Your Body Is The Content

It took Bianca Vesco four years to build up 10,000 followers on Instagram.

In that time, she worked in some of the most highly regarded gyms in New York City and modeled for companies like Athleta and Reebok. Then a year ago, her account got hacked. Someone, she doesn't know who, infiltrated her account, deleted her photos, and changed her username. The hacker had essentially created an entirely new account — with all of Vesco's followers.

"I didn't have Instagram for two weeks and it was incredible. I gave myself that time to mourn," sas Vesco. "But it's an obligation for us." To rebuild her new account at @biancapaigefit, Vesco spends at least three hours per day creating video content and books one catchall photoshoot each month. And that's from someone who tells me, "I'm sorry to curse, but I don't give a shit about how many followers I have."

The fitness industry — like travel, like fashion, like period underwear — has begun to take its cues from social media, and not the other way around. Fitness influencers, of course, have entire careers thanks to their Instagram platforms. ("I go to castings now as a fitness model, and I have to write my follower count next to my shoe size," says Vesco.) Beyond simply hoping that clients will share their workouts on Instagram, entire studios are conceived explicitly for social media. You might just be trying to take care of your body, but a gym session can end up feeling like a visit to the Museum of Ice Cream.

Now that the fitness market calls for Instagram walls and the Outdoor Voiced women to pose in front of them, talent agencies are springing up to wrangle their 10 percent from all those toned muscles. We've come a long way from the days of Michael Jordan selling shoes and Jane Fonda demonstrating stretches in her barebones studio.

I recently received a press release for CruBox, a boxing studio in LA. Here's how representatives described the workout: "It's no wonder that when opening a studio these days, more than the programming is taken into consideration. To keep up with the OG fitness studios, the newer ones like CruBox pay special attention to the design aesthetic of the studio, making sure every angle is Insta-worthy and they have merch that will make a statement outside of the studio." Nowhere in their description do we learn what exercises a class will entail. Still, the promo seems to have paid off with a very 2018 seal of approval: Kim and Kourtney Kardashian worked out there in May.

SLT, a megaformer studio, is known for two things: its ability to sculpt models' bodies and its reputation as one of the hardest workouts in New York. It's the preferred workout of trainers, models, and people who spend their time and money on their bodies. Classes in Manhattan cost $40 a pop. The studio could let results (or, as they call them, reSuLTs) stand for themselves. Instead, its brand identity is fortified by a 35,000 follower-strong Instagram. Instructors are encouraged to participate in #megamovemonday and share a video of a particularly challenging exercise. Clients who survive the class are invited to show off their new abs with a photo at the studio's Instagram walls. Honestly, they deserve to.

The studios' physical locations are meant to be photographed. "At this point, I would say [we design for Instagram] 100%," says SLT founder Amanda Freeman. "We think about how the studio will look and feel while you're there, but also about opportunities to capture and share via your camera. What is shareable in the space?"

SLT's design strategy has evolved over time. "We have some studios that are five years old and probably less Instagrammable," say Freeman. The newer of its 25 locations are plotted out with at least one Instagram wall and a photo-friendly doormat. You'll recognize the font on the studio walls as designed by ubiquitous NYC-LA artist Baron Von Fancy, who has also worked with companies like Uber and Nike. They've also partnered with artist Brian Kaspr and designed custom wallpaper inspired by the patterned leggings of fitness apparel brand Terez. There are neon signs, which it takes a true influencer to know how to photograph properly. And once Freeman noticed how much fans loved to share the phrase "better sore than sorry," she trademarked it.

Even at-home workouts aren't immune to the power of Instagram-friendly aesthetics. I recently visited the Dumbo headquarters of Obé (short for Our Body Electric, pronounced like "obey"), an at-home workout company founded by CAA agents-turned-fitness buffs Mark Mullet and Ashley Mills. The streamable classes are shot in a 10×10 lightroom. Picture a Richard Simmons workout as curated by Yeezy in partnership with Glossier for the MoMA. Obé takes something that people are meant to do alone, at home, in their living rooms, and turns it into an experience that almost feels wasted if you don't share it on social media. It really does look that good.

"The at-home fitness market has largely looked the same for a long time, by which I mean it's darker, it seems grittier, it's a hardwood floor," says Mills. "We thought a tremendous amount about the look and feel of what we were doing." The brand's aesthetic is pulled from a mix of modern art, '80s fitness and Chinese color therapy. "I think why at-home fitness has gotten a bit of a bad rap is because there's nothing from an experiential perspective that really speaks to [the client]," she says. They chose bright colors to help wake up members, who are ideally starting their day with 20-plus minutes staring at Obé on screen. The white background was chosen to "open up your lungs"; yellow supposedly brings happiness. "We wanted to create a product that we would want to consume, and it needed to be beautiful," she says.

Obé has just over 40,000 followers on Instagram, a milestone that Mills says she discovered only when I asked her about it. The plan is for fitness people to discover the brand via Instagram, where they "tap over to our bio and then over to our site where hopefully we convince them to try it out." There's a seven-day free trial option, so really, the hurdle is discovery. Once you've discovered the lung opening and happiness waiting for you in that lightbox, who's cancelling?

