The manosphere is obsessed with Pilates. It’s about far more than fitness

April 21, 2026 — 7:00pm

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On the latest season of Love is Blind, contestant Chris Fusco tries to explain to his fiancee, Jessica Barrett, that he’s not attracted to her because her body type isn’t that of “somebody who f---ing does Pilates every day”.

Watching the scene unfold, I was gobsmacked, struck by the hyper-specificity of his sulk. Apparently being a slim, “hot doctor” – as fellow contestant Amber Morrisson put it – wasn’t enough. To be good enough for this guy, Jessica also needed to specifically do Pilates every day.

Not long after, I heard The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Jessi Draper reveal on the Call Her Daddy podcast that among demands she be more “feminine” and embrace more “traditional gender roles”, her ex-husband Jordan Ngatikaura often pressured her to “start doing Pilates every single day”.

Hearing this kind of demand once felt weird. Hearing it twice felt like something else was going on.

I decided to do some digging and soon realised it is indeed no coincidence that both of these men fixated on the........

© The Sydney Morning Herald