role model is
reflected in the occupational texts as well; articles promote identifying wholly
with the occupation, so that personal lifestyle and professional image are
inseparable. For example:
You communicate your energy and intentions through your demeanor,
through your honest enthusiasm for helping others improve their lifestyles
and reach their fitness goals, and through the activities your pursue to
develop yourself personally and professionally. When people meet you,
they should feel your competence, enthusiasm and values. (IPT, 1994
(November/December) 5: 33)
Further reflecting the degree to which professional authority is seen to
reside in personal conduct, the final clause of the IDEA code of ethics states:
Uphold a professional image through conduct and appearance. Smoking, sub-
stance abuse and unhealthy eating habits should be avoided. Speech and attire
should be appropriate to the client’s comfort. (IPT, 1997 (January) 8: 3)
Personal trainers are thus encouraged to regard their professional

identity as dependent on and guaranteed by their personal lifestyle choices
and experiences. This highlights the gap between established and quasi pro-
fessions, and the precariousness of the personal trainer’s influence over
clients: a heart surgeon’s credibility is not seen to hinge on whether or not
he or she has had bypass surgery.
One might suggest that the more appropriate comparison is not with
heart surgeons but with teachers; personal trainers have more in common
with the pedagogical professions, who have traditionally been held to a
higher code of personal conduct than other professions. Because of their
position as role models, teachers are expected to embody the values they are
charged with imparting. However, Foucault’s work (1986, 1991) on the his-
torical shifts in the modes and exercise of power would suggest that the
authority of all professionals – heart surgeons, teachers, personal trainers –
must be understood within the contemporary, ‘governmental’ context, in
which the social order rests increasingly on individuals’ self-management.
Against such a backdrop, authority ‘softens’: rather than directly intervening
in an individual’s life, the governmental mode of power is concerned with
indirectly managing the conduct of others (Burchell, 1996). Contemporary
exercise culture is not about enforced, collective callisthenics at set times
during the day, but about enticing people to work out through promises of
improved health and appearance (and the chance to look like one’s personal
trainer!). This is an indirect mode of authority, which involves the expecta-
tion that authority figures must be able to lead themselves in order to lead
others (Foucault, 1986); hence, the interest in the personal lives of authority
figures. In a sense, the roles of all professionals are becoming more like that
of the pedagogical professions: to influence, instruct and motivate, rather
than intervene, dictate and punish. That said, the disciplinary mode of power
does not disappear (Foucault, 1991: 102); it is reconfigured and held in
abeyance until warranted, then exerted against those who fail to comply
with the obligation of appropriate self-government. It also remains an
ambivalent source of nostalgia for those burdened with the obligation of
self-management, as when clients look to personal trainers to act like drill
sergeants, thereby passing the responsibility for accomplishing the exercise
on to the disciplinarian (Smith Maguire, 2008: 173).
Communication, performance and self-presentation skills, and the ability
to exert interpersonal influence are central in accomplishing the management
of others (Goffman, 1959; Hochschild, 1983), and thus key to governmental,
therapeutic experts. A trainer must cultivate a client’s trust by looking, sound-
ing and acting like a fitness authority, thereby convincing the client to dele-
gate part of their self-managing rationality to one who is more skilled. Similar
to using a brand name as a rational means of choosing a product, the trainer
becomes a way to manage risk and reduce complexity (cf. Miller and Rose,
1997: 23–25). Consider the following IPT article, which lays out the skills
required for success:
As a personal trainer, your ability to establish rapport with others is essential

