How to do the jane fonda dance
My Magical Week of Working Out With Jane Fonda
My Magical Week of Working Out With Jane FondaSubscribeGive A Gift
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Fonda in her prime. Photo: Harry Langdon/Getty Images
Unfortunately, as a womyn in the 21st century, you have so many opportunities to exercise. You can do yoga in a sweltering room. You can go to some sort of Tracy Anderson baby-food gym. There is even something called Bloglates on YouTube.com.
Walking around your typical Lululemon objectivist workout space, you would never imagine it hadn’t always been there. It seems as eternal as Stonehenge! But 30 years ago, none of this female fitness infrastructure existed. Whom do we have to thank for it? Why, none other than Jane Fonda, actress, activist, and founder of the Jane Fonda workout.
The Jane Fonda workout was a true phenomenon. In 1979, Jane Fonda started a tremendously popular workout studio in L.A. This later spawned a best-selling fitness book, which eventually sold so well that the New York Times Best Sellers list started a new category for self-help (it was embarrassing that an exercise book was selling more copies than Céline spokesperson Joan Didion, or something). The book inspired a workout home video, which eventually became the best-selling home video of all time (altogether, she sold 17 million copies).
I even have a dim memory of my mother doing a Jane Fonda workout.
I say “dim” because I literally only have five memories from childhood and they are mostly of class trips. (In fifth grade, we went to the Museum of Science!)
“Oh yeah,” she told me when I asked if she had ever done “the Jane” (which is how people refer to it, apparently). “I watched it all the time when we lived in Cleveland. Your brother used to roll around on the floor every time I did it.”
“Did I do the workout with you?” I asked, thinking that perhaps my incipient interest in health and wellness had been been awakened in such a moment, like Woody Allen watching his first Ingmar Bergman film.
“You hated moving.
You didn’t even like going outside. Remember?”
“Ahh,” I said. I had not remembered that!
With the recent re-release of Jane’s old workouts on DVD, I figured it was time for me to actually try the exercises that started it all. Maybe these tapes actually did make me who I am today, a writer of health and wellness in Nieuw Amsterdam, and I just don’t remember. Also, I still hate going outside, and Jane Fonda is all videos, so that is a plus.
A class in progress. Photo: Ron Galella/Getty ImagesThe Original Workout
I put on the Original workout DVD one frigid Saturday after a shitty brunch in which I ordered eggs with a side salad by accident (it seemed as if there were going to be hashed-browns but then there were not). I am excited to work out in my kitchen, though. I should have just made eggs here and not gone outside.
In the DVD’s brief introduction, present-day Jane wears a beautiful pink leather jacket (I want it!!!) and explains why the workout was such a success back in the ‘80s. According to Jane, at the time, “most gyms were primarily for men.” Jane raises just the slightest hint of an eyebrow as she says this, because that’s all you have to do when you’re a baller.
Then I have to choose between the beginner and the advanced versions of the workout. Modestly, I start with the beginner.
The workout starts with Jane in a beautiful striped leotard chilling in this dance studio. The music in the background is a blaring saxophone, kind of like a very loud Steely Dan song that has no words and no real tempo or anything. Then, a bunch of athletic-looking dance-types stumble into the studio. There really are so many people. A man in athletic shorts and tights. Another man, in thigh warmers! Also some girls, who all wear leotards resembling swimsuits. No one is wearing shoes.
To be honest, the whole routine is pretty easy.
There is a ton of stretching and most of the exercises are kind of like what a broken doll would do if it knew Pilates. The aerobics portion only lasts five minutes. However, almost immediately everyone starts sweating a TON. Jane is drenched. No one’s leotard can keep up with the amount of sweat, which makes me think everyone should be wearing a T-shirt.
One thing is that I kind of like this Steely Dan song. It’s so much better than real Steely Dan songs about Bard College, etc. I do the advanced version of the workout a few days later just so I can hear the song again.
