Download Kinly McCaffrey Capstone in Communication Studies and more Lecture notes Communication in PDF only on Docsity!
Kinly McCaffrey Capstone in Communication Studies Bednar February 8, 2022 Context Paper In this paper, my objective is to dive into the recent addition of plus-size women models on the popular gym apparel brand Gymshark’s website, and analyze the commodification and tokenization of the plus-size female body particularly on a gym apparel’s website. I will be discussing what Gymshark is, how it recently sky-rocketed to popularity, as well as how it has impacted the Body Positivity movement. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, social media platforms have become more popular than ever before, and because of this, the Body Positivity movement, specifically directed towards the female body, has increased awareness and acceptance of any and all bodies that may not perfectly fall into the 21st century western societal expectations. In communication studies, there have been many recent conversations regarding the Body Positivity movement as well as conversely about the negative stigma surrounding plus- size women. I will be discussing body positivity in relation to post-feminism and uncover the reality of the body positivity movement used to commodify plus-size women. Gymshark is a British fitness brand that sells apparel and accessories, founded in 2012 by 19 year old college student Ben Francis. It is currently one of the fastest growing and most recognizable fitness brands around the world, with over 5.6 million followers on Instagram and has a valuation of over $1 billion (Forbes). Gymshark started out as a dropship website that people could order their gym supplements from, and easily have products drop shipped to their house without having to click through a multitude of websites to find all the supplements they
needed. From there, Francis decided to start creating his own gym clothes because the clothing other brands were selling were not as in-style or they did not fit right. He began learning how to design and sew his own clothes, and hot press the logo onto the clothing. After about a year of this, he held a convention and invited all of his favorite weight-lifter Youtube influencers to attend for publicity of the brand. This created a lot of attention for Gymshark, as the Youtube influencers began wearing his clothing in their Youtube videos. From there, with the addition of women’s clothing and the opening of the Gymshark production facility in Solihull, England, Gymshark began rising to popularity at a massive speed and soon became the big-name brand it is today. You can find Gymshark’s website at gymshark.com. They sell an array of fitness and gym products, ranging from men and women’s workout apparel, loungewear, undergarments, equipment, water bottles, bags, and more. When you are on the homepage, there are three different tabs that direct you to different groups of items on their website: “Women’s,” “Men’s,” and “Accessories.” When you click on the “Women’s” tab, there is a drop down menu of more specific product categories labeled “trending,” “products,” “collections,” and “accessories.” The “trending” tab includes items like new products and best sellers, to direct the customer to options that are currently at high demand and are very popular or recommended by Gymshark. Different types of clothing that Gymshark sells for women are leggings/bottoms, crop tops, hoodies/jackets, shorts, sports bras, underwear, tank tops, and t-shirts/tops. When looking through the different items of clothing, you will notice that they use a few of the same women to model different things. For example, the same woman that models a sports bra is the same woman you will find modeling a pair of leggings. Even within the same category of clothing, you can see the same woman modeling maybe three or four different styles of sports bras.