if you’re to facilitate a working relationship that maximizes your effectiveness
and your client’s productivity. Lack of this ability will eventually hinder your
business, regardless of your knowledge and teaching skills. (IPT, 1993
(October) 4: 1)
Technical knowledge, like the equipment at the health club, is a necessary
but not sufficient resource in fitness market competition; like the clubs that
have increasingly focused on décor and company image to attract and keep
members, a personal trainer’s personality adds value, differentiating them
from other trainers.
As part of their professional mission as educators and role models, per-
sonal trainers are encouraged to counter the ‘unrealistic expectations …
fueled by the media and at times a somewhat overzealous health community’
(Sudy, 1991: 364). In an IPT article that includes the advice to be upbeat and
positive at all times, the author writes:
To be a top-notch personal trainer, you must have the perfect body. Right?
Wrong! Most clients want to view their trainers as human – above par fit-
ness-wise but with some typical human foibles. Demonstrate to your clients
that you are not obsessed with exercise and nutrition but instead practice
moderation and balance for a healthy lifestyle. Make sure they understand
that gaining a great physique takes time, effort and adherence. (IPT, 2001
(February) 12: 31)
Physical capital and body management are essential for attracting clients;
consequently there is an unquestioned assumption that the trainer (the
reader) already has and values a ‘fit’ physique. But trainers are placed in a
double bind: an overt emphasis on their body shape will undermine their
professionalism by perpetuating unhealthy body attitudes and contradicting
traditional professional criteria such as certifications; at the same time, their
(quasi) professional authority is literally embodied. Just as the clothing
choices of sales assistants are central to the display of ‘fashion competency’
(Pettinger, 2004: 179), a trainer’s physique displays their expertise and
authenticity.
As has been found with advertising creatives both on and off the job
(McFall, 2004: 74), cultural intermediaries’ expressions of aesthetic prefer-
ences and self-care routines through styles of dress, physical appearance,
brand choices and so forth are instrumental in the production and repro-
duction of identity, achievement of status, and accomplishment of work.
Occupational texts encourage adoption of a particular lifestyle (signified –
for creatives – by informal attire at work, metropolitan living, juvenile
codes of behaviour and – for trainers – by a fit physique, ‘clean’ living and
an upbeat attitude) in order to maintain and legitimate one’s occupational
identity. This mandatory lifestyle helps trainers to distinguish themselves
from other fitness instruction services (e.g. group classes, videos), from
other trainers who are competing for the same clients, and from the clients
themselves who supposedly look to trainers’ general lifestyle as an indicator

of their reliability and authority.
However, the mandatory lifestyle implied in the occupational texts raises
specific difficulties and constraints for the actual practice of personal training.
For example, the emphasis on an ideal fit physique creates an implicit age
limit to such occupations; family responsibilities or an ageing body constrain
an individual’s ability to live up to such a lifestyle. In addition, the practice of
personal training is shaped by gender – especially given that nearly 75 per
cent of personal trainers and their clients are female.3 The ideal fit physique
narrows the corporeal parameters for participation (not everyone can ‘look’
the part), and implicates female exercise instructors in the reproduction
of dominant feminine ideals (cf. Markula, 1995; Maguire and Mansfield,
1998; Real, 1999), even if they take a critical or oppositional view of con-
sumer body culture (Haravon Collins, 2002; Markula and Pringle, 2006).
Nevertheless, the commodification of the personal trainer’s physique opens
up the possibility of a problematization, if not pluralization, of hegemonic
gender codes (cf. Miller, T., 2001): less-than-perfect personal trainers can
market their ‘poor’ physique as emblematic of an inclusive or enlightened
approach to fitness (while still embodying their professional credibility).
Making the personal professional introduces particular challenges: one’s
‘honest enthusiasm’ (IPT, 1994 (November/December) 5: 33) is colonized as
an instrumental means to recruit, motivate and retain clients. This most inti-
mate of occupational resources – personal belief – is at the heart of a voca-
tional disposition for personal training. The vocational attitude – of living
‘for’ rather than ‘off’ of fitness – brings us to the final aspect of cultural inter-
mediaries: the ‘relational work’ (Cochoy, 2003, in du Gay, 2004: 100) that
takes place between economy and culture, production and consumption.
Fitness as a vocation
Cultural intermediaries, as viewed from the cultural economy perspective,

are important because their material practices make manifest the ongoing
dialogue between culture and economy. It is not that cultural intermediaries
have a monopoly on the interweaving of these two realms or logics, but that
their work provides an ideal lens on such dynamics because such dynamics
are their work. The material practices of personal trainers make the cate-
gories of culture and economy manifest, as, for example, when: cultural
knowledge is used as a tool to achieve economic ends (e.g. personal train-
ers use their ‘people’ skills to recruit and retain clients); economic logic is
used to achieve cultural agendas (e.g. trainers use their fees and package
deals to motivate clients to take up a ‘fit’ way of life); economic ends are
embedded in cultural activities (e.g. trainers gain increased exposure and
client recruitment by hanging out and working out at a health club during
their non-work hours); and cultural knowledge is embedded in economic
calculations (e.g. trainers use their experience with people’s obstacles to