Jane Fonda’s New Workout
A couple of days later, I attempt Jane Fonda’s New workout (a workout that came slightly later in the Fonda chronology, in which everyone wears shoes) and am all of a sudden greeted with the Proustian madeleine of my life: a song that floods me with a remembrance of things past!
After a vibrant stretching session in which everyone starts sweating immediately, Jane introduces a woman named Leslie Lilien. Without any context at all, she is going to take over for the aerobics portion! As Leslie emerges from the scrum of other dancers (one of whom is Peggy Lipton, Rashida Jones’s mom), she starts singing a song called “Do It,” which has lyrics like “There’s so much more / to you than meets the eye / there’s so much / more to you you wanna try.
” Jane, from the background, instructs everyone to sing along with Leslie at home so we know we aren’t getting too out of breath during this 15-minute aerobic dance. And guess what? I somehow knew this song before Leslie started singing it! I know every single word, even though it has a million verses. I must have learned it while my mother exercised. It’s the best song, too.
This iteration of the workout is slightly less balletic, and slightly more aerobic. It reminds me of a very anatomically unsophisticated Tracy Anderson regime, with way WAY more sensical directions and ease of use (Tracy’s very into being like, “Now we’re doing this!” and then launching into an insane hopping routine with no explanation).
Later, after doing the slightly longer advanced version of the exercise regime (which has a reprise of “Do It”), I go online and try to find Leslie Lilien.
Where is she now?? Unfortunately, I only find the Q&A section of Jane’s website, in which someone asks Jane what happened to Leslie and Jane replies, “Susan, alas I have not kept up with Leslie.”
Jane Fonda’s Prime Time Workout
There is this amazing part in Jane Fonda’s autobiography in which she describes a video she shot where “I had thought it would be funny to have a guy seem to crash the class, just sort of come in late and insert himself into the back row and then act very crazy. To this day people refer to ‘that tape with the crazy guy.’”
What?? That is so funny I am LOLing right now! I hope the Prime Time workout contains this man!
Unfortunately, it does not. The good thing is that (not that you can tell from the accumulated sweat) this is the easiest Jane Fonda workout I could have possibly imagined. I think this workout is for old people. I have a lot of evidence to support that: (1) it’s basically an easy ballet class where you don’t do pliés and use a chair as a bar, (2) there are a million old people in the class, (3) it is called Jane Fonda’s Prime Time workout, (4) the only soundtrack is jazz flute, and (5) there’s this super-old man in sweats in the background who is really bad at all the exercises. At one point he says, “I need a drink!” and Jane yells back, “Herb, you don’t drink!”
Jane Fonda’s Low Impact Workout
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. This video starts with a man, in a flat red cap, blue hammer pants, and a Hawaiian shirt, coming into the dance studio, looking extremely confused. When I see him, my heart skips a beat! Is this the famous video??? MAYBE IT IS.
But is this man “acting crazy”? It’s hard to say. He keeps asking people where he is, because he is confused. No one has any idea. When Jane is ready to start the class, the man strides up to her and says, “Is this a rehearsal or something?” and then Jane responds, “Excuse me, what?” and then they both shrug and he stays in the class. The whole time he’s mildly bad at the exercises, but not even insanely bad or anything. It is a very typical low-impact aerobics workout of the ‘80s school.
There’s a lot of grapevining, for example.
Jane Fonda’s Complete Workout
I am sad because this is the last Jane Fonda workout I ever have to do. And what do I even have to look forward to now? A random man has already barged into the workout. I have already experienced my personal Rosebud. Can Jane Fonda still surprise after a week?
Yes! For example, at the start of this workout, a claymation version of Jane pops out of a claymation gym bag. This is only the beginning of the modern special effects that are in this video, however.
