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cheapfaresnews · 8 years ago

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Good Looking Walking Shoes

Just because you travel on a budget only after carefully reviewing your cheap travel options such as cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, cheap deals, discount travel deals, and cheap vacation packages, does not mean that you should travel with walking shoes that you are ashamed to wear in public.

The following are walking shoes that perform like athletic sneakers as well as are stylish, according to Caroline Morse:

· The Propet Travelwalker’s upper is made from a lightweight mesh that collapses to be nearly flat. These shoes have the feel of athletic sneakers, though with a much thinner sole, and thus do not look like bulky workout shoes. Travelwalkers come in every color of the rainbow.

· Sperry Paul Sperry Collection is a classic line designed for outdoor wear in all types of conditions, while retaining a fashionable, preppy look. The Paul Sperry Collection is comprised of classic boat shoes that have been retrofitted with athletic features making them ideal walking shoes. They come with a comfortable amount of cushioning.

· Teva is well known for its iconic walking sandals. Teva has come out with sneakers that are an ideal blend of street style and comfort. These sneakers lace up, stay on, and support the wearer’s feet, allowing them to be worn for long distances without contributing to feet soreness. The men’s version is the Teva Sterling which prides itself for offering lightweight, breathable, and cool sneakers.

· Rockport Boat Shoes are excellent “undercover” walking shoes. While stylish, their casual design results in awesome foot friendly features. The Cambridge Blvd Boat Shoe and Bennett Lane 3 Boat shoe have ADIPRENE built in, which provides the same shock absorbing heel cushioning all day comfort available with Adidas running shoes.

· Sperry Top-Sider Seacoast Canvas Shoe are perfect for long walks. Its laces spiral through at the end, and are designed not to be tied, keeping its shoes firmly on the wearer’s fee without sacrificing style.

· Nike Flyknit sneakers are designed for hardcore workouts, meaning they hold up great for miles and miles of walking and are also lightweight and easy to pack. Their only downside is a giant Nike logo plastered on the side. This is a non-issue if you purchase a pair in all black with a black swoosh so that the log blends in.

· Clarks’ Fallston Style Shoe is an upgraded boat shoe that is designed to be worn without socks. It comes with a fabric lining designed to reduce friction and a cushion soft OrthoLite footbed. Ideal for hot destinations where you want something sturdy. Women’s Clarks CloudSteppers Sillian Joss come with a super soft foam insole and are very lightweight.

· Aureus Insignia shoes are made for style conscious males as evidenced by the wide variety of colors available and standout features such as contrasting shoelaces. These shoes take advantage of AM-TECH technology which provides cushioning and arch support. These shoes bond the outsole directly to the upper (instead of using glue) which means that well-worn versions of these shoes will not ultimately suffer from separation.

· Blue Kicks are easy to wear and comfortable to walk in slip-on shoes for men and women. These machine washable shoes are made with cotton canvas and come with a removable insole that offers meaningful arch support.

· The Asha Alt 2 Slip-On Sneaker from Puma offers a EcoOrthoLite breathable sockliner for an ideal fit and a lightweight structure.

www.cheapfares.com

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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How Fitness Culture Enlisted Ballerinas To Profit Off Our Insecurities

Its 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, and the exercise studio is starting to fill up. Participants are filtering in, each of them claiming a place at the ballet barres that are bolted to floor-to-ceiling mirrors along every wall. Theres not a leotard or a pair of tights in sight; everyones wearing running leggings and t-shirts. Their hair is in ponytails, not stiff ballet buns. And the music that soon starts pumping through the speakers is not classical piano, but pulsating EDM and Rihanna remixes. This looks like a ballet studio, but therell be no ballet happening here today. Welcome to barre class.

Ballet is having a cultural moment right now. From Misty Copelands crossover into mainstream celebrity to the proliferation of barre classes and the use of ballerinas as models for athleisure and fashion lines, ballet is once again fashionable and aspirational.

