“The Mother of All Comebacks”

Abstract

Swimmer Dara Torres’s comeback to her sport at 41 years of age was a prominent story from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. While her record making swims made her comeback an athletic success, the importance of her comeback extends beyond her athletic accomplishments. Media representations of Torres during her comeback construct her body and the lifestyle that produced it as inspirational—or fitspirational. Although the term circulates widely in U.S. popular culture, and despite its importance in reframing what a woman’s ideal body is and how it is achieved, fitspiration has not received much attention from scholars. In this article, we use the constructed narrative of Torres’s 2008 comeback to demonstrate how notions of individualism, self-monitoring practices, personal responsibility, and empowerment in conjunction with long-standing ideological portrayals of women athletes erase social inequalities and perpetuate heteronormative ideals. The constructed narrative produces her as a fitspirational figure whom American women should emulate. Furthermore, this process transforms Torres from an elite athlete to a mom who used sport to regain her fitness. Her status as an elite athlete is marginalized and her body becomes attainable through the representation of her age and motherhood as barriers that can be overcome through self-monitored consumptive practices.

Postfeminist biopedagogies of Instagram: young women learning about bodies, health and fitness

“…Academic research into 'fitspiration' and social media often employs content analysis methods and frequently reveals: a strong focus on appearance, including images of thin and toned female bodies; the sexual objectification of women's bodies; and the promotion of exercise for appearance (Boepple, Ata, Rum, & Thompson, 2016;Carrotte, Prichard, & Lim, 2017;Simpson & Mazzeo, 2017;Tiggemann & Zaccardo, 2016). There are also 'inspirational' quotes or slogans advocating personal effort, challenge and empowerment, which can heighten undertones of moral superiority (Hodler & Lucas-Carr, 2015). These quotes or slogans are constituted through discourses of healthism (Crawford, 1980), which encourage a neoliberal moral imperative towards continual self-improvement as a matter of individual responsibility.…”

Strong Is the New Sexy

“…Dworkin and Wachs (2009) point out that it is “the appearance of a fit body, rather than the reality of fitness” that underlies the focus on “healthism” rather than actual health (p. 12). Hodler and Lucas-Carr (2015) highlight in their analysis of the framing around swimmer Dara Torres how postfeminist discourses positioned her as a “fitspirational figure—her impressive body emphasized above her athletic accomplishments,” which elided any opportunity to address the social and cultural inequalities that figured so prominently in her late career “comeback” (p. 1).…”