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1. Some of the People Some of the Time: Prologue to a Discussion of “Black Hipster Expression” « This So-Called Post-Post-Racial Life on 20 Sep 2009 at 8:53 pm

   [...] a new ad campaign for a gym featuring a Blaxploitation-era-looking scantily clad Black woman. As broken down by Andrea (AJ) Plaid: David Barton Gym is definitely selling Black women’s bodies–or, rather, using the “hip 70s [...]

Comments

1. Wendi Muse wrote:

   the free ride part just brings it on home, how doesn’t it? though, given, david barton gym is known for being sexytown. their newest gym on astor place is lit like a club, and it’s (the gyms themselves) notorious for being a gay hookup spot. this ad just goes along with the usual image of sexy, SEXy, SEXY!

   i doubt they were thinking about it that much, though. they probably thought, “ok, find a hot woman with a nice ass and peddle sex.” the afro bit/70s-esque theme may relate to some present promotion for their gym, but i am not sure. either way, i always find mysef wondering, is there a way to advertise for gyms without bringing on the sexy? that’s why a lot of people go to them. given, health is one component, but at the end of the day, a lot of people are undeniably in the gym to look hot. health maintenance is just a side effect. and i wonder if ads for gyms like this are simply meant to serve as motivation and nothing more? or at least to say, “look, people who go to this gym are hot like this woman!”

   i even wonder, too, if anyone in the boardroom said, “let’s make the hot girl black because there are few positive, sexy images out there of black women.” in this respect, i always find myself torn. yes, i want there to be more ads/media including sexy black women. we need to be shown as sexy, too, damnit. BUT there’s that overall feeling of it being from one extreme to the next…sexy/hot or dowdy and bad attitude laden. when are we just going to be portrayed as beautiful, just like white women are in the media, and not as only one extreme or the other?

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 10:10 am ¶

2. Wendi Muse wrote:

   to add to that, maybe the “beautiful” image can be found in the generic stock woman with natural hair photo. i feel like that’s the only neutral, yet attractive type of image of black women out there right now.

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 10:11 am ¶

3. Thea wrote:

   Ugh. That ad is gross. Can’t read the copy but am having trouble understanding why it says FREE RIDE behind the woman of colour – what does that have to do with the gym? Yick.

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 10:39 am ¶

4. A. wrote:

   Cosign with Wendi on #1.

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 11:38 am ¶

5. malted_tea wrote:

   I hear you Wendi but why is it a FREE ride? Like, we know it alludes to sex and a sexual position, right? So why her and free together?

   The connotation I get is that while she’s ogle-worthy, the fact that she’s Black means you can “ride her pony” for free (thank you Ginuwine, even though I twisted it a bit).

   Sigh…would it be better if you had to pay? Of course not. It’s just the no charge/overpowering thing.

   Or am I reading to much into this for a gym that is, as Wendi says, is primarily frequented by LGBTQ community anyway?

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 11:59 am ¶

6. Asada wrote:

   I have to agree, This add for a gym has nothing to do with being healthy or athletic. Its just sex. And pathetic sex at that.

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 12:40 pm ¶

7. Wendi Muse wrote:

   it’s mainly frequented by gay men, not the whole lgbt community….so i wonder then, too, is this like just a play on kitcsh/70s stuff?
   next time i walk by, i will see if they have any other 70s stuff out…maybe there is a sexy disco theme or something i missed? idk

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 12:44 pm ¶

8. Wendi Muse wrote:

   (sorry for all the comments)…i should clarify here that that was a follow up to a previous comment made by malted tea. and no, i am not saying places catering to gay men are excused from having the racism/sexism card being called on them. i am just thinking out loud here…like i wonder if it’s part of some campaign and there are other images that go with it? i have no idea. they also may be trying to increase their female and straight male clientele? again, no idea. but whenever you say david barton gym in nyc, the first thought most people have is hot gay men.