As a fashion influence, ballet has come and gone for decades: legwarmers cycle in and out of style, and American Apparel spent years trying to convince hipsters everywhere that leotards are comfortable. Ballerinas from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater are currently serving as models for luxe clothing brands like Wolford, Thakoon and Negative Underwear. But ballets current mainstream moment goes beyond fashion, crossing over into fitness culture and serving as a revealing reminder of the kind of female athleticism the kind of female bodies that American culture deems acceptable and admirable.

This is not surprising. After all, the ballerina is the perfect emblem of our anxieties and aspirations around female athleticism: shes fit and physically strong, but she also bears a striking resemblance to a catwalk model. The ballerina, as most of us envision her, is everything women are encouraged to aspire to be: thin, ultra-feminine, wealthy and white.

Lets start with barre classes, the blend of pilates, yoga and basic dance moves, some of them done while holding on to the same kind of barre that ballerinas use while warming up and strengthening their bodies at the start of every ballet class.

Barre has spiked in popularity in the last several years, with Pure Barre and Barre3 franchise studios popping up all over the country. Barre was the breakout trend for 2016, said Ashley Hennings, the Head of PR at Class Pass, in an email to The Huffington Post. Hennings says that last year, barre accounted for 17 percent of all classes booked through the subscription program, and saw the highest yearly increase in bookings of any fitness category.

Barre bears little resemblance to what ballerinas do in a ballet studio: Its a lot of squats, there are exercises that require free weights and inflatable balls, and the music is for getting you pumped, not for dancing.

Promotional copy for Pure Barre promises a full-body workout concentrating on the areas women struggle with the most: hips, thighs, seat, abdominals and arms, and reassures that each strength section of the workout is followed by a stretching section in order to create long, lean muscles without bulk. Barre3s copy says the workout mixes athleticism, grace, and the latest innovations designed to balance the body, and promises that it will tone and lengthen all major muscle groups, resulting in proportion in the body that is shapely and attractive. It purports to improve your posture, too, presumably to help you to stand tall and regal, like an elegant ballerina. The words long and length appear a lot on the Barre3 website. Lean, not bulky, muscles are the goal here. The technique works to defy gravity by tapering everything in and lifting it up! the Pure Barre website assures, perkily.

Raleigh News & Observer via Getty Images

A Barre3 teacher leads a class in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Long, lean, lengthy, lean muscles that definitely arent bulky dont come cheap.

In New York City, a class at Barre3 will run you $33 for an hour of exercise. In Dallas, a single Pure Barre class costs $22, with discounts if you buy a package of classes. Classes are tailored to their markets, so a single class in Fayetteville, Arizona, is $15. And a monthly subscription for online Barre3 workouts, complete with recipes and a chat function to consult instructors, is $29. Pure Barre recommends that beginners start by taking four classes a week for optimal results.

Then, theres the gear: studios sell workout wear, weights and balls you can use at home, plus special socks purported to improve your grip and balance during a class that most people do wearing regular socks, or nothing at all, on their feet. The workout wear is pricey, too: There are $56 cotton tank tops and $98 leggings. The grip sox are $16.

The gear isnt mandatory or necessary, of course, but it is part of what the Pure Barre website explicitly calls more than just a workout … a lifestyle. Barre life isnt just about the squats. Its about the gear, about carving out time for you, about doing exercises designed for women and taught by women. This is about creating a particular kind of female body one that is strong but not bulky and living a particular kind of feminine life. An expensive one.

Purity or proximity to classical ballet aside, barre classes do claim to offer participants a way to sculpt a ballerina-esque body. Despite its tenuous connections to actual ballet, barre uses the promise of a ballerina body to market to customers (Pure Barre was founded by a former dancer; while the founder of Barre3 describes herself as renowned wellness expert and media personality).

Barre studios are not the only ones in the fitness industry who are doing so. With the rise of athleisure, brands have begun hiring ballet dancers to help them market apparel for the gym, yoga, running and other workout activities. New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns serves as a model for Cole Haans recently announced athleisure line. Fellow principal Lauren Lovette models for athleisure line MPG Sport. New York City Ballet corps de ballet member Olivia Boisson models for Puma, and the brand just released a Swan Lake-themed line of workout and athleisure gear, created in partnership with City Ballet and modeled by their dancers. American Ballet Theatre soloist Calvin Royal III models for GapFit, along with a racially diverse set of ballerinas. And American Ballet Theatre principal Misty Copeland has a high-profile endorsement deal with Under Armor.