The other half of this business is the influencers themselves, or as Obé calls them, the talent. Take Sia Cooper, or Instagram's infamous @diaryofafitmommyofficial, who you probably recognize from the comment section underneath one of Kylie Jenner's photos. Cooper has caught flack for one of her growth strategies, which involves inserting a comment under a more famous Instagrammer's post and hoping the algorithm pulls out her username and encourages scrollers to tap over to her profile. But, I'm sorry to tell the haters, Cooper is thriving.

It took her just one year of treating her Instagram like a full-time job before she made as much as her actual full-time job, which was as a nurse. Now, she dedicates 25 to 35 hours per week to creating content and keeping up with her feed. That's one less nurse on rotation, but one more person who's theoretically encouraged more people to get into fitness. It's hard to know how many of her 1.2 million followers are actually using her as fitness inspiration, and how many are just checking out her abs between photos of someone's dinner and someone's baby. But influencers assert that it's not just profit that keeps them posting. It's also the chance to inspire.

Cooper earns anywhere from $500 for one sponsored Instagram post to $20,000 for three. "[Influencership is] an integral part of my income and business," she says. "If one company is not willing to pay you what you desire, there will be another company who will." But Cooper could be charging much more. The standard formula, according to president of influencer casting agency Socialyte Beca Alexander, is about $1,000 for every 100,000 followers. Price varies based on "popularity essentially," she says. Popularity, as I always suspected, can get you rich.

Aside from money in the bank, Cooper tells me she's been given free trips to Cancun and St. Lucia, Dyson fans, mattresses, gym equipment, skincare, strollers and all the workout gear and exercise equipment she could want. If you ever meet an influencer, I highly recommend asking them about the best swag they've been offered. 

On the other side of the spectrum are micro-influencers, or bloggers with a relatively smaller platform and deeply engaged audience. Ana Alarcon of @anagoesfit started building up her 21,000 followers when she realized that "other girls… were making some money or getting free products." She is a fitness professional, but the classes she teaches at Btone Fitness in Boston are "on the side." The bulk of her time and income is in blogging.

"[Being an influencer] is my job, so some days I don't feel like posting and others I want to share everything. But I have a clear goal and objective, and share on work days, and just use the app to work — not for scrolling," says Alarcon. She also takes a break from her phone at least once a week. (Her swag — I asked — is mostly free products, gym memberships, and travel. "Can't complain!")

Thanks to all this influence running rampant among thousands and millions of followers, we've hit the next logical step: The fitness companies are turning into talent agencies. In July, Equinox and SoulCycle announced they would mine fitness personalities inside their establishments and out in a new joint talent agency. The instructors at these boutique fitness holy grail studios have already become small-scale stars. SoulCycle's Akin Akman has not only a literal Akin's Army of lithe followers who can each hold a plank for five minutes, but modeling campaigns with Tommy Hilfiger, DKNY, and the CFDA. It'd be easier to spot beloved SoulCycle instructor Stacey Griffith on a bus than it would be to get into one of her classes. Like with so much in the fitness world, Equinox and SoulCycle (which are owned by the same parent company, The Related Companies) have moved the needle.

"It's certainly no secret that Equinox and SoulCycle are both iconic brands and platforms from which talent can significantly grow and reach sizable audiences," says Chloe Steinberg, VP of Business Development at Equinox. "While our talent is already being tapped by their communities across the lifestyle landscape, we're not giving those selected the opportunity to build on that influence." The new agency will "empower talent" to keep cultivating their personal brands — something many instructors already do — and focus on Instagram-focused influencer marketing.

Still, Instagram alone "isn't enough," says Steinberg. "We live in an omni-channel world and there is a reason the world's best direct-to-consumer brands are opening physical stores: consumers want to feel that they truly experience, and have a touch-and-feel element, to every product and brand they engage with."

As a business development professional, Steinberg had an immediate answer when asked about Instagram's actual value-add. But most others that I spoke to had difficulty quantifying the results. When I asked Freeman of SLT why the brand directs energy into the platform, she paused to consider — before coming back with the numbers. It turns out their Instagram follower count is on par with the number of subscribers to SLT's email list. That's over 35,000 people who care about what SLT looks like, even if they don't live in NYC and have never paid $40 for a workout in their lives.

In my own Park Slope studio, the clientele is more Brooklyn tattoo artists and new moms than models taking a break from Fashion Week. Everyone I've met is friendly; everyone likes to talk about how hard the workout is and understands when you need to drop to your knees in plank. But you'd never know it from the brand's Instagram account, which is more focused on toned obliques than body diversity. My best friend refuses to work out with me, more because I'm insufferable when I talk about fitness than because of any Instagram feed, I'm sure. But still, photo after photo of skinny white women in only sports bras probably isn't helping. A place like SLT — where you already have to be in shape to make it through the workout, where you have to be able to afford $40 for class — is intimidating. Its Instagram aesthetic appeals to the people who, I imagine, the company already knows are its target demographic. It's also keeping some people out.

Posing in a headstand and a sports bra in front of an Instagram Wall may be our modern way to finish a workout. But when asked to sum up the future of fitness, Mullet — the Hollywood agent turned fitness entrepreneur — gives an answer that could have applied just as easily to Jane Fonda. 

"At the end of the day, we think that the fitness talent out there are some of the brightest stars on the planet," he says. "Someone that makes you feel better, do better, look better, is a very powerful type of personality."