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 12:47 pm ¶

9. CDF wrote:

   I’ll just browse fitness mags if I want to see some actual beefed-up females instead of this faux-rehash…

   Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 1:03 pm ¶

10. MJ wrote:

    They seem to have a thing (fetish?) for this…

    http://chubbyafro.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/david_barton.jpg?w=600

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 2:29 pm ¶

11. Fiqah wrote:

    Thanks, AJ. I am now stuck in side-eye. Making it hard as hell to type. “Free Ride”? Good, sweet Lord. o_O

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 2:46 pm ¶

12. Kaonashi wrote:

    My guess is that “Free Ride” refers to some sort of club promotion and NOT the girl in the ad. That’s just…hella crass (which is the LAST message you want to send out). There’s probably a pigtailed blond working the roller derby look in another ad.

    Also, there’s a lot of designers that evoke the 70s with their work so I’ve seen the “Beautiful Black babe working the Angela Davis special” more times than I can count when an ad is trying to convey that a place/product/event is “cool” and “hip” and “the place to be.”

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 3:08 pm ¶

13. storm wrote:

    Wow. I can’t believe this David Barton ad imagery of a black woman is being discussed here. How timely.

    I have been disgusted — and offended — by this imagery for MONTHS now. I live in NYC and pass Barton’s gym every morning on my way to work. I can still remember the very first time I saw the life size poster of the black woman. In that ad the woman was nude. All you could see was her big fro and ass. I was too shocked and offended (I can not stress that enough.)

    I am a black woman and I am so tired of our bodies being objectified, commodified, and sexualized to sell shit.

    David Barton’s gym is located in the heart of gay boy America (Chelsa). Who is he appealing to with this image?

    I would love to know how many African American women are members of his gym? (I bet not many.)

    I am so offended I had even considered writing a letter to David Barton to voice my feelings.

    Thank you for discussing this here.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 3:20 pm ¶

14. Kaonashi wrote:

    I went to their website and there’s a special going on right now where you can get a guest pass, so maybe that’s what the ad’s about.

    On the homepage there’s a bald chick posing nude for two gentlemen wearing suits who are sketching her. What this has to do with a gym (other than “you too can have her hotass body if you work out) I don’t know, but it weirdly complements the other pictures of the gym equipment on the page.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 3:29 pm ¶

15. A.D. Nix wrote:

    There is at least one other ad in this vein that was around town earlier this year. And it’s . . . Not entirely SFW.
    http://racked.com/archives/2008/12/09/david_barton_makes_some_sort_of_statement_on_astor_place.php

    @ Wendi Muse
    According to a former co-worker who is also a current ad man and friend of DB, they’re definitely trying to make DBG ’straighter.’ I’ve been to the one in Chelsea and I’ve passed by the new one and both seem to have more women in them than DBGs in the past before.

    That said, advertising a free ride on black ass isn’t how to get my black ass to sign up for a membership. But I don’t think that’s what this ad is about. It seems clearly designed primarily for the gaze of potential riders (”We have some of this inside, sign-up!”) and secondarily for those who want to sign-up and get a free-ride-able ass (”Just like a black chick -but maybe not quite as big, right? Right guys??”).

    Considering the crazy (to my gym-phobic, Greenpoint YMCA-card-carrying-self) cost of a membership, and the race-income mindf*ck that is Manhattan, it’s clear that this was not intended as a biggups to black women (even if it turns out to be that for some) rather than to use an image of a black woman’s body to, naturally, showcase hot backside.

    How refreshing to see focus on a black woman’s ass. This never happens.

    In another context, from another source (and with different copy, for the love of Pete Campbell) I might love this image.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 3:29 pm ¶

16. Kaonashi wrote:

    I have been disgusted — and offended — by this imagery for MONTHS now. I live in NYC and pass Barton’s gym every morning on my way to work. I can still remember the very first time I saw the life size poster of the black woman. In that ad the woman was nude. All you could see was her big fro and ass. I was too shocked and offended (I can not stress that enough.)

    @Storm: whatwhatWHAT?

    Thank you so much for posting. That’s what I get for trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. Eww. Just Eww!!!

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 3:33 pm ¶

17. Wendi Muse wrote:

    yeah, they have a new location on astor place…the old one in chelsea closed…though maybe they opened a new one (idk, i have been out of the country for a yr)…but it makes sense if they are trying to “straighten” up their image (pun intended)

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 3:51 pm ¶

18. storm wrote:

    @ Wendy,

    The David Barton gym in Chelsa is still open. I pass by it every day on my way to work; I passed it today.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 4:21 pm ¶

19. SeattleSlim wrote:

    I am conflicted on this. I am not conflicted about whether the free ride is wrong, or whether it’s even wrong as a whole. I, however, find the image appealing as a BW.

