Although fitness centers and gyms may seem like a place to sweat and work out with the intention of not being seen without makeup and in shabby clothes, this may not be the case , particularly when it comes to university gyms. Contrary to what Tamara L. Black exposed in her Doctor of Philosophy thesis in Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, in which she describes the situation of the classic fitness center as dominated by physical exercise, after the observations made during the participation in In the Boston College Recreation Complex, fitness centers may be more focused on the expression of sexual and social relationships than on health-related issues. While he does not elaborate on this vision of the gym, he acknowledges that “popular media, cultural stereotypes, and some empirical literature describe gyms as places where people meet, where sexualized interactions are likely to take place, where bodies are on display as objects of desire” (p. 40). This could be the perfect definition of the situation I encountered in my observations. Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs, in Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness, acknowledge that “the mainstream media casts men as active and women as inactive. In this view, women are often shown as 'visually perfect' and passive, immobile and unchanging'” (p. 40). Perhaps we are to blame the media for this hyper-sexualization of a situation that was initially intended for self-realization and health-related practices. Roberta Sassatelli, in her piece Fitness Culture: Gyms and the Commercialization of Discipline and Fun, gives rise to this idea of ​​a “gender-activity matrix” (p. 74) within fitness centers. This is where you point out... halfway down the paper... I've come to the conclusion that the Boston College gym is primarily a place to enhance or display one's appearance in a sexualized way for the most part, whether it's girls wearing tight clothes, girls working out to look better in bikinis, guys lifting to build muscle, or guys trying to look like they know what they're doing, all participants take part in this situation for the sake of getting noticed from others. Works Cited Black, Tamara. 2008. Exercise and fitness in a commercial gym in the United States. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International. Dworkin, Shari L., and Faye L. Wachs. 2009. Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness.New York: New York University Press.Sassatelli, Roberta. 2010. Fitness culture: gyms and the commercialization of discipline and fun. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.