At one point, Jane Fonda is doing a salsa dance and then, flash bang, Jane Fonda is doing the salsa dance in front of a screen of real salsa dancers. Later, Jane Fonda is doing a little jig and POW! She’s doing a tiny Riverdance in front of Riverdancers in Ireland. I actually remember this video as well because my mom had it too. Perhaps this is the place I learned how to dance? The dances are easy, so it makes sense. The salsa is just step lunges.
Well, my week with the Jane Fonda workout is just about over! I think I’ll miss her. I like her easygoing approach to exercise. Fitness these days has become so stratified and so difficult. Classes like SoulCycle and Barry’s Bootcamp can make someone who already isn’t in good shape feel so self-conscious. Random ballet-style workouts are fun, but usually you have to wear some kind of exposed bra contraption and who can do that?? But the Jane, a combination of cardio and ballet/Pilates, is a workout that everyone can do, in the comfort of their own sweatpants.
Even seniors! And a random guy from off the street. And a woman who hates being outside.
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Jane Fonda Interview Marks 40 Years of "The Jane Fonda Workout"
Thanks to Jane Fonda’s Workout, leotards and leg lifts became enduring cultural phenomena. Forty years after the video’s debut, Fonda is still astonished that it worked
ByLinda Wells
April 2, 2022
Reading Time: 4 minutes
“Whoo!”
“Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce!”
That was the soundtrack in my first New York apartment.
I lived behind a bookshelf, where I sheltered my possessions: a remnant square of carpet, bed, desk, typewriter, pile of underlined books, and, newly purchased from Crazy Eddie, TV and VCR. I owned one VHS tape, Jane Fonda’s Workout. Every night I’d pop it in and, for 30 minutes, it was just Jane and me, dancing and ab crunching and leg lifting on my patch of carpet, feeling the burn.
Jane had fluffy hair, a belted leotard, and scrunchy leg warmers. She was energetic and cheerful, and never once breathless. That sweet, girlie workout had a steely center, like Fonda herself.
My introduction to working out coincided with my introduction to working at my first real job. A few months after starting both, as I charged through Grand Central Terminal to pick up lunch for my boss, a man shoved his hand into my bag and grabbed my wallet. I calmly clasped his wrist and told him to get out of there. And he did. That was all Jane.
Jane Fonda’s Workout turns 40 years old this year; Jane turns 85.
What started as a way to get fit for a bikini scene and raise money for the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a political action committee run by Fonda and her then husband, Tom Hayden, became a movement in itself.
It sparked the exercise boom, the exercise-video boom, and its subset, the Hollywood Squares–style exercise-video boom (Raquel Welch, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Jenner, Debbie Reynolds).
Jane Fonda’s Workout went on to become one of the best-selling VHS tapes of all time, and Fonda followed the original with 21 variations. Over the years, it spawned imitators and acolytes, and is even experiencing a revival today on a multitude of streaming classes. (“Give me some Jane Fonda!” calls instructor Ally Love during a Peloton barre session.)
One class, Torch’d by Isaac, was my lifeline during the pandemic lockdown. Isaac “Boots” Calpito leads the class on Instagram Live, and much of it—the leg lifts, crunches, V-sits, bridges—comes right out of the Jane Fonda playbook.
“I’m a child and a student of Jane Fonda,” says Calpito. “[She] set the tone for everything that came after her.” Calpito, like Fonda, turns his class into a charitable machine, raising more than $1.5 million for No Kid Hungry by soliciting donations from his regulars.
In 1978, Fonda signed up for a dance-and-calisthenics class in Century City taught by Leni Cazden. “That’s L-e-n-i C-a-z-d-e-n,” says Fonda, spelling the name on the phone to make sure I get it right. Cazden’s workout was a killer, and Fonda was quickly hooked.
So much so that Fonda used Cazden’s choreographed moves to create the original Jane Fonda’s Workout. For decades, she didn’t give Cazden credit for the program—not to mention remuneration—and only recently acknowledged that omission.