exercise to assess how much time and effort to devote to reclaiming a client
who has become an ‘exercise drop-out’). It is not that there are two mutu-
ally exclusive economic and cultural logics or agendas intersecting in the
work of personal trainers, but that the everyday understanding of the dif-
ference between culture and economy is produced through such dynamics.
Unlike previously studied cultural intermediary occupations in, for
example, advertising, retail and publishing, personal training makes explicit
both how the dynamic relationship between culture and economy is fraught
with ambivalence, and how such ambivalence is itself productive of an
occupational mentality or disposition.
The tension between economy and culture is particularly evident in the
occupational texts around the issue of selling. Selling goes against much of
what is taken for granted about professions as it places the economic ratio-
nality of the entrepreneur in direct conflict with the service-oriented ethic of
the professional. For example:
The word ‘sales’ has a bad reputation in the fitness industry. However, sell-
ing personal training is something that many of you are doing daily with-
out even knowing it! Most of you truly love your work. You represent a
healthy lifestyle, a fit mind and body, and a positive self-image. Selling often
becomes second nature when you present the concept of personal training
to someone else. Your own personal commitment generates enthusiasm and
sparks an interest. (IPT, 1993 (June) 4: 1)
Similarly, in an article on ‘the ethics of selling products’, the reader is
reminded of the code of ethics and the pledge to put the client’s interest ahead
of personal financial gain. Nevertheless:
In addition to being fitness professionals dedicated to helping individuals
lead healthier lives, many of us are also small-business owners. We’re
always looking for better ways to serve our clients, but we want to grow
our businesses as well. … Most trainers would agree that there is a distinct
difference between selling yourself and selling products. (IPT, 2000
(October) 11: 26)
Reflecting their not-yet-established professional status, selling evokes
mixed emotions for personal trainers. Yet, the same applies to established
professions such as those in academia, medicine and law, for whom norms
are changing as the expectation to be income-generators (with the emphasis
on research grant income and billable hours) becomes commonplace (Leicht
and Fennell, 1997). Selling – demanding a price for – one’s professional ser-
vice places the student, patient or client in the position of a consumer, a
figure more likely to demand choice, personal service and guaranteed results
(and be more litigious should these expectations not be met).
Selling is a contentious issue, bringing to the fore a conflict between a profes-
sional culture or ethic, and the economic parameters of the occupation – the need
to recruit clients, set fee rates and so forth. The occupational texts resolve this
conflict through appeals to belief, personality and the moral ideology that fitness
lifestyles are socially ‘good’. While neither a personal belief in fitness nor highly
developed relational skills form the objective basis of wages or certification, a
personal trainer’s authority status and occupational success ultimately rest with
his or her personal qualities. As the ACE manual (Sudy, 1991: 375) makes clear,
trainers must be able to mobilize empathy, warmth and genuineness:
Genuineness can be defined as authenticity or being honest and open without
putting up a front or facade. It is a state in which the helper’s words and
actions are congruent. … Genuineness is the ability to relate to people with-
out hiding behind a clipboard or a white coat. It is not necessarily being self-
revealing, but rather being committed to a responsible honesty with others.
The primary resource for personal trainers – as depicted in these occupa-
tional texts – is a personal belief in a ‘fit’ way of life. By virtue of a ‘genuine’
commitment to fitness, selling is converted into preaching: in order to do the
work, the trainer is encouraged to believe. This, ultimately, is what makes
cultural intermediaries ideal ‘need merchants’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 365): both
their social status and personal belief reside – and are thus at stake – in their
work.
The endorsed vocational disposition does not seamlessly translate from an
ideal, discursive construction to actual practice. A variety of factors enable
and constrain an individual’s reflexivity concerning the different parameters
and tensions framing personal training work. It is noteworthy that discussion
of such factors – such as age, physical ability, gender – is restricted largely to
questions of tailoring personal training to specific populations – such as the
elderly, the physically disabled or pregnant women. The occupational texts
position the personal trainer as a mediator of the constraints faced by partic-
ipants in the consumption of personal training, while remaining mute on the
role of such factors in the production of such services. For example, the texts’
promotion of certification is gender-blind, despite the added incentive for
women trainers to gain certification: specialized, technical knowledge serves
as an objective measure of competence and expertise, assisting women’s entry
into the ‘male preserve’ (Dunning, 1986) of strength training.
Concluding remarks
Personal trainers mediate between spheres typically considered mutually exclu-

sive: production and consumption; culture and economy; professional and
entrepreneurial. Like cultural intermediaries more generally, personal trainers
are simultaneously involved in the production of consumption and the con-
sumption of production, helping to create for others the experience of particu-
lar goods and activities, while internalizing their productive role and thereby
legitimating those goods and activities through an investment of personal belief.
The discursive construction of personal training endorses a vocational dis-

