2008 Woodie Awards
Letter: Exercise class name innapropriate
Dr. Sheila E. Schroeder
Issue date: 4/22/08 Section: Editorials
Dear Editor,
I have tried repeatedly to get the attention of Coors Fitness staffers on the issue of their Bikini Boot Camp.
I've written letters and talked to folks in person, but no one there seems to understand how naming a class Bikini Boot Camp perpetuates notions of status quo femininity, feeds into the culture of female bodies as spectacle and hastens serious and potentially deadly health issues of anorexia and bulimia.
In my last failed attempt to get them to change the name of this class to something less focused on body image and more focused on health, I was told they 'ran the name by female staffers' who didn't find a problem with the name.
Had the decision-makers at the Fitness Center attended any of the Misogyny Conference held in recent days on our campus, they might have discovered that both women and men are subject to misogynistic thinking because the culture as a whole devalues women.
I implore the Fitness Center, which does so many things right, to consider changing the name of this class.
The name simply perpetuates experiencing women only as bodies and not as full human beings.
Peace,
Dr. Sheila E. Schroeder
University of Denver Mass Communications and Journalism Studies Professor
I have tried repeatedly to get the attention of Coors Fitness staffers on the issue of their Bikini Boot Camp.
I've written letters and talked to folks in person, but no one there seems to understand how naming a class Bikini Boot Camp perpetuates notions of status quo femininity, feeds into the culture of female bodies as spectacle and hastens serious and potentially deadly health issues of anorexia and bulimia.
In my last failed attempt to get them to change the name of this class to something less focused on body image and more focused on health, I was told they 'ran the name by female staffers' who didn't find a problem with the name.
Had the decision-makers at the Fitness Center attended any of the Misogyny Conference held in recent days on our campus, they might have discovered that both women and men are subject to misogynistic thinking because the culture as a whole devalues women.
I implore the Fitness Center, which does so many things right, to consider changing the name of this class.
The name simply perpetuates experiencing women only as bodies and not as full human beings.
Peace,
Dr. Sheila E. Schroeder
University of Denver Mass Communications and Journalism Studies Professor
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