I love releasing myself into my art because it offers me a constructively MEANINGFUL outlet for the strong emotions I am encouraged by my own self to suppress. Real artists feel strongly. @mpgsport #feeleverything #useitforgood

A photo posted by Lauren Lovette (@laurenlovette) on Oct 28, 2016 at 6:05am PDT

There are many forms of exercise that require, or seem to require, the kind of athleisure wear that has been embraced by retailers and celebrity merchandisers at a staggering rate in the last few years. And there are many forms of exercise that will give you, or promise to give you, the kind of long, lean muscles advertised by barre studios charging $30 per class. Plenty of workouts will leave you looking athletic, muscular, toned all those words that reveal the truth behind the strong is the new skinny movement, which is that, in addition to being strong, you should still, wherever possible, please be skinny. Yet its ballerinas who are increasingly modeling the athleisure wear, and its barre classes that are spiking in popularity.

The choice of the ballerinas body as a way to market exercise gear and of ballet as a marketing tool for exercise classes (excuse me, lifestyles) is not coincidental.

PUMA X NYCB // Weve teamed up once again. Just in time to open our Winter performances of Balanchines one act Swan Lake, PUMA is launching their Swan Pack collection inspired by the power and grace of this iconic ballet. #rachelhutsell @rachelhutsell #mimistaker @missssmimi @puma @pumawomen @pumatraining #PUMA #PUMAwomen #PUMAtraining #swanpack #nycballet #nycb #newyorkcityballet #ballet #linkinbio

A photo posted by New York City Ballet (@nycballet) on Jan 18, 2017 at 1:37pm PST

The rise of athleisure highlights the extent to which a body that is regularly exercised has become a status symbol. Athleisure wear, which gives one the appearance of always heading to or from a gym, and reveals your size and shape and musculature in a way that regular street clothes do not, is one means by which to flaunt that status symbol. At a time when, for women, wealth and low weight are correlated, and where poverty and obesity often go hand-in-hand, athleisure wear, and the body youre clearly meant to have or aspire to when youre wearing it, is not just about having the right kind of female body its also about having the right kind of bank account with which to dress it.

It makes sense, then, that ballerinas would be recruited to market athleisure wear and the barre classes for which you supposedly need it: Ballet is, in the public imagination, an activity for the elite. Its not only the ballerina body thats aspirational; so, too, is the economic status that the art form of ballet itself suggests.

In the U.S., ballet watching it and doing it has long been viewed as an elite activity. In her book Nutcracker Nation, dance historian Jennifer Fisher writes that there is a rarefied elegance associated with the art form, which has an aristocratic subcode and a tony profile. Ballet has a perceived exclusive quality … conferring on its participants the gloss of something high class. She describes a mid-1990s documentary in which a fundraiser for Londons Royal Opera House called elitism one of [her] biggest selling points.

We like it because its elitist, thats why people come here, the fundraiser says. Part of what makes this place special is that the audience is special.

This attitude is implied in the U.S.s grand ballet spaces, like Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, and Fisher notes that it applies to both watching ballet and to learning it: in her ethnographic research, people repeatedly referred to ballet as a classy thing to do.

This perception is rooted in fact: Ballet tickets and ballet training are expensive. Even the cheapest tickets to a premiere company like New York City Ballet can cost close to $50. Ballet classes and gear are costly, too, especially as children grow quickly out of leotards, tights and shoes. Pointe shoes start at about $50. This is to say nothing of the cost of performance costumes, competition fees and, for very advanced students, room-and-board at full-time residential ballet schools.

