The Truth About Hailey Fernandes

It’s a common picture: walking into the Barnes center and seeing all of the Stairmasters occupied, usually by young women. An open spot is rare to come by, and is usually snatched up within minutes by another girl looking to get their cardio in. The stationary stair-steppers get a lot of buzz on TikTok for being toning, weight-loss miracle machines, but their popularity has increased even more since the rise of a new gym influencer, Hailey Fernandes.

Fernandes is relatively new to the influencer scene, gaining mass popularity only in the last few months. She now has 392.8k followers on her main account, and 231.4K more on a backup account. Her fame comes from her almost shocking physique, which she shows off often in posing videos in her gym’s bathroom. Pinned on her account are transformation videos, showing a stark difference between how her body looked three years ago and how it looks today. Her shredded abs and glutes inspired the same comment from many girls looking to replicate what they saw: “drop the workout routine!”

Fernandes’ most popular and most prolific videos feature her on the Stairmaster. She shared with her followers that she completes 45 minutes on the machine every time she works out, and posts videos of her doing just that, with captions often about how she stays motivated to get through the 45 minutes and get to the gym in the first place.

The conclusion is a natural one: achieve a transformation like Fernandes’ by doing 45 minutes on the Stairmaster every day. Though it isn’t easy to spend 45 minutes walking up stairs, it is simple: a quality many seem to gravitate towards when it comes to fitness plans.

This assumption sparked videos inspired by Hernandes’: young women trudging up stationary stair machines with the caption, “the Hailey Fernandes effect.” Many bought into the idea that if they could only achieve the same amount of cardio as Fernandes, they would begin to achieve the same body. 

Soon, there was pushback from other fitness influencers, casting blame on Fernandes for creating an unrealistic narrative that a daily 45 minutes of Stairmaster cardio was the cheat code to a toned, muscular and slim look.  But the truth about Hailey Fernandes is that she never told her followers that there was an easy way to look like her. Instead, her content fell victim to the simplistic and trend-prone fitness culture that is dominant on Tik Tok.

The truth is, Fernandes often shares that a multi-faceted approach to fitness and wellness is how she achieved her transformation. In the captions of her Stairmaster videos, she often writes that “the best form of cardio is whatever you’ll do consistently”.  Her content focuses on other aspects of wellness and fitness like clean eating, weight training, mental health and body image. Though she encourages those who have posted videos of themselves following her example of consistent cardio, she consistently reminds followers that there isn’t a singular best way to be in shape. The intent of her content is to inspire others and share her own journey, not to deceive. So how did she become so misinterpreted?

Tik Tok and Instagram are full of videos of influencers, fitness or otherwise, claiming that a certain exercise, diet, workout routine, or supplement is the key to achieving the look they see in those influencer’s pictures and videos: often slim and toned. This is a tried and true marketing strategy, both for “marketing” videos in order to gain popularity, and for literally marketing fitness and wellness products to make sales for a brand deal or on commission. There always seems to be a new wellness trend that claims to be what you’ve finally been searching for after trying and finding no luck with previous ones. 

The common discourse about what type of exercise is “best” for women didn’t help with the interpretation of Fernandes’ content either. It’s common to see videos of “pilates princesses” or “muscle mommies” promoting their own fitness routines. Some claim that lifting heavy weights will make you bulky and un-feminine, while on the other end, those who do promote lifting claim that you won’t see any results, or “gains” without lifting heavy weights. So, when something like the “Hailey Fernandes effect” comes along, people tend to latch onto it: a straightforward fitness plan that is easy to follow and seems to balance these two schools of thought.

The truth is, there’s no one “truth” about how to achieve your fitness goals or how to look like an influencer you see online. At the end of the day fitness and wellness are personal, and what helped Hailey Fernandes get her six-pack might just feel like forty five minutes of wasted time for you. The constant coming and going of fitness trends is exhausting and confusing, but it presents the opportunity to take what works for you from each trend- or influencer- and leave the rest. Though latching onto the simple and popular answer to staying in shape is easy, in the long run it’s better to find a plan that is sustainable, though it may not be viral.