Workouts and VCRs were fairly novel in 1982, and marrying the two gave new access to a population that had felt excluded from musclehead culture.
“There weren’t gyms for women,” says Fonda. “I’m kind of astonished that at the time the Workout started, women didn’t think about having muscles.... Women who couldn’t afford to belong to a club, or didn’t go to a club because they didn’t like the way they looked—it brought all those women to a place of health that they didn’t have before.”
“At the time the Workout started, women didn’t think about having muscles.”
The workout benefited Fonda in other ways besides abs, thighs, and activism. “I’m somebody who had major body dysmorphia, and the workout really helped me,” she says. “It was changing my body and changing my mental attitude about my body.” Many students felt the same. “Women would take the class and after a month say … ‘I can sleep now,’ ‘I stood up to my boss.’”
Fonda acknowledges that the workout could have also contributed to a degree of body dissatisfaction among its participants. The extras in the video and Fonda herself are uniformly slim, uniformly uniform in their high-cut belted leotards.
The words “body” and “positivity” weren’t acquainted then. When I ask her what she thinks of the concept, she says, “You mean obesity?” After a discussion about the high price of quality fruit and vegetables and the perniciousness of fast food, she concludes, “It’s good to feel positive about your body; it’s good to love your body. I hated my body for too long.”
Now she marvels at her strength and the benefit of all those years spent in dance studios. “When my father died, he was seven years younger than I am now. He seemed so old because he was sick. I was much older when I was 20 than I am now. It has to do with my mental attitude and what I did to my body and being strong. Six weeks ago, I had a shoulder replaced. It’s a complicated operation, and it took a long time to recover. Even though I can’t use my arm, my back is strong, my abs are strong, and I’m O.K.”
Fonda is acting in a movie now with Rita Moreno, who’s 90. She’s leading Fire Drill Fridays with Greenpeace USA to raise awareness of the climate crisis and to protest governmental inaction, and has been arrested five times.
The final season of Grace and Frankie, the Netflix comedy she stars in alongside Lily Tomlin, premieres on April 29, and she’s proud of what it accomplished, too.” So many women come up to me and say, ‘I look forward to aging now.... It makes me feel that there’s hope.’ That’s a big thing.”
“I’m an older woman, I’m living life, I’m working, I’m getting arrested. People tell me, ‘I’m not afraid of getting old because of you.’”
Fonda offers me some advice. When she learns that I’m calling her from Paris and that my French is fairly appalling, she says, “You need to have an affair with a Frenchman … or a Frenchwoman. I knew French academically, but I really learned to speak it in bed.”
That’s the other Jane Fonda workout. No pain, no gain!
Linda Wells spent 25 years as Allure magazine’s founding editor in chief, served as Revlon’s chief creative officer, and currently consults and sits on the boards of several beauty and apparel companies
Photos: Warner Bros.
/Photofest; © Carol Guzy/Zuma Press/Newscom
From Kaia Gerber to Jane Fonda: sports, dancing and what else the stars can teach you on TikTok tighten up the vocals. Celebrities help in this way: they post videos of their workouts on social networks, read books aloud and post video recipes. Online platforms are great for these purposes, and now many have switched to a more “youth option” - TikTok: we tell you who you should subscribe to in order to learn something new.
Jane Fonda is in great shape (by the way, the American actress is 82 years old!) and offers everyone her home workout on TikTok. In the 1980s, the actress was the “aerobics queen”: Jane Fonda developed her own technique, and now she decided to breathe new life into the once famous video and published it on TikTok – the trainer is back in business.
@janefondaHello Tik Tok! I'm bringing back the Jane Fonda Workout to fight the climate crisis.
♬ original sound - janefondaJoin ##firedrillfriday 4/3 @ 11AMPT ##happyathome ##indoorworkout
Kaia Gerber and her friends will teach you a new dance: feel free to turn on Britney Spears' song "Oops, I didn't again" and repeat simple movements. And if you want to mourn a little - the version "only for girls" led by Kaya and Cara Delevingne.