All in all, ballet is not simply perceived as a feminine pursuit, but as one for wealthy women and girls. No wonder, then, that ballerinas so strong and lean, so athletic in their pricey leggings and racer-back tank tops, so fancy would be used to market athleisure and fitness classes. Theyre a way to sell apparel and exercise by advertising aspirational upper-class feminine beauty.

Brad Barket via Getty Images

A Puma executive, left, with New York City Ballet dancer Mimi Staker, right.

And that upper-class feminine beauty is white.

The archetypal ballet dancer, in the public imagination, is not only a woman shes a white woman. Thats largely because of the whiteness of the ballerinas who, historically, have risen to the top of the ballet world and become known beyond it. True, there are notable exceptions, reaching back to the beginning of American ballet: Maria Tallchief, widely considered the U.S.s first ballet star, was Native American. Still, those exceptions are just that: deviations from the norm. The norm in ballet, particularly in the highest ranks and the most prestigious companies, is white.

The most obvious contemporary exception to that norm is, of course, Misty Copeland, the first black woman to become a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. There are other visible exceptions New York City Ballets Boisson and American Ballet Theatres Courtney Lavine (who is the face and body of an Avon perfume) but Copeland is by far the nations best-known ballerina, of any race. In addition to her documentary, her several books and her leotard line, which are marketed at dancers, she has her more mainstream endorsement deal with Under Armor and another with Seiko. Shell appear in Disneys live-action Nutcracker movie, and she has her own Barbie. She has emerged as a ballet star, a civil rights figure and a celebrity of sorts. Still, her celebrity and her visibility rest not just on her talent, but also on her status as an outlier in the world of ballet. She is a principal because she is a terrifically talented, hardworking and beautiful dancer; she is famous because she is the only black woman in a world of white ballerinas.

@underarmour Copeland wont let you define her. How do you #RuleYourself? Share your rule with #RuleYourself and @Underarmour and your story may be featured in our next documentary! Rules in Bio.

A photo posted by Misty Copeland (@mistyonpointe) on Mar 21, 2016 at 8:18am PDT

Exceptions aside, ballet remains, in reality and in the public imagination, overwhelmingly white. And GapFit notwithstanding, the ballerina body that is deployed to market athleisure gear is usually a white one, and the aspirational lifestyle that is marketed via ballet-adjacent barre classes is implicitly for white women. While the websites for Pure Barre and Barre3 splash sleek professional photos of ethnically diverse classes, the roster of barre enthusiasts who say the regimen has changed their lives for the better is almost entirely white. Barre classes may be a new and growing trend, and ballerina-fronted athleisure may be booming like never before, but scratch the surface of ballets new visibility, and theres very little thats novel about it.

For those who love ballet and prefer it to be present in mainstream culture, rather than cosseted away in what Fisher calls its usual swank milieu, its tempting to be cheered by its current popularity and prominence. Now, for the first time in perhaps a generation, ballerinas are visible and accessible to mainstream audiences, held out as role models and as actual models.

But its worth looking closer at how the idea of ballet, and the bodies of ballerinas, are being used to sell women on an acceptable vision of feminine athleticism one thats muscular but not bulky, strong and skinny and on a version of femininity that promises a body, and a lifestyle, marked by wealth and by whiteness. The goal of all that squatting and pulsing remains unchanged, the costume of athleisure leggings and fitted hoodies is for the same desired performance: be thin, be rich, be white. Be the right kind of woman.

As barre enrollments around the country swell and athleisure brands proliferate, you have to ask: Isnt this just the same old dance weve always done?

Read more: http://ift.tt/2k3carz

from How Fitness Culture Enlisted Ballerinas To Profit Off Our Insecurities

#How Fitness Culture Enlisted Ballerinas To Profit Off Our Insecurities

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poledancertoday · 8 years ago

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How Fitness Culture Enlisted Ballerinas To Profit Off Our Insecurities

[Chloe Angyal | Huffington Post]

It's 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, and the exercise studio is starting to fill up. Participants are filtering in, each of them claiming a place at the ballet barres that are bolted to floor-to-ceiling mirrors along every wall. There's not a leotard or a pair of tights in sight; everyone's wearing running leggings and t-shirts. Their hair is in ponytails, not stiff ballet buns. And the music that soon starts pumping through the speakers is not classical piano, but pulsating EDM and Rihanna remixes. This looks like a ballet studio, but there'll be no ballet happening here today. Welcome to barre class.

