If you lived in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, your choices for an aerobic workout class were truly slim. You could go to Jane Fonda’s studio in Beverly Hills, where everyone breaking a sweat was “feather-to-lightweight,” according to one observer. You could try a few dance studios where the professionally beautiful — actresses, models, media personalities — willed their bodies to become even more so. If building muscle was your goal, you could stop by Gold’s Gym or other palaces of pump, where an almost entirely male clientele strove for hard bodies in the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It was against this backdrop of fitness exclusivity that Richard Simmons kicked, shouted and shimmied to the forefront of the workout scene, inviting the people he encountered to move with him — first at his Los Angeles studio and then in their own living rooms, through his home workouts on TV and VHS.
With his trademark crown of frizzy hair, sequined tank tops, short-shorts and guy-next-door physique, Mr. Simmons, who died on Saturday at 76, “did not look like a god, and he spoke to those who didn’t aspire to look like a god,” said Daniel Kunitz, the author of the book “Lift: Fitness Culture, From Naked Greeks and Acrobats to Jazzercise and Ninja Warriors.”
While other fitness evangelists promoted the idea that exercise was for every body, Mr. Simmons danced the dance, so to speak, and “helped break down barriers for all sorts of people who didn’t see themselves reflected in the fitness cultures of the time,” Mr. Kunitz said.
And yet, despite his embrace of the overweight and overlooked, Mr. Simmons was singularly focused on helping his followers shed pounds, seemingly convinced that while you didn’t need to aspire to look like a supermodel to be happy, losing weight was ultimately the key to health and well-being.