‘Learning to be Zen’: women travellers and the imperative to happy

Abstract

This paper follows the emotional management of lone, independent women travellers as they move through tourist spaces, based on my doctoral research Embodiment and Emotion in the experiences of independent women tourists (2012). Specifically, this paper will focus on 'gendering happiness' by arguing that women travellers are significantly compelled to feel and display characteristics of happiness, humour and 'learning to be Zen' in order to be successful travellers. The imperative to become, and remain, happy and humorous in the face of embodied, emotional and gendered constraints is a key feature of women's reflections of their travelling experiences, mirroring the recent emergence of literature into happiness and positive thinking within feminist theory (Ehrenreich 2010, Ahmed 2010. Negotiating 'bad' emotions provides a powerful insight into the perceptions of women travellers; to remain happy can mask problematic power relations and other forms of resistance. This is not to say that emotional negotiation is not partly a form of effective resistance, rather, I wish to make room for the freedom to be unhappy and angry in travelling space without feeling failure for not achieving a successful travelling identity.

Where is the humour in tourism promotion? An investigation of the “Spain Marks” campaign

“…Humour, as a multidisciplinary construct, has attracted the attention of academics working in a variety of disciplines including education, sociology, psychology, medicine, anthropology, communication, linguistics and tourism (Brône et al 2015;Critchley 2013;Falconer 2017;Fernández 2017;Fry 2011;Kuipers 2015;Lynch 2002;Mahony et al 2002;Martin & Ford 2018;Morreall 2014;Sliter et al 2014).…”