Ballet is having a cultural moment right now. From Misty Copeland's crossover into mainstream celebrity to the proliferation of barre classes and the use of ballerinas as models for athleisure and fashion lines, ballet is once again fashionable and aspirational.

As a fashion influence, ballet has come and gone for decades: legwarmers cycle in and out of style, and American Apparel spent years trying to convince hipsters everywhere that leotards are comfortable. Ballerinas from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater are currently serving as models for luxe clothing brands like Wolford, Thakoon and Negative Underwear. But ballet's current mainstream moment goes beyond fashion, crossing over into fitness culture and serving as a revealing reminder of the kind of female athleticism ― the kind of female bodies ― that American culture deems acceptable and admirable.

This is not surprising. After all, the ballerina is the perfect emblem of our anxieties and aspirations around female athleticism: she's fit and physically strong, but she also bears a striking resemblance to a catwalk model. The ballerina, as most of us envision her, is everything women are encouraged to aspire to be: thin, ultra-feminine, wealthy and white.

Let's start with barre classes, the blend of pilates, yoga and basic dance moves, some of them done while holding on to the same kind of barre that ballerinas use while warming up and strengthening their bodies at the start of every ballet class.

Barre has spiked in popularity in the last several years, with Pure Barre and Barre3 franchise studios popping up all over the country. Barre was “the breakout trend for 2016,” said Ashley Hennings, the Head of PR at Class Pass, in an email to The Huffington Post. Hennings says that last year, barre accounted for 17 percent of all classes booked through the subscription program, and saw the highest yearly increase in bookings of any fitness category.

Barre bears little resemblance to what ballerinas do in a ballet studio: It's a lot of squats, there are exercises that require free weights and inflatable balls, and the music is for getting you pumped, not for dancing.

Promotional copy for Pure Barre promises “a full-body workout concentrating on the areas women struggle with the most: hips, thighs, seat, abdominals and arms,” and reassures that “each strength section of the workout is followed by a stretching section in order to create long, lean muscles without bulk.” Barre3's copy says the workout “mixes athleticism, grace, and the latest innovations designed to balance the body,” and promises that it will “tone and lengthen all major muscle groups,” resulting in “proportion in the body that is shapely and attractive.” It purports to improve your posture, too, presumably to help you to stand tall and regal, like an elegant ballerina. The words “long” and “length” appear a lot on the Barre3 website. “Lean, not bulky, muscles” are the goal here. “The technique works to defy gravity by tapering everything in and lifting it up!” the Pure Barre website assures, perkily.

RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER VIA GETTY IMAGES

A Barre3 teacher leads a class in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Long, lean, lengthy, lean muscles that definitely aren't bulky don't come cheap.

Then, there's the gear: studios sell workout wear, weights and balls you can use at home, plus special socks purported to improve your grip and balance during a class that most people do wearing regular socks, or nothing at all, on their feet. The workout wear is pricey, too: There are $56 cotton tank tops and $98 leggings. The “grip sox” are $16.

The gear isn't mandatory or necessary, of course, but it is part of what the Pure Barre website explicitly calls “more than just a workout … a lifestyle.” Barre life isn't just about the squats. It's about the gear, about carving out time for you, about doing exercises designed for women and taught by women. This is about “creating” a particular kind of female body ― one that is strong but not bulky ― and living a particular kind of feminine life. An expensive one.