@tommy.dorfmanrehearing for our virtual tour ♬ original sound - tommy.dorfman
Rita Ora not only sings and dances in her account: the singer has published a simple banana cake recipe - especially for those who want something new for dessert.
@ritaoraI also love making banana bread! This is a good way to use fruits going off to not waste it! ##ilikecake ##bananabread ##fyp ##foryou ##foryoupage
♬ I Like Cake - Akil Noel
But Will Smith suggests not just cooking, but decorating them and shares the way of decorating: just look at this dough rose: beautiful and very appetizing.
True, the actor does not fully reveal the secret of making such an ornament - but thanks for the idea, Will!
@willsmithA rose by any other name would taste as delicious. ##dumplings
♬ 大碗宽面 - 吴亦凡
For those who have long wanted to start training at home, we offer a “walk” on Shakira’s account: a celebrity uploads inspiring short videos about sports. For example, during a workout, you can easily wash the floors - relevant and timely!
@shakiraGetting set for Super Bowl! ?? @nfl
♬ Me Gusta - Shakira & Anuel AA
Related articles:
Vanessa Hudgens dances with her mom in new TikTok video How Jane Fonda protested against the Vietnam War, stepped out of her father's shadow and became the queen of aerobics
Hollywood starlet, fitness guru, anti-war activist, women's rights activist - in her 84 years, Jane Fonda has lived several lives at once.
We understand how she became a legend.
Star Daughter
Jane was born to actor Henry Fonda and socialite Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw. The parents' relationship was tense: Fonda rarely appeared at home because of the filming, his wife found out more than once about his betrayals. Years later, in an interview with Jane Fonda, she said that her mother "suffered from a mental disorder that would now be called bipolar." Little Jane and her brother Peter missed their mother, who was often treated in clinics. At 42, while undergoing another course in a psychiatric hospital, Francis committed suicide. Jane at that time was 12 years old, Peter - 10. Their father told them that the cause of their mother's death was a heart attack, they learned the truth only many years later - from the press. At the age of 78, Jane Fonda admitted that she never came to terms with the loss of her mother:
I'm still trying to get through this, but life in general is a constant movement towards becoming whole.
In order for life to be full, good, you need to make efforts. After all, we decide for ourselves: let this happen to me, but will I become a victim because of this? What matters is not what happens to you, but how you deal with it.
Jane Fonda with her mother
The press described Henry Fonda, already a big movie star at the time, as "a cold and aloof father". He started on Broadway, rose to fame in Hollywood in the 1930s, and during World War II, at the peak of his success, he volunteered for the US Navy and served three years.
His marriage to Frances was his second. A few months after her death, he married again - the bride was nine years older than his daughter.
Henry Fonda and Francis Ford Seymour Brokaw
Despite everything, Jane spoke of her father with warmth all her life. She believes that most of all he was like his hero from the film "On the Golden Pond" - this is the last role of Henry Fonda, she brought him an Oscar:
In life, he was the same - a man who finds it difficult to show his real feelings and emotions.
I think this can be said about many people of his generation. He used acting as a mask to hide his true emotions, and could not stand anything that could show his vulnerability. I adored him. He was a good man, very honest.
Jane Fonda with her father
While seeking her father's approval, Jane Fonda developed an eating disorder: in her memoirs, she recounts how her father constantly told her to lose weight. Henry, in her words, "was obsessed with female slimness." The result was that Jane developed bulimia as a teenager. She subsequently struggled with this disease for decades - she says that a full recovery came only by the age of 50. Not without the help of drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist, and her famous author's fitness course.
Jane Fonda
Personal life
Jane started getting roles when she was about 20, at first in Broadway productions and passing films. The directors did not take her seriously, the press called her "the wonderful long-legged daughter of Henry Fonda.
