fitnesslovrr-blog

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Intimacy

Her is a non-traditional movie about romance with a twist added to it. Theodore is a sad and lonely man that is going through a divorce. His job is to write love letters for a living, although he isn’t the best at finding love, he’s great at his job. During his free time, to keep his mind off of his divorce, he often plays video games. However, he is intrigued by the new OS1 and soon purchases it. He doesn’t waste time on setting it up and is quickly drawn to the OS1, who goes by Samantha (and picked her name out of dictionary of names in a couple of seconds). Throughout their constant interactions they quickly feel comfortable with each other and fall in love. During this time Theodore feels happy and in love but yet doubtful because he is dating an operating system. Adding fuel to the fire, his ex wife tells Theodore that Samantha is not even real. Throughout the movie Theodore and Samantha have many highs and lows which resulted in them not being together in the end.

Pittman's article, Love in the Time of Tamagotchi  discusses love and technology which corresponds to the movie Her. For starters, Pettman states in the beginning of his article, “young people in Japan are almost as likely to be dating an algorithm than a human being” and although this sounds crazy, it is bound to happen sometime in our future here in America and this is the case in Her. He also goes on to talk about Otaku which is “asocial young and not so young men, who flirt with a virtual woman on their hand-held devices”. This is exactly Theodore and Samantha’s relationship since she is an operating system and he can communicate with her everywhere, he even takes her to the beach with him. Theodore was once a social man who loved to be with friends and his wife and often interacted with his co works but after his divorce he seems like he’s shifts more to the antisocial side. But somehow finds comfort in Samantha and develops a relationship with her. During the reading I came across Pittman's discussion about meru tomo relationship, which is, “the recipients of text messages (or even ‘sext messages’), as nodes in an anonymous network of friends-of-friends-of-friends. Users often note the liberation, which comes with such intimate anonymity, although observers are not necessarily convinced that it is something to encourage. It also includes, virtually no face-to-face contact, and is primarily all online”. This describes Theos and Samantha’s relationship as there’s no face to face communication and virtually all online, even their sexting or sexual form of communication is all online. Theo in a way uses Samantha for comfort because he doesn’t know how to deal with his emotions or open up and Samantha uses Theo to strengthen her system and continue to evolve. 

Although this relationship isn’t normal it definitely made me look at relationships differently. Maybe some people aren’t capable (or even want to) have a “real” relationship with another human being but then who are we to say what a “real” relationship is and isn’t? This movie was different but yet I really enjoyed it because it’s not your average love story movie or perfect ending either and somehow I can see this happening in the future too!

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Social Media Activism

With the development of social media there has been a rise in social media activism. Social media movements are often created to raise awareness and see change in a particular issue. Hashtags are also often created to help spread awareness. The social media movement that I picked for this week is the #22ADAY and the 22 pushup challenge. I picked two movements because they are closely related and in a sense helped each other. #22ADAY is a movement that was created to raise awareness in veteran suicide awareness. In 2010 the VA released a study that was conducted between 1999 and 2010 that revealed 20-22 veterans commit suicide daily. Jackson and Welles discuss early initiators which are people who first start spreading the information and crowdsourced elites which are the most influential that have helped spread awareness. In this particular issue the VA (Veterans Affairs) are the early initiators of revealing and spreading the findings of their study. Meanwhile the crowdsourced elites would be the creator of this movement. Whom is a widow of a veteran who unfortunately lost his battle with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). However, there are far more crowdsourced elites of this movement. For example, the Rock (Dwight Johnson) talked about this movement on his social media and other celebrates with essentially were the most influential because of their following. When this movement went viral there was several other movements that began like the 22 pushup challenge which also played a big role in helping awareness. Not only were there retweeting about this movement but people would challenge each other to continue the 22 pushup a day as a way to continue to raise awareness. The Rock challenges JJ Watt and Kevin Hart and between the three of them there’s millions of people who watched them do the 22 push ups and talking about veteran suicide. There were many other celebrities that were involved in this movement. Jackson and Welles state that, “discourse analysis allows us to go beyond the identification and description of networks and their members to understand how early initiators and crowdsourced elites engage in processes of mean-making” (Jackson & Wells, 403). Essentially, mean-making is important because of the power of language to create as hashtags play a significant role (Jackson & Wells, 403). Mainstream media also played a significant role in this media and helped it not only grow but also gain more supporters of both of these movements. However, #22ADAY movement didn’t gain as much attention as the 22 pushup a day challenge did, but it still had great success because when people would use the 22 a day hashtag ninety percent of the time they also included the #22ADAY movement. Below are a few pictures of mainstream media broadcasting the challenge and as seen in the picture news reporters also joined in on it. 