Barre studios are not the only ones in the fitness industry who are doing so. With the rise of athleisure, brands have begun hiring ballet dancers to help them market apparel for the gym, yoga, running and other workout activities. New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns serves as a model for Cole Haan's recently announced athleisure line. Fellow principal Lauren Lovette models for athleisure line MPG Sport. New York City Ballet corps de ballet member Olivia Boisson models for Puma, and the brand just released a Swan Lake-themed line of workout and athleisure gear, created in partnership with City Ballet and modeled by their dancers. American Ballet Theatre soloist Calvin Royal III models for GapFit, along with a racially diverse set of ballerinas. And American Ballet Theatre principal Misty Copeland has a high-profile endorsement deal with Under Armor.

instagram

There are many forms of exercise that require, or seem to require, the kind of athleisure wear that has been embraced by retailers and celebrity merchandisers at a staggering rate in the last few years. And there are many forms of exercise that will give you, or promise to give you, the kind of long, lean muscles advertised by barre studios charging $30 per class. Plenty of workouts will leave you looking athletic, muscular, toned ― all those words that reveal the truth behind the “strong is the new skinny” movement, which is that, in addition to being strong, you should still, wherever possible, please be skinny. Yet it's ballerinas who are increasingly modeling the athleisure wear, and it's barre classes that are spiking in popularity.

The choice of the ballerina's body as a way to market exercise gear ― and of ballet as a marketing tool for exercise classes (excuse me, “lifestyles”) ― is not coincidental.

[READ MORE]

The post How Fitness Culture Enlisted Ballerinas To Profit Off Our Insecurities appeared first on Pole World News.

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imreviewblog · 8 years ago

Text

How Fitness Culture Enlisted Ballerinas To Profit Off Our Insecurities

It’s 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, and the exercise studio is starting to fill up. Participants are filtering in, each of them claiming a place at the ballet barres that are bolted to floor-to-ceiling mirrors along every wall. There’s not a leotard or a pair of tights in sight; everyone’s wearing running leggings and t-shirts. Their hair is in ponytails, not stiff ballet buns. And the music that soon starts pumping through the speakers is not classical piano, but pulsating EDM and Rihanna remixes. This looks like a ballet studio, but there’ll be no ballet happening here today. Welcome to barre class.

Ballet is having a cultural moment right now. From Misty Copeland’s crossover into mainstream celebrity to the proliferation of barre classes and the use of ballerinas as models for athleisure and fashion lines, ballet is once again fashionable and aspirational.

As a fashion influence, ballet has come and gone for decades: legwarmers cycle in and out of style, and American Apparel spent years trying to convince hipsters everywhere that leotards are comfortable. Ballerinas from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater are currently serving as models for luxe clothing brands like Wolford, Thakoon and Negative Underwear. But ballet’s current mainstream moment goes beyond fashion, crossing over into fitness culture and serving as a revealing reminder of the kind of female athleticism ― the kind of female bodies ― that American culture deems acceptable and admirable.

This is not surprising. After all, the ballerina is the perfect emblem of our anxieties and aspirations around female athleticism: she’s fit and physically strong, but she also bears a striking resemblance to a catwalk model. The ballerina, as most of us envision her, is everything women are encouraged to aspire to be: thin, ultra-feminine, wealthy and white.

Let’s start with barre classes, the blend of pilates, yoga and basic dance moves, some of them done while holding on to the same kind of barre that ballerinas use while warming up and strengthening their bodies at the start of every ballet class.

Barre bears little resemblance to what ballerinas do in a ballet studio: It’s a lot of squats, there are exercises that require free weights and inflatable balls, and the music is for getting you pumped, not for dancing.

Promotional copy for Pure Barre promises “a full-body workout concentrating on the areas women struggle with the most: hips, thighs, seat, abdominals and arms,” and reassures that “each strength section of the workout is followed by a stretching section in order to create long, lean muscles without bulk.” Barre3’s copy says the workout “mixes athleticism, grace, and the latest innovations designed to balance the body,” and promises that it will “tone and lengthen all major muscle groups,” resulting in “proportion in the body that is shapely and attractive.” It purports to improve your posture, too, presumably to help you to stand tall and regal, like an elegant ballerina. The words “long” and “length” appear a lot on the Barre3 website. “Lean, not bulky, muscles” are the goal here. “The technique works to defy gravity by tapering everything in and lifting it up!” the Pure Barre website assures, perkily.

