Technologies of the Gendered Body: Week 9

Rising gym use (cited in Crossley 2006: 23)18% increase in the number of health clubs from 1998-2002

14% of population belong to a gym (in 2002)

Surveillance and disciplineGym-going as self-surveillance – producing the docile, disciplined body

Duncan (1994) (re: Shape magazine)The efficacy of initiativeFeeling good means looking goodConfession

Minute measurement…

Barker-Ruchti and Tinning (2010)Women’s Artistic GymnasticsDocile subjects – “active passivity”Paradox (p. 246):

“may offer gymnasts the potential for kinesthetic experiences, physical strength and corporeal expertise not traditionally possible for women.”

“the degree of discipline and submissiveness required by gymnasts is key in preventing these athletes from reflecting upon themselves as individuals, their conduct, as well as their sport, and thus using their experiences as a space to invent themselves”

Charitable bodies

“If citizenship involves a commitment to social engagement and individual responsibility for health, then the city marathon both symbolises and reinforces the image of the active citizen. Thus fit bodies may also become “charitable bodies” and manifest both public policy and private self-fulfilment.”

(Nettleton and Hardey 2006: 447)

Crossley (2006)The ideal type described in Discipline and Punish doesn’t reflect practice / lived experience – a “witches brew”

Need to move away from a static, single factor as explanatory of all gym use (e.g. body image pressures)

Crossley (2006)Motives for joining:

Athletes seeking to enhance performanceWeight loss (+ toning up)“The reference point of the agent was not a social standard, accessed through advertisements, celebrities or some other conduit of common culture, but rather their own past self, as revealed by experiences that effected contrast.” (p. 31)

- Body work as episodic

Crossley (2006)Motives for continuing:

habitSocial interactionMoral pressureEscape: “[…] they could, to some degree, turn off consciousness and absorb themselves in exercise” (p. 43)

“ogling”

Cannons Gym

Crossley 2006Relaxation /stress release: (citing Becker

re: marijuana smoking):“For most people it is horrible at first.

Agents persevere and learn, however. They acquire the taste, learn the techniques and learn to frame the experience in such a way as to render it positive. So it is with working out.”

- Physical self-hood- Guilt- Sport

Gendering Working OutWomen’s physical

capacities viewed through the lens of reproduction (e.g. Balsamo)

Dworkin and Wachs (2004)The pregnant body is seen as maternally

successful but aesthetically problematicThe third shift – getting back in shapeLanguage of empowerment whilst inscribing

women to the privatised realm of bodily practices, domesticity and family values.

Women’s gyms

www.gymophobics.co.uk“Is gymphobics for you?”

“Would prefer an air-driven exercise circuit that is easy to use and that has no clanking weight machines, no pounding treadmills and no lung-busting aerobics classes?”

www.womensworkout.co.uk

Hanold (2010)Female ultrarunning bodiesFocus on Foucault’s notion of power as

producing “effects at the level of desire” (p. 165)

Pushing bodily limits to enhance sense of selfThe normalisation of pain and injury. Disruption of conventional gendered

distribution of participation and outcomesBody type doesn’t predict success – focus on

“what they can do rather than what their bodies look like” (p. 170)

Very white / middle class

Body building

A challenge to normative femininity?Muscularity is seen as incompatible with

femininity (within western cultural norms)Women are encouraged not to take up spaceSandra Bartky (1990) sees it as an empowering

practice that challenges normative femininitySusan Bordo (1990) – compares body building

to anorexiaAnne Balsamo – the “naturally” female body is

“culturally reconstructed according to dominant codes of femininity and racial identity” (p.41)

ConclusionThe creation of a “sporting body” involves

bodily discipline / docilityThere are limits to a Foucauldian reading of

these practicesSporting bodies are always gendered, but not

in fixed waysThe sporting body can be experienced as

empowering (usually on an individual level)Sports can offer a route to alternative /

multiple / novel subjectivities.

Further readingsBarker-Ruchti, M and Tinning, R (2010)

“Foucault in leotards: corporeal discipline in women’s artistic gymnastics” Sociology of Sport Journal 27: 229-250

Gimlin, D (2010) “Uncivil attention and the public runner” Sociology of Sport Journal 27: 269-284

Hanold, M T (2010) “Beyond the marathon: (de)construction of female ultrarunning bodies” Human Kinetics 27: 160-177

Young, K and White, P (1995) “Sport, physical danger and injury: the experiences of elite women athletes” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 19(1): 45-61