Similarly to Ferguson’s findings, “it is possible for those with a set of niche expertise or activist experience and connections to significantly infiltrate public debates but also for indivdual members of highly marginalized counterpublics to do so” (Jackson & Wells, 412). This was seen in the #22ADAY movement because veterans, family members of veterans, and families who lost their loved ones to PTSD were influential and succeeded in defining the terms. I would also consider these a very successful movements primarily because together they were able to raise awareness and help over 600,000 veterans that suffer from PTSD. Similar with the #22ADAY movement, the 22 pushup challenge veterans, family members of veterans, and family that have lost their loved ones to PTSD played a significant role in the defining the terms.

Social media is being used to share information, and raising awareness. Although sharing information is great but what’s important of sharing or raising awareness is if there’s an outcome of the movement. Like previously states the outcomes of these movements was that the organizations that started them are still helping veterans to this day.

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Labor

While reading the articles by Duffy and Nakamura, defined labor, talked about the different types of labor. Duffy, however, defines a new term which is aspirational labour. Duffy defines aspirational labour as, “forward-looking, carefully orchestrated, and entrepreneurial form of creative cultural production.” He also states that, “aspirational labourers seek to mark themselves as creative producers who will one day be compensated for their craft—either directly or through employment in the culture industries.”  Immaterial labour is defined as, “activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms and public opinion.” On the other hand, Nakamura talks about how “cheap female labor is the engine that powers the internet.” Nakamura also talks about feminist speech in digital spaces, and how it has been able to benefit people. I found the quote by Duffy interesting because nowadays people that I follow are trying to create an instagram where they review products and attempt to eventually get paid for their posts and advertisements. Or they now do get paid by these companies to advertise and make it clear that it’s a “#paidsponsership”. A lot of people because of technology have been successful with creating their social media platform for themselves. But regardless they are putting themselves out there and practicing “self branding.”

When reading these articles I immediately thought of Paige Hathaway. She’s shared her story with her fans how she went to the Arnold Classic (which is a fitexpo in Ohio) and made cards of herself that included pictures, how many competitions she won, and how long she had been in the fitness industry. In hopes that someone would gain some interest in her and want to do some sort of business together. This particular situation rang a bell when I was reading the articles because she was practicing self branding. Eventually she caught a companies eye where she later signed a contract with them and was paid to promote their supplement line. And this also demonstrates Duffy’s as producers that will one day be compensated and since then Paige Hathaway’s net worth (as of 2016) is 5.56 million. Since her debut at the Arnold Classic passing out cards of herself, she has had various sponsorships which not only has gained her revenue but as well as being able to travel the world to attend different fit expos at the sponsors expense. Duffy also talks about how DWYL (doing what you love) is not really practical and can be problematic, which I completely agree with. While she is constantly traveling she always posts how “the grind never ends” and how she’s always working even if she’s traveling. Which essentially shows that there is no designated work time and personal time and they are now intertwined with each other. This essentially shows exploitation because regardless if her sponsorships are paying for her travel she still has to work the fit expo and work on her other stuff (client email, business emails, ect.) Below are two photos of Paige Hathaway promoting her sponsors products 

The majority of my accounts demonstrate aspirational labour. For example,  Heidi Somers (also known as BuffBunny) has demonstrated aspirational labour. She self branded herself by competing and winning most of them. Eventually she got her name out there and companies started reaching out to her for sponsorships. She now promotes the supplement line that sponsors her and also provides “discount codes” to get some money off your order. Below is one of many of her posts that she advertises her sponsorships that have allowed her to pursue her career in the fitness industry.

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Fans, Amateur

For this week’s topic I have chosen to analyze Paige Hathaway, Katy Hearn, and Hannah Bower and how fans, amateurs, and professionals play a part in their life and their online careers. Out of the three women that I have analyzed I would have to say Paige Hathaway is a professional simply because she has been in the fitness industry the longest (with having a little more than four million followers) and has also had many business opportunities come her way, which has benefitted her career in the long run. Katy Hearn would also fall under a professional because she has been able to branch out and also do more things other than postings on social media. Hannah Bower I would consider an amateur primarily due to her following and she is still yet to be discovered as Paige and Katy are very well known. Paige is known to be the fitness queen in this industry and is known by so many. All three fitness gurus followers would be considered fans but the ones constantly commenting on their posts and liking their photos would be their active fans. However, making the distinctions who is a professional and amater can be difficult because in the fitness industry every fitness model can be seen as a professional because of their physical appearance so these lines seem in a way blurred now. So I went based off their following and job opportunities that they’ve had.