Long, lean, lengthy, lean muscles that definitely aren’t bulky don’t come cheap.

Then, there’s the gear: studios sell workout wear, weights and balls you can use at home, plus special socks purported to improve your grip and balance during a class that most people do wearing regular socks, or nothing at all, on their feet. The workout wear is pricey, too: There are $56 cotton tank tops and $98 leggings. The “grip sox” are $16.

The gear isn’t mandatory or necessary, of course, but it is part of what the Pure Barre website explicitly calls “more than just a workout ... a lifestyle.” Barre life isn’t just about the squats. It’s about the gear, about carving out time for you, about doing exercises designed for women and taught by women. This is about “creating” a particular kind of female body ― one that is strong but not bulky ― and living a particular kind of feminine life. An expensive one.

Barre studios are not the only ones in the fitness industry who are doing so. With the rise of athleisure, brands have begun hiring ballet dancers to help them market apparel for the gym, yoga, running and other workout activities. New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns serves as a model for Cole Haan’s recently announced athleisure line. Fellow principal Lauren Lovette models for athleisure line MPG Sport. New York City Ballet corps de ballet member Olivia Boisson models for Puma, and the brand just released a Swan Lake-themed line of workout and athleisure gear, created in partnership with City Ballet and modeled by their dancers. American Ballet Theatre soloist Calvin Royal III models for GapFit, along with a racially diverse set of ballerinas. And American Ballet Theatre principal Misty Copeland has a high-profile endorsement deal with Under Armor.

A photo posted by Lauren Lovette (@laurenlovette) on Oct 28, 2016 at 6:05am PDT

There are many forms of exercise that require, or seem to require, the kind of athleisure wear that has been embraced by retailers and celebrity merchandisers at a staggering rate in the last few years. And there are many forms of exercise that will give you, or promise to give you, the kind of long, lean muscles advertised by barre studios charging $30 per class. Plenty of workouts will leave you looking athletic, muscular, toned ― all those words that reveal the truth behind the “strong is the new skinny” movement, which is that, in addition to being strong, you should still, wherever possible, please be skinny. Yet it’s ballerinas who are increasingly modeling the athleisure wear, and it’s barre classes that are spiking in popularity.

The choice of the ballerina’s body as a way to market exercise gear ― and of ballet as a marketing tool for exercise classes (excuse me, “lifestyles”) ― is not coincidental.

PUMA X NYCB // We’ve teamed up once again. Just in time to open our Winter performances of Balanchine’s one act Swan Lake, PUMA is launching their Swan Pack collection inspired by the power and grace of this iconic ballet. ⠀ ⠀ #rachelhutsell @rachelhutsell #mimistaker @missssmimi @puma @pumawomen @pumatraining #PUMA #PUMAwomen #PUMAtraining #swanpack #nycballet #nycb #newyorkcityballet #ballet #linkinbio

A photo posted by New York City Ballet (@nycballet) on Jan 18, 2017 at 1:37pm PST

The rise of athleisure highlights the extent to which a body that is regularly exercised has become a status symbol. Athleisure wear, which gives one the appearance of always heading to or from a gym, and reveals your size and shape and musculature in a way that regular street clothes do not, is one means by which to flaunt that status symbol. At a time when, for women, wealth and low weight are correlated, and where poverty and obesity often go hand-in-hand, athleisure wear, and the body you’re clearly meant to have or aspire to when you’re wearing it, is not just about having the right kind of female body ― it’s also about having the right kind of bank account with which to dress it.

It makes sense, then, that ballerinas would be recruited to market athleisure wear and the barre classes for which you supposedly need it: Ballet is, in the public imagination, an activity for the elite. It’s not only the ballerina body that’s aspirational; so, too, is the economic status that the art form of ballet itself suggests.

In the U.S., ballet – watching it and doing it – has long been viewed as an elite activity. In her book Nutcracker Nation, dance historian Jennifer Fisher writes that there is a “rarefied elegance” associated with the art form, which has an “aristocratic subcode” and a “tony profile.” Ballet has a “perceived exclusive quality ... conferring on its participants the gloss of something ‘high class.’” She describes a mid-1990s documentary in which a fundraiser for London’s Royal Opera House called elitism “one of [her] biggest selling points.”

