I’m a little confused. You see, I run a website about outdoor activities, and I like to compare it to other media. Checking out the competition, you might call it.

So tonight I did a quick check on Google Images for pictures of outdoors people, using as the search text the names of a few popular magazines. And I’m a little surprised. The outdoor people on the magazine covers all look pretty much the same. For instance, look at these four magazines:

They all look very thin and very young and very, very perfect. And most of the covers I saw featured people that looked like this. Sometimes they were black or Asian instead of Caucasian, but they were always thin and young and unchallenged.  This left me scratching my head, because I had different images of outdoors people. To me, they look like this:

Michael Mills, athlete

And this:

Neva Warren, 14 year old Appalachian Trail thru hiker

And this:

Paul Martin, triathlete

And this:

Beverly, cyclist

And finally, outdoors people look like this:

101_2852
Neil Brennen, outdoor enthusiast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its odd. Either I’m wrong, or the outdoor magazines I looked at are wrong.

I don’t think its me.

Because the outdoors is for everyone.

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