After class this past Tuesday and reading Higginbotham's piece I started thinking of all the girlish magazines that I had always turned to in middle and high school to finally get out of my awkward stage or how to kiss a boy; but I would mostly find myself in the nutrition and fitness section. I had fallen victim to looking like a fitness model and I still am, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Fitness and nutrition plays such a big role in everyone's overall well being. Of course I am no fitness model but it's always a goal I can personally strive towards. I have always thought that women's magazines did an overall good job of providing exercises as well as diet tips.
That is until I was reading my twitter feed this morning. One of the accounts that I follow is Women's Health Magazine on Twitter who tweeted an article with the caption "Look Hot While Working Out." I am not one to ever read links from my twitter feed, since that was all I did Fall of 2012 in Journalism 1010, but they definitely did a good job of catching my eye. I don't know if it is worse that the magazine editor let this be printed in the magazine or the fact that there will be a lot of women at the gym doing this! I feel bad for the women that believe that you need makeup to look beautiful. Don't get me wrong because I use makeup regularly and I believe it makes me look more alert and ready for the day as well as accentuate my features, but I wouldn't wear makeup and do my hair a certain way just to go to the gym. The point of working out is to focus on yourself and bettering yourself, not on finding a boyfriend or impressing other women. As we discussed in class, I believe it belittles women's role in society to the fact that our sole purpose is to impress others with only our looks versus, in this case, our physical ability. Don't be ashamed of looking bad during or after your workout. Embrace it! I have always believed that if you look good in the gym, you are obviously not working hard enough!
Every time I go to the gym I think the same thing! I see these girls who have a full face of makeup, their hair down(I don't understand how they can stand that)and I'm both horrified and intimidated. I understand why these girls are doing this, to impress the men AND other women at the gym. They don't want anyone doubting their femininity because this is going against our society's norm. We wear tight feminine attire and put makeup on, that we are going to sweat off anyway, at the expense of our comfort in order to hold firm to this idea of what it means to be a girl. This is a lot a girls too, I've seen my own roommate put powder on her face before going to the gym and I'm not completely innocent of this either. We're all so afraid of breaking out of our "pretty" molds, even to work out.
ReplyDeleteI think most of this fear stems from men's understanding of a woman's appearance. Now I know there are guys out there that understand what a sports bra does, and why a girl can look drastically different at the gym than she would at a party. For the most part though, I think we are worried that these men we are trying to impress will misinterpret our gym appearance as our actual appearance. So, we wear the tightest clothes possible and slap on some makeup to remind them that there is some femininity smashed somewhere under our sports bras.
I instantly remembered a Jenna Marbles video when I read this blog post, and she explains/demonstrates this misunderstanding between men and women perfectly. She's talking about a man who claims that the Olympics are destroying femininity. I'll put the link below, but just a warning she uses some derogatory language, so if you're easily offended you might want to just pass on this one. (She also has the link for the article she is talking about below the YouTube video if you're interested in reading that.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag4C0MFRnmE
I could not agree more with Kelsey's post! I, too, have always said that if you look just as good leaving the gym as you did when you arrived, you didn't actually WORK OUT. I get that the point of working out is to make you feel good about yourself, which is also the point of makeup. But do girls really need to try to look good at the gym? I mean, who cares? You should be focused more on working your body and less on what guys think of you. Honestly, when was the last time you got asked out (or for guys, asked a girl out) while at the gym? Probably never. So why waste your time looking "pretty" when it's going to (or should if you're actually working out) come off anyways?
ReplyDeleteToday, it seems like more people are in touch with their health than ever before. Eating, working out, and living a healthy lifestyle is becoming increasingly popular, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. I know as a girl, we see celebrities going on extreme diets, so we try to imitate that and go on the latest "trend diet." But the problem with that is that we aren't actually doing it for health reasons. We're only following these crazy grass-drinking, juice-clensing diets because we see celebrities do it. People might think to themselves, "if I eat the way Angelina Jolie eats, maybe I'll look like her," therefore getting "healthy" for the wrong reasons.
I think this circles back around to the fact that us girls care way too much about what other people, both guys and girls, think of how we look. We often are too preoccupied with trying to appear healthy and fit than actually doing the work. I say go to the gym looking like you are about to do some serious work, ACTUALLY DO SERIOUS WORK, and leave the makeup and hair styling for when you go out and show off all the hard work you've been doing at the gym.
I thoroughly agree with Kelsey! Working out shouldn't be about how we look to other people but rather how we are feeling about ourselves. That being said, there is a certain psychological aspect to impressing other people. From personal experience, I know that when I work out at the gym around 5pm (it is packed) I am on my game. I push a little harder, run a little longer and start comparing myself to others. For me, this motivates me to work harder to get the body I want and see other women working to achieve. I don't think that this is necessarily a negative thing but rather possibly a healthy dose of competition. The reason fitness groups such as CrossFit (http://www.crossfit.com/) are so popular today are because of the competition and work ethic of the others in the group.
ReplyDeleteBack to the "looking good while working out" concept, I feel that when you look your best and feel your best, you will train your best. When you are confident and proud of your body, you're more likely to show it off and get to the gym more often. Attractive and functional exercise apparel is one way to feel good about yourself and be confident while working out. I recently found an article that perfectly describes the reasons behind work out gear. Here is one piece of the article that really stuck out to me and explains the importance of good apparel.
"After all, workout clothes serve both a practical and a psychological purpose. "On a practical level, you need special workout clothes simply because street clothes are either too constricting, or they'll rip, or they're made from non-breathable fibers," Moran says. "But psychologically, you need special workout gear to convince yourself it's time to work out."
http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/look-good-while-you-get-fit
Overall, I believe that you should train how you are most comfortable, however, for myself and many others, feeling confident (and possibly wearing a bit of makeup and some cute clothes) motivates us to do our best work at the gym.
I agree with Kelsey that when you walk into the gym it shouldn't be about impressing other people. Focusing on working out and becoming fit and healthy is a great goal to have for yourself.
ReplyDeleteFor me as a young girl I was always amused by magazines, not because they told me how I should dress, look, or act, but because I thought that it was silly that some girls actually devote time and energy to becoming like these people featured in magazines. Besides magazines telling you too "look hot" while working out other types of media, although indirectly, also encourage this idea of looking good while working out. I'm not sure if anyone follows OUCrushes on twitter, but I've noticed multiple times that many of the tweets are "Too the girl wearing blah blah blah at Ping this morning I'd love to get to know you." After seeing these tweets I thought to myself," great the one place I can go and do my own thing without feeling judged because everyone else is doing the same is ruined now." I still go to the gym and work out, but in the back of my mind there is still that lingering thought of how I am being perceived. Luckily for me I'm not the type of person who really cares, but I could understand the desire that some girls have in order to go the the gym looking their best.
I definitely agree with Morgan's final thought in her reply that you should train however makes you feel the most comfortable whether that be dressing a certain way to feel confident or wearing makeup.
I don't see it as problem or anything that girls want to look good while they're working out. It's just like any other time you go out, and you'll be seeing people. Look good feel good. I can't get into girls' heads, but maybe they work out harder if they know they're looking hot and getting attention. I know I run a little harder when a pretty girl walks by. Furthermore, guys do the same thing. The only difference is, we're not trying to look hot. We're trying to look buff before we ever hit the free weights.
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