“We like it because it’s elitist, that’s why people come here,” the fundraiser says. “Part of what makes this place special is that the audience is special.”

This attitude is implied in the U.S.’s grand ballet spaces, like Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, and Fisher notes that it applies to both watching ballet and to learning it: in her ethnographic research, people repeatedly referred to ballet “as a ‘classy’ thing to do.”

All in all, ballet is not simply perceived as a feminine pursuit, but as one for wealthy women and girls. No wonder, then, that ballerinas – so strong and lean, so athletic in their pricey leggings and racer-back tank tops, so fancy – would be used to market athleisure and fitness classes. They’re a way to sell apparel and exercise by advertising aspirational upper-class feminine beauty.

And that upper-class feminine beauty is white.

The archetypal ballet dancer, in the public imagination, is not only a woman ― she’s a white woman. That’s largely because of the whiteness of the ballerinas who, historically, have risen to the top of the ballet world and become known beyond it. True, there are notable exceptions, reaching back to the beginning of American ballet: Maria Tallchief, widely considered the U.S.’s first ballet star, was Native American. Still, those exceptions are just that: deviations from the norm. The norm in ballet, particularly in the highest ranks and the most prestigious companies, is white.

The most obvious contemporary exception to that norm is, of course, Misty Copeland, the first black woman to become a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. There are other visible exceptions – New York City Ballet’s Boisson and American Ballet Theatre’s Courtney Lavine (who is the face and body of an Avon perfume) – but Copeland is by far the nation’s best-known ballerina, of any race. In addition to her documentary, her several books and her leotard line, which are marketed at dancers, she has her more mainstream endorsement deal with Under Armor and another with Seiko. She’ll appear in Disney’s live-action Nutcracker movie, and she has her own Barbie. She has emerged as a ballet star, a civil rights figure and a celebrity of sorts. Still, her celebrity and her visibility rest not just on her talent, but also on her status as an outlier in the world of ballet. She is a principal because she is a terrifically talented, hardworking and beautiful dancer; she is famous because she is the only black woman in a world of white ballerinas.

@underarmour Copeland won’t let you define her. How do you #RuleYourself? Share your rule with #RuleYourself and @Underarmour and your story may be featured in our next documentary! Rules in Bio.

A photo posted by Misty Copeland (@mistyonpointe) on Mar 21, 2016 at 8:18am PDT

Exceptions aside, ballet remains, in reality and in the public imagination, overwhelmingly white. And GapFit notwithstanding, the ballerina body that is deployed to market athleisure gear is usually a white one, and the aspirational lifestyle that is marketed via ballet-adjacent barre classes is implicitly for white women. While the websites for Pure Barre and Barre3 splash sleek professional photos of ethnically diverse classes, the roster of barre enthusiasts who say the regimen has changed their lives for the better is almost entirely white. Barre classes may be a new and growing trend, and ballerina-fronted athleisure may be booming like never before, but scratch the surface of ballet’s new visibility, and there’s very little that’s novel about it.

For those who love ballet and prefer it to be present in mainstream culture, rather than cosseted away in what Fisher calls its usual “swank milieu,” it’s tempting to be cheered by its current popularity and prominence. Now, for the first time in perhaps a generation, ballerinas are visible and accessible to mainstream audiences, held out as role models and as actual models.

But it’s worth looking closer at how the idea of ballet, and the bodies of ballerinas, are being used to sell women on an acceptable vision of feminine athleticism ― one that’s muscular but not bulky, strong and skinny ― and on a version of femininity that promises a body, and a lifestyle, marked by wealth and by whiteness. The goal of all that squatting and pulsing remains unchanged, the costume of athleisure leggings and fitted hoodies is for the same desired performance: be thin, be rich, be white. Be the right kind of woman.

As barre enrollments around the country swell and athleisure brands proliferate, you have to ask: Isn’t this just the same old dance we’ve always done?

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