Jenkin states that social media’s main component of media is that it is ‘spreadable’ he goes on to say, “consumers in this model are grassroots advocates for materials which are personally and socially meaningful to them.” (Jenkins, 2009) He reiterates that ‘if it doesn’t spread it’s dead’ which is essentially correct because for example if the content of these fitness models doesn’t spread among their fans they wouldn’t be where they’re at today.

If people did not share the content that Katy Hearn put out or shared who she was she would not have been able to open her own gym, start her own supplement line, or start her own meal prep company. But because of how much people spread her content and got her name out there when she would start her challenges the spots would fill up within minutes which essentially allowed all her programs that she ran to be successful. What Katy does to share her content is that she makes these contests where people comment below her picture their different favorite foods and they will win either a gift card to her supplement line or meal prep foods but she also has them tag a friend. Which essentially if you tag someone and they are not currently following the account they would then start following and eventually start participating too. This relates back to Jenkin’s concept of ‘if it doesn’t spread it’s dead’ because as seen in the picture it is liked by 12k people. So it is constantly spreading.

Jenkin’s beliefs on participatory culture is that social media is an expression of this. His definition of participatory culture is “in which fans and other consumers are invite to actively participate in the creation and circulation of new content.” (Jenkins, 2008) While analyzing Hannah Bower’s social media accounts she constantly ask her fans if they want her to put out next whether it be what type of supplements she is taking now that she is pregnant or more pregnancy workouts or a tour of her nursery, ect. With instagram’s newest updates you can now take polls and their fans will often decide what content they’d like to see. This is how she usually asks her fans what they’d like to see.  But she has not posted a poll on her story today below is a screen shot that I took of her asking her fans what YouTube video they would like to see next. This is a great example of Jenkin’s beliefs that fans can participate in what content they would like content creators to put out there. Because usually whatever her fans want to see is what she usually posts next.

On contrast to what Jenkin’s describes that fans benefit from being able to participate in the creation of new content Fuchs challenges what Jenkin claims. Funchs claims that essentially “Jenkins misses the central economic relevance of money in the economy and argues that the exploitation of users’ digital labour is not really a problem if they have social benefits from platform usage”. (Fuchs)  Fuchs goes into great detail about they way Jenkin thinks and how this is just a long history of the crisis of capitalism.

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Online Minorities

America has been known for its continuous racism against non white groups. However people claim that we have come a long way from slavery and although it is partially true there is now a “new” form of racism. Cisneros and Nakayama discuss this in their article New Media, Old Racism they distinguish that the “old” racism is blatant and “new” racism which is associated more as with “colorblindness”. Since the rise of social media we have seen a new form of racism while still seeing signs of “old” racism, Cisneros and Nakayama states, “Twitter users and mainstream media, contributed to the project of the “new” racism. Thus such moments of explicit racist discourse highlight the ways that “new” and “old” logics of racism coexist in the world of social media” (Cisneros and Nakayama pg.112). After being crowned Miss America in 2014, Nina Davuluri experienced the “old” and “new” form of racism when people online were making remarks about being the first Indian American woman to win the competition. They referred to Davuluri as a “terrorist” and how American “forgot what happened on 9/11” as if 9/11 had anything to do with her winning Miss America. Hannah Bowmar is one of the fitness accounts that I currently follow and she was a gymnast that is currently pregnant. Her husband is an African American man that is currently serving in the Navy. When she first announced that she was pregnant she also experienced something similar to what Nina Davuluri had to. She got terrible comments along the lines that her baby was going to come out looking like a “monkey.” This form of racism was expressed through social media (instagram) while Davuluri case was expressed through Twitter. This is where I previously stated that it was partially true about moving forward because as I read through the article and seeing how much racism has changed overtime but yet it still continues to occur in society today as a different form. Below is a picture of Hannah and her husband and counter comments reflecting and defending Hannah just as people defended Davuluri.

