Blog 9_Wk_5_Modernity_Spectatorship_Power

Enter medium sized male, age 17-20. Walks into gym. Full of hard-muscled, well shaped people. The young male walks over to the weight stack and slowly starts to lift the weights. Yet he continuously looks around the gym, not focusing on his own lifting because he is too obsessed and paranoid by what the others are doing in the gym. The bigger men are using more weight the young male thinks. But if he adds more weight, he won’t be able to do it, and then look even more amateurish. He can feel the “Gaze” strongly. The perception that his body is flawed and not good enough. The mirror bounces back an image of insufficiency and a lack of body shape. He spots one of the muscle-bound men with a colorful bottle that seemed to be a tasty supplement. Maybe if he took that, he could be like the others in the gym. But probably not. He leaves the gym without even finishing his workout, and so the cycle continues.