Living the Paradox: Female Athletes Negotiate Femininity and Muscularity (original) (raw)
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Femininity, Sports, and Feminism
Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 2004
U.S. society continues to accept myths regarding the supposed weakness of women’s bodies. Women’s displays of physical power are often prevented or undermined, typically in ways centering on the concept of femininity. Increasing numbers of female athletes have not led to a true physical feminist liberation, one which would increase women’s confidence, power, respect, wealth, enjoyment of physicality, and escape from rape and the fear of rape. Despite these possible benefits, most feminists have not encouraged the development of physical power in women. Although caution regarding physical power is warranted, the benefits of a physical, libratory feminism outweigh the risks.
Femininity, Sports, and Feminism: Developing a Theory of Physical Liberation
S. society continues to accept myths regarding the supposed weakness of women's bodies. Women's displays of physical power are often prevented or undermined, typically in ways centering on the concept of femininity. Increasing numbers of female athletes have not led to a true physical feminist liberation, one which would increase women's confidence, power, respect, wealth, enjoyment of physicality, and escape from rape and the fear of rape. Despite these possible benefits, most feminists have not encouraged the development of physical power in women. Although caution regarding physical power is warranted, the benefits of a physical, libratory feminism outweigh the risks.
Muscularity Beliefs of Female College Student-Athletes
Sex Roles, 2011
Female athletes in the United States face the paradoxical challenge of acquiring a degree of muscularity to be successful in their sport, yet they also endure pressure from societal expectations of femininity that often don't conform with the notion of muscularity. To address research questions about how female student-athletes balance muscularity and femininity, we conducted a mixed-methods study to examine muscularity beliefs among female student-athletes, female college students, and male college student-athletes. We quantitatively examined Drive for Muscularity Scale (DMS) scores from 221 participants attending college in the Midwestern US. Results indicated that female student-athletes reported significantly higher DMS scores than female students, but male student-athletes reported the highest DMS scores in the sample. Qualitative results indicated that female student-athletes wanted to be muscular for these reasons: functionality (45%), health (42%), external gratification (21%), internal gratification (18%). Only 16% of female student-athletes did not want to be muscular, whereas every male studentathlete reported a desire to be muscular. The results of this study can be used to better understand the unique drive for muscularity among athletes, particularly female college student-athletes who live the paradox of negotiating societal standards of femininity with this desire to be muscular. This enhanced understanding can help create more nuanced interventions for coaches, administrators, and mental health professionals to use to help female student-athletes create space to resist constraining societal gender ideologies. Doing so can help these student-athletes actualize their athletic potential on the field as well as their interpersonal and intrapersonal potential off the field.
The community of sport is a powerful site for the construction of masculinity, male identities, and heterosexuality. Consequently, the increased entry of women into the sporting arena has been actively resisted, with women athletes either excluded or framed within traditional, sexualized discourses of femininity and heterosexuality. Yet Title IX and increased female participation have been used to suggest that women have achieved sporting empowerment. Thus, elite, professional female athletes provide an interesting position from which to explore the discourses available for women's construction of athletic identities. Using critical discourse analysis with an emphasis on rhetorical and discursive analysis (Potter, 1996), we analyzed 20 interviews with professional female athletes with a particular interest in exploring the problematic nature of performing female identities given the limited hegemonic forms and resources offered by a predominant and powerful male discourse. Analysis revealed limited ways to construct female athleticism that involved complex and contradictory gender work, including the problematic construction of female athleticism through the deployment of hegemonic discourses that framed ordinary women as nonsporting. Our findings suggest that women athletes remain at the peripheries of the community of sport.
Gender Negotiations of Female Collegiate Athletes in the Strength and Conditioning Environment
Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 2017
Female athletes often negotiate their meanings of femininity and athleticism due to restrictive cultural norms, with muscularity at the center of this negotiation. Using a critical feminist interactionist perspective, this study seeks to understand how female collegiate athletes negotiate their meanings of muscularity and femininity within the strength and conditioning environment. Negotiation strategies emerged from the data, including the gendered body and the weight room environment. The findings suggest that while the strength and conditioning coach is responsible for training athletes in power and speed, they must do so within the cultural context that often attempts to limit women’s physicality.
This research investigated body image in a group of British female athletes to find out their thoughts and feelings about their appearance, and if they felt this impacted on their athletic careers in any way. The athletes were interviewed individually being asked about their perception of bodies. Four key themes were identified which were analysed using thematic analysis: body image pressures, gender differences, body comparisons and the media. All of the participants reported feeling they had to maintain a certain appearance, and all felt pressure from outside influences, including the media and from the uniforms they had to wear for their sports. A number of suggestions and recommendations have arisen from the findings, including a need for interventions to maintain a positive body image in female athletes, as well as considerations for factors such as uniform choice, and support from coaches.
BMC Women's Health
Background: Women who exercise intensively, whether competitive or recreational, devote a lot of time and energy into exercise, which requires high levels of ambition and motivation. The aim of the study is to investigate the self-understanding and bodily identity of different (competitive vs recreational) forms of exercise, and to investigate the role of important others (parents, siblings and social relations) for this self-understanding. Methods: A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. An interactional psychodynamic framework informed the development of the interview questions focusing on the influence of their family, peers, and the meaning of exercise for their identity. Participants were recruited via local training centers and via the Danish Athletic Sports Association. A total of twenty highly physically active female athletes were interviewed, ten of whom participated in competitions ("competitve athletes") and ten of whom did not ("recreational athletes"). Results: Self-related and social similarities and differences between competitive athletes and recreational athletes were found. Recreational athletes had supportive but not ambitious parents and used sport to reinforce their bodily self-efficacy and identity, while competitive athletes had highly engaged parents, especially fathers, and competed to externalize their identities as athletes. Correspondingly, the meaning of exercise was the activity itself, for recreational athletes, while competition was the means to the end of achievement, for competitive athletes. Conclusion: All athletes are affected and triggered by their biography and their environment. The biographical tradition of sport culture must be recognized as important for the engagement in different forms of physical activity in health and competition settings. If research can make the conflicts and relations of the self visible in sports culture, this could strengthen the recognition that the overall bodily well-being of athletes is important for women's health.
Conformity to gender norms among female student-athletes: Implications for body image
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 2011
Sport exposes athletes to attributes that are typically associated with traditional masculine traits (e.g., individualism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, power). Female athletes often participate in sport using standards of traditional male athleticism, yet at the same time attempt to manage societal expectations of conforming to traditional femininity. By exploring conformity to gender norms in sport, we examined the relationship between gender norms, sport participation, and perceptions of body image among 143 female student-athletes and nonathletes. Results indicated that female student-athletes and nonathlete female college students did not differ in level of conformity to feminine norms; however, female student-athletes reported higher levels of conformity to masculine norms, particularly traditional masculine norms associated with sport participation (i.e., winning, risk taking). Additionally, participation in athletics did not significantly predict body esteem for women. Instead, conformity to three traditional gender norms-along with self-perceptions of being overweightaccounted for 53% of the variance in body esteem. Results are discussed in regard to past research and clinical applications.