Your local pilates instructors only want you to do two things: breathe through your side-planks and vote. In the days leading up to the US midterm elections, a wave of posts from fitness and wellness accounts blanketed Instagram, eschewing their typical messaging around the importance of strengthening your core in favor of the importance of exercising your civic duty. Owners of pilates and yoga studios and instructors across the US posted reels and pictures on platforms like Instagram encouraging their followers and clients to vote.
Engagement varied depending on their following: posts reaped anywhere from 70 to more than 10,000 likes. Having a voice is powerful. Go vote,” posted Frederick Ocansey, a pilates instructor who goes by the name flyfreshfreddy on his Instagram account with nearly 25,000 followers.
Vote.” Kore Pilates, a Nassau county, New York, Black-owned studio posted in plain block letters against a black backdrop: “Pilates Girls Vote.” Yoga studios also offered free drop-in classes for anyone who brought in their “I voted” stickers and others have offered to waive fees for canceling a class too late so people can go vote. For many of those instructors and creators, there’s a natural connection between pilates and politics. I don’t want my clients to have to decide between booking a pilates class and affording groceries.” Posts that show off “I voted” stickers or that encourage people to vote have become reliably viral content for social media during US elections in recent years.
Platforms like Instagram often capitalize on the moment, creating filters or stickers to overlay on images being shared to users’ stories. Using celebrity to encourage people to vote, especially for less attended elections like midterms, is also well-trod territory. The “Rock the Vote” campaign of the 90s famously tapped rappers and singers to bring younger people to the polls.
Social media has combined the two phenomena, mobilizing the influence of semi-famous fitness instructors who command deeply loyal followings. It’s not lost on Gibson-Cooper that her posts about voting could be seen as a ploy to boost engagement and business. But she said her past posts and the studio’s work with the community are proof that this isn’t just about bringing more people into her studio.
Over the summer, studios, social clubs and businesses across the country hosted pilates pop-ups that took place on rooftops, in parks, after dark, with matcha in hand, and more – many of which were hosted by big corporate brands as a means to enable their online consumers and influencers to engage with their brand and products offline. In just the last few weeks, those pilates pop-ups became a little more civically themed, pivoting to the news of the moment. In Houston, the League of Women Voters (LWV) hosted their own pilates pop-up to encourage women to vote.
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