    There is something about her that is hot. I mean, she’s rocking an afro to the levels I would like to grow mine (I mean honestly, this image hit home today, as I did a full on blow out today), her body is gorgeous, the tattoo hits home, I mean….she’s hot and she’s noir.

    But then again, I’ve been a fan of those kitschy 70s posters that Outkast were so fond of in their earlier days (think Melvin Van Peebles’ room in The Shining), with the thick, afro’d out, supermamas.

    I guess Wendi Muse voiced my opinion the best. I also like the other poster that was linked in the beginning (she had a purple/lavender hue).

    If I had teen boys (which is in the next 7 to 12 years for them), if I had to pick between having Buffy the Body, Melyssa Ford, “exotic models” (think puffy’s new video for Angels or Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” videos) or these photos, I’d go with these, without the free ride part. That’s jut entirely ridiculous UNLESS of course, they have the same words for a poster with a WW, HW, etc.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 5:06 pm ¶

20. Kaonashi wrote:

    Unlike the ad pictured above (where she’s just simply pin-up retro with an AWESOME body that manages to not look “too hooch”) the model being naked in other ads with the “Free Ride” copy is tacky and makes for all sorts of nasty connotations; you want to skate the line between “being the ad that everyone talks about” and being THAT ad that everyone talks about, you know?

    SS: I agree. Bring on the gorgeous women with the big ass fros!

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 6:37 pm ¶

21. Courtney wrote:

    Gyms can be so creepy. Didn’t the perpetrator of the recent gym shooting target women who he somehow saw as having ~rejected him?

    Maybe he should have gone to this gym, where, undoubtedly, there are always black women giving out free rides to whatever perverted loser comes along! …UGH that is such a gross phrase. Advertisers, get the memo– we’re not the 2/3 to anybody’s one whole, and Coffy would definitely have pulled a shotgun on your ass if you stepped to her with some “free ride” crap.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 7:49 pm ¶

22. Evan Carden wrote:

    I stared at that for like ten minutes before I finally figured out that David Barton Gym wasn’t someone’s name.

    My brain just did not make that connection, maybe because no gym I know offers free rides. They offer really expensive rides that take you nowhere.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 9:23 pm ¶

23. Evan Carden wrote:

    Sorry for the two posts, but a second theory just occured to me:

    I could be deeply stupid.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 9:23 pm ¶

24. Ange wrote:

    Holy foghat! What the hell is this hot mess? I am speechless. Thanks for the heads up!

    Posted 12 Sep 2009 at 1:29 am ¶

25. Wendi Muse wrote:

    storm,

    the gym that closed was on like…16th and 6th ave in chelsea. i *think* it was a david barton’s back in the day…that then relocated somewhere else in chelsea? i might be mixing some things up…but has the chelsea david barton always been in the same place?

    Posted 12 Sep 2009 at 3:59 am ¶

26. The Cruel Secretary wrote:

    Hmmmmm….I think the best way to respond to the thread is with an event that recently happened in my life:

    I came home one Saturday to find a pair of men’s underwear on my camera, which sits in a area that my soon-to-be ex-landlord agreed I could use as a sitting/dining area and he would have access to (he has tools in the area that he and his workers use.) The next day, the STB ex-landlord, a Latino who emigrated from Peru decades ago, sent me a creepy-ass email the next day saying that I should lock up the camera because the handymen may try to take it.

    I wrote back that the entire time the camera sat where it was, nobody bothered the thing except him with his man-panties. He came back with “[his] intention wasn’t to tell [me] what to do with [my] life that I was “upset” and “we should have coffee” and talk it over. Coincidently, he left for a long trip.

    When he came back, he knocked on my door and started going on and on about how upset he thought I was and his intention and so on. I told him that his thinking I was upset was his “misinterpretation” (I was, of course, utterly furious and grossed out, but I also sussed he wanted to know that some sort of expression of feeling meant, in some twisted way, that I cared about/for him–like I said, he’s creepy). Then I said the following: “Quite frankly, I really don’t care what your intention was. Hell is paved with them. And I’m accepting your apology.”

