On the occasion of the “Same machine, same legitimacy” campaign, launched by Nutrimuscle, the Alice Milliat association is committed to making the place of women in gyms more visible. Through this initiative, the whole question of representation and legitimacy is raised. Tess Harmand, development director of the association, deciphers the issues.
In sports halls, the pictograms are predominantly male. Why is this graphic detail an important issue?
There is a real issue of representation, which corresponds to the message of the campaign on which Nutrimuscle worked and which we fully support: making something visible so that it can become a model and inspire vocations. It’s true that in the world of sport in many respects, whether in practice or in the presence of women in the media or in certain positions.
Making a female body visible where one is usually never seen simply shows that it exists. In the campaign, what is also interesting is that we see that female bodies are not completely absent from the pictograms in certain sports halls, but they appear on very targeted body exercises.
For example, the video that was produced shows that when we work on the lower body, the glutes, we will instead put a pictogram of a woman. This also shows that there is still awareness work to be done, to remind people that everyone can use all the machines.
How was the collaboration between the Alice Milliat association and Nutrimuscle born?
We started working with Nutrimuscle a few months ago, in October, around an event called Post Workout. This type of event brings together their clients around a theme and this one was entirely dedicated to women in sport. We came to bring our expertise and host an interactive and awareness-raising session for the people who were present.
It went very well. This collaboration is part of the brand’s desire to work more on the place of women in sport, since it clearly sees that there is an increasingly present desire among women to move towards disciplines which were historically less open. And when we talk about bodybuilding, it’s true that there is still a lot of work to do. So quite naturally, they came back to us for 2026 with this campaign, but the goal is really to work over time on different projects.
In your opinion, how can this campaign change the outlook or the feeling of legitimacy in a gym?
What is clear is that the campaign has had reactions. We had rather positive feedback from the women’s side, but above all, it created debates among male practitioners who do not see how it brings anything to make this modification. And that’s where it’s interesting, since from the moment it sparks a debate, it means that there is a subject on which we must work.
We are in a society where many things have been built by men and for men and women are used to taking as a norm something that is masculine. As soon as we add a feminine version, we touch something sensitive in men. The feedback can be mixed, but this creates space for dialogue.
How can we make this initiative sustainable beyond March 8?
The campaign was launched at a time that can resonate, where these messages have a more important place perhaps in the public debate, but it can absolutely continue to live behind it. We can always have fun replacing pictograms or in any case continue to talk about them all year round. I think that clubs and gyms also have their role to play in changing the way people look, even if it’s not necessarily immediately visible.
In addition to the campaign, there was the creation of the “Reinvented” t-shirt, can you tell us more about it?
A first version was presented at the October event and there was a desire to further rework the product. So there was this double action, with the release of the campaign and the release of the t-shirt, with a feminine figure on it, which can be worn by everyone and which goes against the masculine image very associated with the brand.
We also thank Nutrimuscle for this initiative. The profits are donated to the Alice Milliat association. This allows us to finance concrete actions, particularly in the fight against sexism in sport, raising awareness among young people and working with federations. So all of this contributes indirectly to making things evolve in a more global way in the sporting ecosystem.
What role can the different actors play to advance equality in sport?
What drives us is working collectively. Everyone, at their own level, whatever their sector, can really contribute to using sport as a lever for greater equality. And so, working with a brand that focuses on nutrition shows that it is possible to have a positive impact by being in the commercial sector with specific products. But we need more players to take up these themes, whether with communication initiatives, but also with resources to invest in projects. Equality is a team sport, so we all have to go for it together.
