Aerial fitness influencers inspiring body positivity
Illustrations by Sophie Parsons
by Anmol Irfan
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In March 2022, after much nudging from my best friend, and in the aftermath of a pandemic and moving across the country back to my hometown in Karachi, I decided to join an aerial arts class. Known more commonly as aerial yoga around me, it became a way for me to get in some much needed movement and also find a way to connect with my body again. As someone who’d had a tricky relationship with exercise my whole life, I think more than anyone, I was the most surprised at how quickly I fell in love with the aerial arts. Unlike my experiences with other forms of physical fitness, I wasn’t surrounded by constant questions during the workout of whether this particular exercise would lead to a smaller bum or eliminate love handles. My instructor valued progress in our skills, and perhaps for the first time ever, I didn’t “feel pretty, despite my hips or my tummy rolls.” I no longer felt the need to make myself smaller. I finally just felt like me, and I didn’t care about any of those things anymore because I was more focused on the fact that I could now do a flip hanging from five feet above the ground.
Sophie Parsons
The aerial arts have been gaining popularity as a form of movement, especially through media representation, which has caused a shift in its reputation. Now the art form is becoming popular with workout beginners and experts alike, and the online community is growing as more and more people want to share their progress online. Soha Jamshed, a Pakistani aerial arts instructor who recently started working at Flying Fantastic Studios in London, has noticed how much diversity you can find within the community and the practice. “One of the main things you realize when seeing people do aerial skills is you can’t tell what a person is able to do strength wise or flexibility wise just by looking at them, things like height and weight don't matter,” Jamshed says.
In fact, a growing and impactful portion of the content shared by aerialists online, both individuals and studios alike, focuses on mental health and pushing for aerialists to use movement to feel good about what they can achieve. Elli Voulgari, a pole dancer since 2011, founded her platform Vertical Wise, which is dedicated to promoting the benefits of pole dancing and aerial acrobatics.
“Aerial arts can be more inclusive than some other workouts because they focus on individual progress and adaptation. Instructors often encourage students to work at their own pace and modify movements to suit their abilities. Additionally, aerial arts can be adapted to accommodate various body types and physical abilities, making it accessible to a wider range of individuals,” Voulgari says.
While the impact of aerial arts on body positivity hasn’t been formally studied, Gemma Sharp, an associate professor and senior clinical psychologist at Monash University, shares what kind of content aids in promoting inclusivity online. “The best physical activity content I have seen focuses on enjoyment and improving skills in the particular physical activity no matter what your body looks like. Not always goal/metric focused, which people with eating disorders tend to hyperfocus on anyway,” says Sharp, who leads the Body Image & Eating Disorders Research Group in the Department of Neuroscience.
Sophie Parsons
For Jamshed, Sharp’s approach is similar to what she embodies in her own content and what she tries to follow online. “I think because we have access to people all over the world, now we can see so many diverse types of people doing aerial, and not just someone with a physique who’s conventionally ‘good,’” says Jamshed, stating that people are encouraged by seeing others in action, thinking, ‘If they can do this, I can too.’ Jamshed adds that sharing her own experiences with her body and practice online have helped her gain confidence, as well.
Platforms like Vertical Wise and the Aviary, which focuses on showcasing bodies of all sizes, go a long way in connecting the aerial arts with its impact on body image and mental health. Content creators in this arena can go further by sharing more inclusive content that displays different kinds of bodies, skill levels, and even mental health and body image journeys.