- Between weeks 8 and 14, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
This week I have done a lot more content analysis and am compiling a large swath of data on different TikTok videos and their content details. My data set is deepening and is starting to show more patterned practices of aesthetic videos and a push for female empowerment. In addition to my work on TikTok, I have also been working on conducting casual interview conversations with women on Bowdoin’s campus about their experiences with fitness. One individual that I talked to cited how if it hadn’t been for her position as a varsity athlete, she would likely feel too scared to enter the downstairs of the college’s gym which is a male-dominated strength and weight lifting space. This expresses how fitness has previously been a masculine space but that is shifting with an increase in women entering the industry and feeling empowered to take part in fitness-related activities.
In my conversations I also found that this individual did not see the male gaze as having a major influence on the motivations of women to become more physically active and take part in the fitness industry. She shared that most of the content she has seen and engaged with on TikTok has been more motivational and empowering and has been informative of nutrition and exercise practices as opposed to how to ‘get skinny’ or ‘lose belly fat,’ which represents a shift in the use of these social media platforms towards a more inclusive and accepting space. This woman saw TikTok and Instagram as a platform for bringing women into the picture and diversifying the gyms and spaces that have been dominated by male presence for so long.
I am excited to see these conversations come to a head with the content I have been collecting and the literature review that I have done, which shows the fitness industry as a place where many social pressures put women in a difficult position of empowering themselves and other women while attempting to fulfill the societal norms of femininity and personal image.
Zoe,
I think this project is really evolving nicely. Your presentation yesterday highlighted some important dynamics that would work well for an “advertisement campaign” that situates these issues in a patriarchal capitalism. Piggybacking on your colleagues’ comments, I would absolutely encourage you to consider how intersectionality plays into this as well. I cannot help wondering how body types, race, and cis- identities might play into these elements as well. I realized that you might create a list of options (like clothing on the website), where you could add or subtract from the “base” price to highlight the relational aspect of capital gained and lost in a white supremacist, patriarchal power structure. I look forward to seeing how this project develops.