In Physical, Rose Byrne plays Sheila—a sardonic, bulimic homemaker who snarls behind her husband’s back, drains his bank account, and uses his preoccupation with his political campaign to discretely pursue her own aerobic ambition.
Watching the series, you may be struck by its frequent parallels to another 1980s-era woman—one who also struggled with an eating disorder, was married to a political figure, and became transformed by the life-changing power of physical fitness.
In the 1970s, she was a rousing activist and legitimate movie star with two Academy Awards under her belt for decade-defining films Klute and Coming Home.
She kicked the zeal up a notch in 1982 by releasing Jane Fonda’s Workout, a home video where the actor—in a striped pink leotard and purple tights, hair fluffed to heaven—instructs viewers to feel the burn.
Fonda followed her first hit with several more videos, and published a best-selling book full of advice like, “exercise teaches you the pleasure of discipline!” In the press, Fonda told stories about women approaching her and professing how the workout changed their lives.
The show is much more focused on Sheila’s fledgling aerobics obsession, building plot points out of her sneaking into classes and making unpleasant small talk with fellow moms at her daughter’s school.
Much of the show is a frank depiction of Sheila’s battle with bulimia, a punishing eating disorder that culminates in a rash of devastating binges.
As Byrne herself has said, the plotline is a study in regressive gender dynamics, a portrait of a forward-thinking, progressive, and talented young Berkeley grad who feels stuck in middle age, propping up her husband’s ambitions.
Since 1973, she had been married to activist and politician Tom Hayden, who, in the 1980s and early ’90s, served as a member of the California State Assembly.
When Fonda released her initial workout video, she relinquished ownership to the CED, so that money from sales could be used to support the cause.
And then I write Jane Fonda’s Workout Book, and it becomes number one on The New York Times for two years.
Deal with it.’” Physical reaches back into that era, tracing the life of one such woman who transforms her own psyche—trying to save herself, one workout at a time.
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