Fitness Fiesta!

As a fitness brand Zumba Fitness has cultivated a devoted fan base of fifteen million participants spread across 180 countries. In <i>Fitness Fiesta!</i> Petra R. Rivera-Rideau analyzes how Zumba uses Latin music and dance to create and sell a vision of Latinness that's tropical hypersexual and party-loving. Rivera-Rideau focuses on the five tropes that the Zumba brand uses to create this Latinness: authenticity fiesta fun dreams and love. Closely examining videos ads memes and press coverage as well as interviews she conducted with instructors Rivera-Rideau traces how Zumba Fitness constructs its ideas of Latinx culture by carefully balancing a longing for apparent authenticity with a homogenization of a marketable south of the border-style vacation. She shows how Zumba Fitness claims to celebrate Latinx culture and diversity while it simultaneously traffics in the same racial and ethnic stereotypes that are used to justify racist and xenophobic policies targeting Latinx communities in the United States. In so doing Rivera-Rideau demonstrates not only the complex relationship between Latinidad and neoliberal postracial America but also what that relationship means for the limits and possibilities of multicultural citizenship today.