- Product
- Describe the form you hope your project will assume (i.e. paper, film, podcast) and a justification for why your selection provides the best approach to present your findings.
- Changes
- Provide a description of any changes in the product of your project, with a brief explanation for your decision.
My project will take the form of a pseudo-product of athletic apparel for women. The product will feature multiple photos of a model from different angles and with different poses. Each picture will represent a different form of motivation for women to take part in the fitness industry. For example, a photo from the front with a woman flexing will represent the goal of personal strength and growth, whereas a close-up photo of a woman’s butt will be an explicit representation of the male gaze. The product will cost $25 dollars of feminine autonomy, in which the proceeds of the purchase go towards the Male Gaze Fund. The product description will include possible motivators for women’s involvement in fitness and the type of cultural capital that they could get from buying the product. Product reviews will feature commentary from female Bowdoin students that I spoke with about their fitness experiences. The website where the products are created is women-run but it is actually controlled by men.
I believe that art is a form of expression and in the case of my research, I see an artistic approach as appropriate for culminating the work I have done. Because my project revolves greatly around a content analysis of TikTok, a social media platform for artistic expression, I want to embody that same approach to representing how women in the fitness industry play both victim and perpetrator within the framework of the male gaze.
In conjunction with presentation feedback, I will be adding a new feature to my final presentation. I plan to have different level packages for products where I “add or subtract from the “base” price to highlight the relational aspect of capital gained and lost in a white supremacist, patriarchal power structure” (Professor Greene).