worldwide, someone could have one Tiktok video or one Instagram post or one Tweet that goes viral and completely changes their life. As mentioned, social media influencers are simply another category of celebrity, and now we see many influencers who got their claim to fame through Tiktok and Instagram walking the red carpet at many different music or movie award shows throughout the year. Even though in the past in our society, to become famous you needed to be very talented at something, whether that be singing, playing an instrument, acting, being a model, or something else, social media influencers in today’s society sometimes become famous simply by luck. Gymshark has created its own new subsection of social media influencers, and that is the “fitness influencer.” Gymshark began choosing men and women who have an established following on Instagram, and who have the current western societal ideal of a “fit” looking body, (which as I mentioned before for women is small but toned shoulders, small waist and flat stomach, and muscular legs with a big butt) to model and become ambassadors for their products. Becoming an ambassador means you get maybe a couple free products from Gymshark and wear it or post about it on Instagram for all of your followers to see. Because social media influencers are an aspiration for many women, especially young women, it influences them to want to buy Gymshark’s products to look like the models they want to look like. Because other gym-going, Instagram-using women began seeing there was a possibility for them to become a Gymshark ambassador by building a large following on Instagram or Tiktok and posting their workouts and their bodies, it inspired many people to become fitness influencers hoping for the chance of getting to work with Gymshark. Now with the plethora of fitness influencers on social media who do not have a partnership with Gymshark, many other gym apparel companies, like Inaka Power, NVGTN, and Alphalete, began picking out those fitness influencers to become
ambassadors for their brand. And as you can probably guess, because people started noticing those fitness influencers as brand ambassadors, it influenced even more people to become fitness influencers. And it has now just become one big cycle that all began with Gymshark. Gymshark’s Instagram ambassadors/influencers/models created an entire culture in the fitness community that then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, has become more popular than ever, and because of social media’s ability to quickly spread awareness of this gym culture, it continues to grow very quickly. People have been posting their workouts or their fitness progress on social media probably since it began, but now it is an entire community of people trying to become fitness influencers. Becoming a social media influencer in general essentially makes you “famous” when you start to get tens or hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of followers. Because people have realized this is a new way to get “famous” it has increased the amount of people working out and going to the gym, especially with young women who want to look like the Gymshark models. With this though, many young women who started going to the gym may not know all the right techniques to the exercises they are doing, which can cause injury. In addition to this, many women are not correctly informed of the proper eating regimine and caloric intake they should be getting everyday when they are working out so much. This can also lead to eating disorders when young women think the way to look like the Gymshark models is to starve themselves or go on extreme diets. With that said, Gymshark fits right into the rest of the media in promoting a certain body and trying to normalize the idea of being “fit” when really it is just an unrealistic body standard. The body positivity movement is a movement that challenges the societal expectations that women and men are supposed to look a certain way. Journalist Kendra Cherry describes it as “the assertion that all people deserve to have a positive body image, regardless of how society
show them off and flaunt them to show other women that no one is perfect and no real person is supposed to fit into the mold that society creates for women. An interesting thing I have noticed on social media, and specifically Tiktok, is that the body positivity movement today especially emphasizes and represents plus-size women, but often times does not include very thin women or mid-size women. The term “mid-size,” which has found its origination on Tiktok, refers to women who wear a size 8 to a size 14. (Di Donato,
- Tiktok’s body positivity does not often represent these “mid-size” women and it has become a bit controversial since the body positivity movement claims to be accepting of all bodies. “Mid-size” women have been lobbying for more representation from the media, because although it is great that plus-size women are finally getting a bit of the spotlight from the body positivity movement, “those who fall somewhere in the middle between sample size and plus size, there’s been radio silence.” (Di Donato, 2021) Recently with the popularity of the body positivity movement on social media platforms, some athleisure companies have began using plus-size models to model their clothing in an attempt to tag along with the body positivity movement. Some companies have started including bodies that are not the stereotypical “fit” body to show their customers of all sizes that their apparel can look good on them too, and not just the few people who have the body that society deems as the norm. Appealing to a larger range of body types on their website attracts more customers when they see models with their specific body type wearing that certain brand’s clothing. This has also created some controversy because the fitness community (and especially those who have the stereotypical “fit” body type) thinks that this is not a good representation of the message that these athleisure companies are “supposed to” convey: strength and health. There is a stigma that being strong and healthy is supposed to look a certain way, and since these
new plus-size models do not fit that template, some people in the fitness community believe that Gymshark should not be using plus-size models to represent their fitness brand. I think this research object, Gymshark using plus-size women to model their clothing, is a great way to continue to spread body positivity in our society and challenge the societal expectations of what women are supposed to look like. When people see that a brand that usually exclusively uses one certain body type for their models change their exclusivity to inclusivity of plus-size bodies, it helps the audience realize that they do not need to look a certain way to be able to feel confident in the gym. But the issue is, in doing this, it almost seems disingenuous. Therefore, the question is: What does a “normal” body look like, and does Gymshark represent those bodies on their website? What exactly does being “fit” mean, and does being “fit” mean the same thing as being “healthy”? Does Gymshark really support the body positivity movement, or is Gymshark just using plus-size bodies as a token or a commodity to appeal to a larger audience of potential customers?
