Gender and Genre: A Comparative Analysis of Peloton Instructors’ Sexualized Genders in Exercise Classes Set to Country and Hip Hop Music
摘要
Whether country and hip hop music prompt consumers to sexualize themselves and others has attracted considerable public and academic attention. Hip hop artists, especially, have been accused of promoting risky sexual behaviors, misogyny, and sexual violence against women. However, researchers have not assessed if individuals sexualize their femininities and masculinities more intensively while listening to either country or hip hop. We address this question through a comparative analysis of how Peloton instructors did gender while teaching stationary bike spin classes set to either country or hip hop. Women sexualized their femininities more frequently than men sexualized their masculinities across classes set to both genres. However, instructors did not clearly sexualize themselves more intensively during country or hip hop classes. Counter to foundational assumptions made by media effects scholars using objectification and scripting theories, men and women also repeatedly enacted lyrics depicting an individual with a different gender—often in ways that complicated common expectations regarding how either genre is associated with sexualization. Men sexualized themselves by enacting lyrics depicting sexualized women, while women linked their femininities to confidence and financial success by enacting boastful lyrics about wealthy men. These results both confirm and challenge assumptions about how country, hip hop, and popular music, generally, are linked to sexualization. By analyzing how Peloton instructors leveraged country and hip hop to do gender while leading classes set to either genre, we argue that media effects scholars should grant greater attention to how individuals creatively engage the music they consume to do gender.