" The actress does not hide - the famous surname helped:
The fact that my father is a movie star certainly gave a certain advantage: they paid more attention to me than to other actresses. And I wanted to make sure that I didn't get the part because of my father, and that made me work harder.
Jane gained real popularity in Europe: she went to shoot in France and ended up staying there for a long time. In France, Fonda met director Roger Vadim, who at that time had already divorced twice - with Brigitte Bardot and Danish actress Annette Stroyberg - and broke up with Catherine Deneuve.
Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim
Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim began an affair and got married in 1965. Vadim decided that their marriage would be open - he sometimes brought other women home. Jane accepted this, but later said that in fact she was always against such a relationship.
In her memoirs, Fonda spoke about other reasons that ruined their marriage: Roger drank a lot, was fond of gambling and got into debt, to pay off which Fonda spent part of the inheritance from her parents.
In the end, the couple divorced - after eight years of marriage. They remained on friendly terms.
Subsequently, Jane married two more times - to activist Tom Hayden and billionaire media mogul Ted Turner. All three marriages of the star ended in divorce, the reason was the betrayal of their husbands. From Roger Vadim, the actress gave birth to a daughter, Vanessa, from Tom Hayden, a son, Troy.
Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden with children
Ted Turner and Jane Fonda
In addition to her two biological children, Jane has an adopted daughter, Mary Luana Williams. Her real parents are members of the Black Panthers, a left-wing radical movement for the rights of blacks: her father went to jail, and her mother began to drink. Fonda and her second husband Tom Hayden adopted Mary when she was 14. Jane admits that her children lacked maternal attention - she was rarely at home, constant travel was associated with filming and activism.
Jane Fonda with her daughter Mary on the cover of The Missing Daughter: A Memoir of Her Life
Barbarella, Oscars and obscene proposals
in the 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella, where she played "the most beautiful creature of the future." A year later, Sydney Pollack's drama "Hunted Horses Are Shot, Isn't It?" was released, after which Jane was finally talked about as a serious actress, and not just a beautiful blonde from a star family. The confirmation was the first nomination for an Oscar. She received the statuette three years later for her role as a prostitute in the drama Klute.
Jane Fonda on the set of Barbarella
As the star recalls, in Hollywood in the 50s and 60s, sexism was in the order of things, and she received obscene offers from directors regularly, but, according to Jane, she only laughed in response.
The actress was silent about all this for a long time, and only in relatively recent interviews did she begin to talk about such things as violence experienced in childhood and sexual harassment by the bosses of the film industry. Fonda confessed in 2017:
I was a victim of rape and experienced sexual harassment when I was a child. And once I was fired because I refused to sleep with my boss. I always thought that it was my own fault - I did or said something wrong.
Jane Fonda, Gene Hackman and Cloris Leachman at the Oscars in 1971
Jane believes that she was vulnerable to such situations because of the wrong attitudes laid down at an early age:
I was taught from childhood that to be loved, a woman must be perfect - thin, beautiful, with good hair... That she must be more sweet than sincere. Must sacrifice herself, never be smarter than a man, never get angry. I guessed that I was paid less than my male colleagues, but I thought that I did not deserve more.
In her personal life, says Fonda, she was also hampered by the stereotypes she believed in for a long time:
I had never been in a partnership before I was 60. My father was married five times, but never had a partnership relationship. So I considered this the norm and wanted only one thing - that my men (and they were all brilliant, amazing) loved me. Already at the age of 60-70 I began to say to myself: I deserve respect.
"Hanoi Jane"
The Foundation entered the history of Hollywood as one of the main activists. Jane tells about how it all began:
A lot has happened in the world. I was pregnant, and a woman in this position is always like a sponge - she absorbs everything that happens around. Around that time, I realized that I wanted to change my life and try to stop the war. I lived in France, was married to Roger Vadim, we had a daughter. And I left it all, went to America and became an activist.
