Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Workin' It.

Alvarez, Go, Ng, Olivares, Rodriguez, Ting

SA21-K
Swag or Die Krew


As a group, we decided that we wanted to deviate the norms of restricting exercise and physical activity to gyms, courts, studios, and normal jogging paths. There are no laws against exercising in public places, so why not? Dressed in our exercise clothes, we had the idea of working out in the vicinity of the Regis building on Katipunan for everyone to see. We chose to do this at 11:30-1 during lunch time because we knew there would be a lot of people in the area.

Our first plan was to carry out our experiment inside the Regis building itself - we were going to run up the escalators, do drills along the halls and inside the elevator. However, even though we knew we weren't doing anything illegal, we changed this last minute because we didn't want to cause a commotion inside a privately owned establishment. So instead, we decided to take our activities outside to the crosswalk bridge connected to the Regis building. This is technically a public area and therefore couldn't be sanctioned for anything considering all we were doing was "exercising". Technically, no one could tell us that we couldn't stay there because we weren't doing anything wrong - we weren't squatting, soliciting, begging, selling or doing any other activities that are unlawful.

We decided to make our exercise routine look like we were members of an work-out class with Joey as our instructor. He was the only guy in our group, so we addressed him as "coach" and had him "lead" our drills. We started by doing a few rounds of jogging back and fourth on the bridge. We continued on with our drills, doing lunges and other exercises back and fourth. We stopped and did some "wall squats" on the sides of the bridge and watched as people passed us. We made sure we were loud enough for people to hear and shouted phrases like "coach ayoko na!" "feel the burn!" "faster!" and other things associated to exercise. We wanted to do something in the elevator so we tried to do some squats as people entered. This couldn't work because the elevator was too crowded and it got even harder for us to keep a straight face when our group mate Clarissa got hit in the face by some guy's elbow because she was squatting beside him.

We got a general response from people who saw us. We passed groups of people on the bridge who looked at us oddly. Some of them would laugh and even stop to look at us. Others just gave us confused looks and kept walking. There were even people who were a bit frightened by us and quickly got out of our way. The drivers and pedestrians under the bridge even looked up at us wondering what we were doing. A social norm that could have been at play which resulted to varying reactions from people was the gender of people. The boys we ran into were more approving and amused by our exercise, while girls from Miriam were more weirded out by the unusual activity they saw over Katipunan bridge. Another social norm that could have been in play was the age difference, which was expected. The young people took our activity more lightly and brushed it off, while the older people gave off a more pissed off vibe, as if we were disrupting the peace and being rowdy. Another social norm that was in play which caused varied reactions was the social class. There were 2 street kids on the bridge sitting and begging for money, and immediately started copying us and watching us when we started the activity, while those in the upper class were more demure and just watched us without making any contact.


The different reactions we observed are the following:

-Before our experiment even started, we already were getting weird looks from people because we were dressed in our exercise clothes. We felt this was odd because - 1. There is a Gold's Gym branch in the building so people come in and out in their exercise clothes all the time, 2. There is also a Yoga studio in the building and 3. We could've just been Ateneo students coming from PE classes. People (especially the students) would stare at us oddly for what we were wearing and give us a judgemental head-to-toe glance when they would pass us.

- We noticed a distinct difference though from the students of Ateneo and Miriam. The Atenean groups would just laugh at us, even cheer us on or maybe had an idea that what we were doing was related to school. The Miriam students would look at us very judgementally, often with no laughter, and look at us as if we were crazy.

- A few Ateneo professors also passed us, but none of them bothered to say anything to us or scold us for what we were doing. Some of us were wearing Ateneo shirts and therefore bearing a representation of the university, however maybe it's possible that they understood that this was some kind of wacky assignment for one of our classes and just laughed at us.

- People not only reacted to our group's actions, but also to the camera. They tended to veer away from the camera, laugh at it awkwardly, and a few people even asked our cameraman if it was ok to pass in front of us (i guess thinking that they would be interrupting some sort of filming.)

- The Regis guards were watching us intently. When we would go back inside Regis to rest in the lounge area on the second floor, one would stand near us and just watch what we were doing. When we were finished and walking down to the parking using the stairwell, we noticed one one even "discreetly" followed us to see what we were up to. And in the parking lot, we also saw that there was one guard who came out to watch us from afar. However, none of them approached us or talked to us.

While planning the experiment, a lot of us were very hesitant. I guess we were embarrassed by the thought of our actions and what we were about to do. After all, we were gonna really stupid doing this. But our feelings changed during the experiment and we just all found it really funny. It was exciting getting the different reactions from people. We weren't doing any harm to anyone or ourselves anyway, so we just carried on with our different routines.

We felt that there was nothing wrong with what we were doing. We were minding our own business and doing our thing, so why do people have to judge us for that? We weren't being noisy or disturbing anyone in a private place because we were technically on the street. We did not block the way or cause a disruption in the flow of pedestrian traffic in the bridge (in fact, it was the pedestrians who were blocking OUR way most of the time.). If people can jog and exercise down on the street, then why can't we do that on a footbridge?


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffa_ZxqP2m0&feature=youtu.be

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