By the late 1980s and early 1990s, weight and fitness were increasingly discussed through the language of alarm, discipline and failure. Throughout the 1990s, Irish newspapers repeatedly returned to the image of the overweight child as evidence that something had gone wrong. Contemporary Irish fitness culture on Instagram and TikTok is the direct descendant of the aerobics era. Obesity rates in the 1980s and early 1990s were far lower than those seen today, yet the rhetoric was already urgent. The same moral framework that turns obesity into personal failure has shaped how Ireland talks about poverty, housing and mental health.

Source: The Irish Times February 16, 2026 13:30 UTC