US gym memberships

Tattoo parlors and gyms are, when you think about it, both places where Americans go to change their bodies. That the two industries collapsed and rebounded together in 2020 suggests the body was, briefly, closed for renovations.

Both were ordered closed in 2020 under the same public health rules, and both rebounded on overlapping timelines. Tattoo parlors reopened to enormous backlogs as customers returned with lockdown savings and new tattoo ideas, while gym memberships — already softening — fell off a cliff and then slowly climbed back as facilities reopened with capacity limits. Two very different body projects, same closure calendar.

So the correlation is the shared business model of any place that puts hands on strangers. Covid closed both. Then covid reopened both. The bodies waited.