Aly Bailey

My community- and arts-based research centres queer, fat, mad, and disability justice in the study of aging, fitness, and health. My ongoing program of work, including a recent project titled ReVisioning Fitness, is about untethering eugenic, colonial, and white supremacist (mythical) ideals of the body/mind from notions of “fitness” and “wellness.” I take a critical approach to so-called “inclusion” by centring and celebrating bodies of difference in the re-imagining of places of leisure, especially fitness spaces. I partner with public, nonprofit and for-profit stakeholders to bring difference-affirming research to action via film screenings (e.g., digital storytelling and mini-documentaries), revising health and wellness programming, and developing training modules. The goal of this work is a worldview shift on the meanings of "fitness" and "health" by (re)prioritizing community, relationality, joy, care, and rest and making "fitness" an opportunity for body/mind reclamation.