What follows here is an essay—a rather one-sided viewpoint that is both tentative and, within the limits of a journal article, incomplete. I attempt to understand how our recent preoccupation with our bodies is being mobilized as one solution to the fiscal crisis of the welfare state. The deep-rooted assumptions of voluntarism that characterize liberal ideology, I claim, are surfacing again in the debate over lifestyle. And lifestyle, it appears, has become an ideological construction which diverts attention from the structural impediments to well-being by framing health issues in terms of personal, moral responsibilities—a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” alternative to state intervention in health care. Some implications of the lifestyle ideology for physical educationists are presented.