Florini discusses in Tweets, Tweeps and Signifyin’ Communication about a signifying which is defined as, “Signifyin’ is a genre of linguistic performance that allows for the communication of multiple levels of a meaning simultaneously, most frequently involving wordplay and misdirected.” (Florini pg.2) Florini describes the need for identifying the racial identity in their online interactions with others. In the article Florini describes Americans as “often assert that combating racism means “not seeing race” and, instead, judging each individual by the “content of her character.” (Florini pg.12) In other words, the goal is not to ignore people’s races but rather to accept who they are because colorblindness is not the cure to racism. African Americans turned to twitter to show their racial identities and to be able to connect with other African Americans. I decided to write about Hannah Bower again just because I also feel that this closely relates to her marriage with her husband. Although her husband (from doing my own research) does not use social media, she advocates for him and African Americans. She previously posted a youtube video of her pregnancy workouts and she received a very disgusting comment about her baby and love for her husband. However she responded “Let them live that sad life while you live in love! They are the ones blinded by the beauty of color.” (Hannah Bower) She goes further on her twitter that she brings awareness to color because as Florini states at the end of the article that “visibility of race as an important social axis in the U.S. culture.” (Florini pg.12) I think it is amazing that Hannah brings awareness to social media because like in her tweet she mentions that not everyone is aware that racism like this still exists. Below is a picture of her youtube and the comment that someone left about her baby and marriage. The following picture is her response on twitter on shining light on things that people don’t think really exist anymore while also showing that it is okay to love someone even if they aren’t part of the dominant race.

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Gender

Postfeminist is often hard to interpret by many people in society, and it is often misinterpreted and misunderstood due to the lack of knowledge about it. People often think that feminist women are men haters, which is not necessarily the case. When thinking of feminism it is often referred to equality between males and females, not men haters. Gill discusses many aspects of postfeminist culture in her article “Postfeminist Media Culture.” She begins with femininity as a bodily property, and claims that “in today’s media, possession of a ‘sexy body’ is presented as a women’s key (if not sole) source of identity.” (pg. 4) As the example that Gill provides in the reading after the breakup between Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise the two women were being picked apart while “there was no comparable focus on the men.” (pg. 5) She also goes into great detail about sexualization of the culture, from sex object to desiring sexual object, individualism, self-surveillance, the makeover paradigm, reassertion of sexual difference, irony and knowingness, and feminism and anti-feminism.

The two pictures above are of Katy Hearn and Paige Hathaway and the majority of their photos are generally all the same. Women are often judged based on what they post and what outfits they wear (or what they’re not wearing) but who are we to decide these based on pictures that people post? This is accurate in the fitness industry and social media. For example, Paige Hathaway is known for her outstanding physical appearance. Katy Hearn is well known primarily of her buttocks and her husband posted about how her buttocks got them “social media famous.” Although people often see these photos as being “scandalous” but other people, like myself, believe that they are demonstrating empowerment and self-surveillance through bettering themselves by being healthy. It is sad that women are constantly being criticized for everything little thing they do or more specifically how women look.

In Wiser’s article Branding the Postfeminist Self” states that, “public self-expression and self-branding are validated by the cultural context of post-feminism, which, among other things, connects gender empowerment with consumer activity.” (pg. 3) Although it states the possible harms of the youth now self-branding themselves.

Wiser talks about the development of YouTube and the self-branding that has occured because of the site and the feedback that these people recieve on it. For example Buffbunny or Heidi Somers has self-branded herself through YouTube which eventually lead for companies to reach out to her for sponsorships. As Wiser talks about the negative feedback that comes with self-branding it reminds me of the situation that Heidi went through. While dealing with personal things in her life she was getting picked apart by society about what she did. She had to rehome her pitbull due to biting one of her friends and being put on intervention. Due to this the feedback she received was terrible and it was so sad to see that people would say those type of things to someone who is already dealing with issues in their personal life. The way that she was dealing with the feedback was by deleting and blocking people that were saying negative things to her. Since these social media influencers put nearly every aspect of their life on social media they are often subjected to negative feedback. However, tieing in our class discussion women are often given more negative feedback than men often are. Below are few of the many comments she recieved during that situation.

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Friendship

As a society people often have friendships for the purpose of hanging out, and people that have friendships often look for people with similar interests and hobbies. Boyd examines through research of how social media is now incorporated into friendships. Boyd’s study was primarily on teens but his findings apply to society as a whole and how much social media is part of people’s friendships. He also goes into how social media can complicate and damage friendships. Like Boyd’s research Deresiewicz also believes that social media is ruining our face to face friendship relationships as we turn to having more online friendships rather than person to person interaction.

