Femininities, Sport and Physical Culture in Postfeminist, Neoliberal Times

Abstract

This chapter details the significance and relevance of a critical engagement with post-, neoliberal and popular feminist discourses to studies of the female moving body, sport and fitness. It establishes a framework through which to approach emerging writing in this field by evaluating how feminist critiques of postfeminism, neoliberal feminism and popular feminisms can transform and reorient established paradigms through which sporting femininity has been traditionally theorised. It outlines the utility of these approaches for feminists seeking to respond to the cultural conditions under which athletic women and girls come to understand and engage in physical activity and the sporting domain, and reflects on the impacts of postfeminist and neoliberal paradigms on the enactment of gender power and politics in sporting and fitness contexts.

Athletic Identity Transformation: A Qualitative Drawing Analysis of Implicit Constructions of Athletes, Girls, and the Self

“…For example, encouraging boys to include girls in sport activities and exposing girls to coed sport experiences could also normalize feminine athletic identities. Given the gendered assumptions affecting participation rates, stakeholders should engage in sensebreaking about the flawed assumption that athletic identities are intrinsic, static, and inherently masculine (Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; Toffoletti, Thorpe, & Francombe-Webb, 2018). These assumptions reinforce a dichotomy of ascribed feminine identities between that of a tomboy or girly girl —gendered identity terms articulated by study participants.…”

Chinese women skateboarders in Hong Kong: A skatefeminism approach

“…Skateboarding has been identified as an activity which perpetuates dominant tropes of masculinity, has typically excluded women and has been both heteronormative and homophobic (Yochim, 2010). In line with the increased prominence of women athletes in media, marketing and public debate (Toffoletti et al, 2018) skateboarding culture has seen considerable revision over the last decade. The release of Skateism magazine, both online and in print, in January 2018 marked the beginning of an established media to address diversity in skateboarding that has long been absent in traditional skateboard media such as Thrasher magazine (Coughlin-Bogue, 2018).…”

“…The work of Pavlidis (2018) has looked at women’s roller derby in China, but in a context where many of the participants were non-Asian expatriates or foreign-born Chinese. Recent work has sought to discuss women in lifestyle sports through a postfeminist paradigm that addresses the new prominence of female subjectivities in sports such as skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding (Thorpe and Olive, 2016b; Toffoletti et al, 2018). However, postfeminism, along with third- and fourth-wave feminism are paradigms that do not easily map on to Hong Kong.…”

“…Skatefeminism provides a way for us to discuss the experiences and opinions of Hong Kong Chinese women skateboarders, without making them conform to one of the existing temporal tropes of feminism. Moreover, it contributes to an unfolding academic project which seeks to both understand the global diversity of women’s skateboarding and lifestyle sports (Abulhawa, 2020; Thorpe and Chawansky, 2016, 2017; Thorpe and Olive, 2016; Toffoletti et al, 2018).…”

Self-Representations of Women’s Sport Fandom on Instagram at the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup

“…For women’s sport, hashtags can be particularly powerful in drawing attention to gender issues (Antunovic & Linden, 2015); they also provide women with an opportunity to affiliate with like-minded people and to share and discuss their personal experiences with sport. Few studies have examined the portrayal of fans of women’s sport on social media, with existing research centred on the uptake of social media by sportswomen using blogs (Clavio & Eagleman, 2011), Twitter (Lebel & Danylchuk, 2012), and Instagram (Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2015; Thorpe, Toffoletti, & Bruce, 2017; Toffoletti, 2018; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018a, 2018b). Pegoraro, Comeau, and Frederick (2018) produced one of the first studies exploring how fans engaged with Instagram to demonstrate their fandom.…”