    He, sufficed to say, was the one who was unnerved. He babbled an apology and left me alone. And, before y’all ask: yes, I found a new place to live and will be moving out very, very soon.

    I feel the same way about this David Barton Gym ad. Living in NYC myself and having visited Chelsea, I also know the area is heavily populated by LGBTIQ communities, esp. white affluent gay men, and am quite familiar with the fact that the gym is a big brand name within that community. But, quite frankly, I *really* don’t care what the gym’s ad agency intended to do when the creatives came up with this ad, be it pay homage to Pam Grier’s Foxy Brown and her 70s Blaxploitation sister (in fact, the Lisa Jones article where the pull-quote is from does the exact same thing. In full disclosure, I have a soft spot for the films myself) or to “straighten” their image to attract a different clientele. The result is this messed-up ad that plays on some very old racialized sexual stereotypes about Black women, namely that we’re sassy, sexy big ol’ butts that fuck for practically free or, at least, sex with a sistah is always no strings attached ’cause we’re promiscuous like that.

    Posted 12 Sep 2009 at 9:32 am ¶

27. MoneyPenny wrote:

    For the record, i’m far from free, and as a sex worker who’s been asked many times, “Why so much?”, And told, “I would pay that much for a white woman but not you”, I know that this sentiment is not just felt in the gym community, it’s everywhere. How dreadful.

    Posted 13 Sep 2009 at 11:19 am ¶

28. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    I am conflicted. I hear everyone about the problematic nature of the context, the text, etc. But these ads bring to mind my uncle’s basement “club room” in the 70s–with the Ohio Players album covers and the velvet, blacklight-lit posters of nude and strategically-nude Black women much like these.

    I used to look at these women and marvel at their beauty and power and confidence. They were absolutely stunning. As is the woman in this ad.

    I do not know what to make of the “free ride” tag line. I did not enlarge the ad, but are they offering some sort of free trial period? The first thing that came to my mind was the lyrics of the Edgar Winter Group song by the same name:

    The mountain is high
    The valley is low
    and you’re confused on which way to go
    so I’ve come here to give you a hand
    and lead you into the promised land

    I don’t know. This is one of those things that I, as a womanist, know I should feel outraged about. But instead I feel a kind of warm, positive nostalgia.

    One thing I do know is that reactions to this ad may show how novel it still is to see women of color depicted in any ads, thus the few that are depicted carry that much more rhetorical weight. I think the default is to assume that these kinds of ads must be racist/misogynistic/both/otherwise problematic and to spend our critical thinking on deconstructing how that might be so. We are less likely to deconstruct the positive reactions we–or, at least some of us–may have.

    Posted 13 Sep 2009 at 3:19 pm ¶

29. Phil Deeze wrote:

    Is the lady on the poster supposed to be Foxxy Cleopatra or something like that? I’ll be she rolls her neck and says, “You have the right to remain sexy, Sugah.”

    All kidding aside, I’m sure there’s a Hottentot Venus parallel to be made here along with interesting connections to Michelle Obama’s bare arms and the dichotomy of hypersexualization of video vixens against how tall the Williams sisters are, the smoky-voiced old lady in the IKEA commercials and black men in drag (Flip Wilson, Eddie Murphy, and Tyler Perry.)

    Posted 13 Sep 2009 at 3:30 pm ¶

30. Rieko wrote:

    I have been searching EVERYWHERE for that first purple glowing ad, so thanks to the person who posted it. I actually LOVE that ad and thought it quite beautiful and effective. As a black woman, I find the second “free ride” ad rather offensive though. I live in Tribeca and don’t go to David Barton, but truly, I just think it’s a gay man thing: Kitschy, wannabe cool and trendy, etc. Just so happens it hit a sore spot. But also, let’s be honest, we are hardly respresented at all in ANY light, so the sexy factor isn’t totally a bad thing. It’s a catch-22 when it comes to sex and black women, a fine line. Personally, I think the first ad hit it right on the nose!

    Posted 28 Sep 2009 at 3:34 pm ¶