As seen on social media that friends are often jeopardized for the most silliest reasons. Whether it be because your friend liked your enemies photo or because they are following someone that you do not get along with. The simplest things can now create drama among friends or even ruin them. For example, one account that I follow @buffbunny was once best friends with @nikkiblackketter and they both traveled to many places together. However, @nikkiblackketter claimed that @buffbunny was trying to be like her and she would constantly copy everything she did. This ultimately ruined their friendship and @nikkiblacketter had her sponsor @gymsharkwomen (which is a fitness apparel line) block @buffbunny. This ultimately caused their followers to pick sides as well, which ended up causing so much drama in the fitness industry on social media.

Bloor was worried that people on social media would try to seek relations based in instrumental vs social relations. Instrumental relations is a tool to get something out of the relationship or friendship while social relations are relationships based on being friends with people based on honesty. In the fitness industry on social media it seems as if friendships are based on instrumental rather than social. For instance a year ago @buffbunny had a sleepover with many other fitness models at her house and claimed she was “with her girls”. However, prior to the sleepover @buffbunny had never really posted about any of the girls that were there or never claimed that she was friends with them. So for the weekend they planned a “meet-up” and this is where they chose a specific location and tell their fans so they can meet them in person. Usually fans bring them gifts and this is also a great way to increase their following by having all the fitness models/influencers there. This only proves that social media friendships of microcelebraties, for some people, are instrumental.

However there are examples that are hard to tell whether it’s an instrumental relation or a social one. For example, @paigehathaway has been bestfriends with @laurendrainfit for many years now. They travel and constantly train together on a daily basis. The two girls have managed to keep their strong ties small and often seem to stay out of drama. From a fans view it will seem that the two have a very genuine and social relation but as we have seen social media can be very deceiving. As social media continues to impact relationships it will be harder to tell the authenticity of friendships. This tension is very important to pay attention to because as these micro celebrities post on their feeds they can often mislead their fans to believing something that isn’t really real. Bloor stated, “The problem is one of superficiality. If we have too many friends, the beneficial effects of the network become fragmented.” This quote couldn’t be more accurate after seeing how much social media impacts and causes tensions with friends.

[fitnesslovrr-blog]

Introduction

I am interested in writing about social media fitness influencers and how they impact their followers to live a healthy and positive lifestyle. Fitness interests me because I used to be extremely unhealthy, weighing almost 210 pounds for a 5’4 female is classified as being obese. After gaining more insight on facebook and instagram, instagram inparticular, I started following more fitness inspiration pages. That is where I came across a couple social media fitness influencers like Paige Hathaway, Katy Hearn, Heidi Somers, and Hannah Bower. I was immediately inspired to start my journey to living a healthier lifestyle. I plan on following all their social media accounts which include facebook, youtube, twitter, and instagram and analyzing their content as to how they continue to motivate millions of people to better themselves and their lifestyles. Paige hathaway has not only influenced people to be more physically active and a healthier lifestyle but she also has inspired people to strive in their careers. For example, she shares her story of how she grew up being raised by her grandparents due to her drug addicted parents. She’s also previously stated that she grew up with bare minimum and everything that she has accomplished today was through her hard work and ethic. This has demonstrated to her followers, which is over four million followers just on instagram. Katy Hearn is another fitness woman that I follow and I decided to go with her because she is very humble. She has also accomplished so much in her career by herself as most fitness influencers have sponsorships. Sponsorships are known to getting your name out there and increasing your following, this is not the case for Katy Hearn. She has grown so much from having her online programing/challenges to owning her own gym, meal prep services, and soon to be supplement line. Heidi Somers is from North Pole Alaska and made the drastic move to Texas without knowing anyone. Since then she has become someone big in the fitness industry. She also owns her own clothing like (Buff Bunny Collection) and is on her road to success. Hannah Bower was a gymnast who experienced a terrible accident that left her hospitalized. She was told that she could never lift or be a gymnast again but she beat the odds. She is now a very inspiring woman who is living a healthy lifestyle while being pregnant. I decided to go with these four fitness women because they are so humble and they show how much they truly care for their followers. There are thousands of other fitness women in this industry but these four are the ones that really have inspired me on a personal level because their content is so touching and motivating. Paige Hathaway brings in the definition of hard work and motivation, and is also known as the biggest fitness guru on instagram. Katy Hearn brings in good worth ethic and success that she achieved on her own. Heidi Somers has recently gone through a lot and has shown how positive she has remained, her positivity is encouraging to her followers to do the same. Hannah demonstrates that fitness can be achieved even if you’re told that you’d never be able to do what you love again. She also inspires many women to live a healthy lifestyle while being pregnant. The four of them have really inspired me in so many ways, and the content that they put on social media is very relatable to their followers. I am excited to learning more about these fitness influencers and analyzing their content throughout this semester.