We are talking about the Vietnam War. Returning to the United States, Jane Fonda began to give anti-war speeches in churches and universities, financially supported the organization "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" and the Winter Soldiers investigation into the crimes of the American armed forces. In 1972, Jane goes to North Vietnam - just at that time it was bombed by US planes. The actress visited the settlements affected by air raids, talked with American prisoners of war, spoke on Hanoi radio calling on US soldiers not to participate in hostilities. The star hoped that all this would help draw the attention of the world to what is happening.
Reaction to Fonda's actions in the US has been mixed. Many considered her a traitor, the actress was nicknamed "Jane of Hanoi", the FBI established surveillance of her, which was reported personally to President Nixon. After her return, they tried to accuse her of drug smuggling and hold her accountable for the very fact of her visit to Vietnam.
It was not possible to do this, since the actress did not directly violate the law - officially the United States and Vietnam were not at war.
The headlines were that I was in jail on suspicion of drug trafficking. I was released on bail, and every pill they found on me was tested in a laboratory (with taxpayer money!). The charges were dropped, at the very end of the document there was a small paragraph stating that the pills turned out to be vitamins, not drugs,
- Fonda writes on his website.
A photo of Jane in a helmet against the background of Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns made a lot of noise. Subsequently, she repeatedly apologized for that picture, calling it a mistake and saying that she should not have been photographed with weapons used to kill American soldiers: think I'm anti-soldiers.
Since the 1970s, almost every public appearance by Jane has been accompanied by some form of public protest. In a 2011 op-ed for The Huffington Post, the actress wrote:
These lies about me have been circulating for nearly 40 years, reopening the wounds left by the Vietnam War and hurting the families of American service members.
This lie distorts the truth about why I went to North Vietnam and reinforces the myth that to oppose the war is to oppose the soldiers.
Fonda's anti-war sentiments were also reflected in her filmography: she helped convince film producers to make the film "Homecoming" about a Vietnam veteran (it took six years) and acted in it. Jane won an Oscar for this role.
The actress continues to take part in the social life of the country: she speaks a lot about women's rights, the fight against sexism, climate change, in the 90s she organized a campaign in support of teenagers who faced a variety of problems - from rejection of their appearance to unwanted pregnancy.
In 2017, Jane Fonda took to the women's march against Donald Trump.
In 2019, Washington police arrested Jane Fonda at a climate change protest.
Aerobics Queen
One of Jane's major creations outside of movies, her aerobics course, is largely due to the star's political activism.
In the early 1980s, her second husband, Tom Hayden, created an organization of the "new left" and intended to participate in local elections, for the campaign needed money. Then Fonda decided to make money by selling her own course of exercises. The lessons released on videocassettes were filmed on the basis of a previously released book, where Jane collected exercises that, in her opinion, were effective.
The actress says that the creation of a revolutionary methodology for those times was for her a kind of means of fighting for equality. Gyms were then "seen as a predominantly male place", and she wanted to come up with something exclusively for women. Lessons from Jane Fonda became one of the best-selling VHS tapes of all time, the actress instantly gained fame as the "queen of aerobics." American Vogue subsequently called this course the best aerobics video ever.
The course took off again during the pandemic, when fitness enthusiasts left out of the gym began to look for videos for home workouts. Fonda herself has helped bring it back into the spotlight by doing a TikTok exercise and running a fitness challenge to raise awareness about climate change.
@janefonda Hello Tik Tok! I'm bringing back the Jane Fonda Workout to fight the climate crisis. Join #firedrillfriday 4/3 @ 11AMPT #happyathome #indoorworkout ♬ original sound - Jane Fonda
Return to the movies
In the 90s, Jane left the cinema, and in the new millennium she returned loudly, starting with the 2005 comedy "If the mother-in-law is a monster" with Jennifer Lopez and continuing with "Cool Georgia", TV series "News ", "Grace and Frankie", "Youth" by Paolo Sorrentino and other films.
