Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The game will be a composed of a series of images and representations of members of certain ethnic groups. The player will encounter a series of characters and will have to click and choose which representations are positive and why. The player wins by earning the most points at the end of their journey. This game will be based upon a dscussion of the psychology behind African American female bodybuilding as a sport including its effects on the self-image, emotional well-being, and self-esteem of competitors in terms of its use as a mode of self-expression and self-presentation used to challenge and recreate collective/ individual images of black womanhood in popular media and consciousness. (As opposed to the criminal, the jezebel, and the asexualized mammy). Also a discussion of how this subculture of black female bodybuilders and women body builders in general (women’s participation in sports/ fitness ) act as a postcolonial, gendered, and racialized means of feminist expression. Also how these African American female bodybuilders act as models of African American female identity for black female youth, especially female collegiate athletes, being alternatives to the typical over-sexualized, degraded images of black femininity portrayed in popular media. Also the paradigm shift in American social consciousness and norms of physical desirability that have begun to shift from an obsession with abnormal thinness to extreme levels of muscularity regardless of gender. Also a discussion of the visual aesthetics and an inversion of Eurocentric ideals of beauty-i.e. in bodybuilding it is more aesthetically pleasing to have dark skin because it displays the muscles in a more defined manner and because of this white women are forced to go to extreme tanning lengths to become as dark as they can.

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