position, which is constructed in the occupational texts through and in
response to the tension between culture (the culture of fitness, and its associ-
ations with health, well-being and traditional caring professions) and econ-
omy (the entrepreneurial aspects of the work that require personal trainers to
market themselves and/or their health clubs). The disposition of living ‘for’
fitness is an attempt to resolve – if only at the level of representation – the
contradictions inherent in living ‘off’ of fitness while simultaneously pursuing
an aura of professionalism. As a vocation: the problematic blurring of work
and non-work time is resolved as consistency in lifestyle and behaviour, giv-
ing evidence of one’s professional credibility; the instrumental deployment of
one’s physique and attitude in the recruitment and retention of clients is recast
as a sincere expression of one’s personal belief and authentic desire to help
others; and the conflict between professionalism and selling one’s services is
reframed as a service-oriented espousal of physical fitness, transforming the
entrepreneurial into the evangelical. The vocational ‘formula’ (cf. Negus,
2002) provides trainers with a mechanism for reconciling and separating dis-
parate aspects of their work: ‘yes, I must be strategic in setting rate fees,
recruiting clients, and sending birthday cards; but I do this in order to better
convert my clients to a fit and healthy way of life, like my own’.
The occupational texts propose a solution to the conflict between personal
trainers’ professionalism and entrepreneurialism that simultaneously produces
(and, indeed, reproduces entrenched notions of) the boundary between culture
and economy: it is acceptable that selling exercise instruction is a for-profit busi-
ness, but because it has to do with health, and with personal interaction, eco-
nomic rationalities must be ruled by a professional ethos, which is considered
exempt from self-interested calculation. This helps to cast light on the broader
dialogue between culture and economy in a consumer culture and service econ-
omy: economic rationalities are still considered suspect when in the context of
‘personal’ interactions and ‘caring’ services. We do not like to contemplate –
either as service workers or clients, teachers or students, doctors or patients –
that the foundation on which our interactions rest is an economic ground, rais-
ing as it does questions of authenticity, trust and exploitation.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Marg MacNeill for the use of her IPT col-
lection, Graham Knight for comments on an earlier draft, and the University
of Leicester for a period of study leave, which facilitated the revisions.
Notes
1 Bureau of Labor Statistics 2005 occupational employment and wage

statistics, www.bls.gov/oes (accessed January 2007).
2 Results from the ACE Salary Survey, http://www.acefitness.org/getcertified/

certification_pt.aspx (accessed January 2007); and the IDEA ‘Personal
Fitness Trainer Fact Sheet’, www.ideafit.com (accessed June 2004 and now
no longer available).
3 Occupational data on gender composition from IDEA’s ‘Personal Fitness
Trainer Fact Sheet’, www.ideafit.com (accessed June 2004 and now no
longer available).
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● JENNIFER SMITH MAGUIRE is a lecturer in the Department of

Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. Her research
on consumer body culture has focused on the intersections between
health clubs, personal trainers and the fitness media within the cultural
field of commercial fitness in the US. She is the author of Fit for
Consumption: Sociology and the Business of Fitness (Routledge, 2008).
Address: Department of Media and Communication, University of
Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, England.
[email:jbs7@le.ac.uk] ●

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ARTICLE

The personal is professional

● Jennifer Smith Maguire

ABSTRACT ● The article examines the discursive construction of personal

training as a case study of the characteristics of cultural intermediary work.

KEYWORDS ● cultural economy ● cultural intermediary ● entrepreneur

Much academic attention has focused on the development of consumer culture

service class and, in particular, the cluster of occupations known as ‘cultural

In Distinction, his analysis of the social dynamics of taste, Bourdieu charac-

Professionalization and its problems

trainers is significant for the establishment of a distinct body of knowledge

Personal trainers are encouraged to construct an aura of professional-

Putting the ‘personal’ in personal training

their personal lives, bodies and tastes as crucial occupational resources. As

Personal trainers are thus encouraged to regard their professional

As a personal trainer, your ability to establish rapport with others is essential

themselves who supposedly look to trainers’ general lifestyle as an indicator

Cultural intermediaries, as viewed from the cultural economy perspective,

calculations (e.g. trainers use their experience with people’s obstacles to

Personal trainers mediate between spheres typically considered mutually exclu-

The discursive construction of personal training endorses a vocational dis-

1 Bureau of Labor Statistics 2005 occupational employment and wage

2 Results from the ACE Salary Survey, http://www.acefitness.org/getcertified/

Abbott, A. (1988) The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert

Ferguson, P.P. (1998) ‘A Cultural Field in the Making: Gastronomy in 19th-

MacNeill, M. (1994) ‘Active Women, Media Representations, and Ideology’, in

Slater, D. (1997) Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

● JENNIFER SMITH MAGUIRE is a lecturer in the Department of

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