Social media, Fitness, Gender, and Rhetoric

Authors

• Emily M. Potts, University of Central FloridaFollow

Streaming Media

Files

Course Code

ENC

Course Number

1102

Faculty/Instructor

Melissa Ringfield

Faculty/Instructor Email

Melissa.Ringfield@ucf.edu

About the Author

Emily Potts

Sophomore - University of Central Florida  

Psychology Major 

Like a lot of college students, I enjoy exercising and will commonly look at videos on social media in order to help me learn new exercises and the correct form. Should we believe everything we hear and how do these videos and comments address the values of this workout community? How are these values different between genders? This paper attempts to answer some of these questions. 

I want to thank my composition 2 professor Melissa Ringfield for her help and support throughout this study. 

Abstract, Summary, or Creative Statement

The goal for this study was to find how TikTok uses rhetoric to argue about effective workout routines for males versus females and what values or ideologies does this rhetoric help to promote. People tend to take health and fitness advice from social media although it is not the most creditable place. Understanding how people on TikTok use rhetoric to argue about effective workouts for males versus females and what values and ideologies this rhetoric helps to promote is a gap, although it affects a significant amount of people in today's society.

To discover how rhetoric is used in this community and what values or ideologies this rhetoric promotes, Tik Tok videos and comments were analyzed for rhetoric, values, and ideologies. I found that males and females both valued their bodies' appearance. Males valued becoming big and strong while females valued becoming skinny and fit. Both genders used similar forms of rhetoric, like showing off their physique, for example.

In this study I gained experience researching, looking at trends, and connecting those trends to real world issues and also how people on TikTok use rhetoric in order to get you to believe what they are saying.

Keywords

Social Media, Fitness, Gender, and Rhetoric

Recommended Citation

Potts, Emily M., "Social media, Fitness, Gender, and Rhetoric" (2026). High Impact Practices Student Showcase Spring 2026. 36.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2026spring/36