Photo Assignment

Lately I have been taking more time to get into my fitness, so I thought it was only fitting that I found the subject of my blog post at the gym where I spend quite a bit of time. Right when I noticed this, I thought it would be perfect for the assignment. Pop culture is always telling women that they have to be very skinny to be beautiful, and it is always telling men that they should be masculine and have defined muscles. That is why these signs that were put up in the women's and men's bathrooms didn't come as a surprise to me. I had actually seen them for weeks, but never noticed until I was looking for something specifically.

The social injustice here is against both of the sexes. In the men's bathroom, there is a product advertisement for protein to gain muscle and in the women's bathroom, there is a sign for a slimming product. This is the stereotype - that women want to be thinner and men want to gain muscle. Well, what about me? I use protein, but I have never used a slimming product and I am a woman.

A big part of my inspiration comes from the fact that so many women are judged for being into fitness and gaining muscle. A woman is supposed to be toned and in shape, but not muscular, if there is too much muscle then she looks masculine. Instead, we are told we need to be thin by popular culture and it is everywhere. I told the manager of the gym what I was planning on doing with these pictures and his response was, "Do you want me to completely ignore all marketing research or what?" That is probably true that the idea to advertise that way came from  marketing research, but does that make it right?