Thursday, Nov. 3Rd NASSS 2016 8 – 9:30 Am ABSTRACTS Thursday Sessions Session 1 8:00 A.M
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Thursday, Nov. 3rd NASSS 2016 8 – 9:30 am ABSTRACTS Thursday Sessions Session 1 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Session 1A PALMA CEIA 1 Post-Feminism & New Female Subjectivities Organizers: Jessica Francombe-Webb, University of Bath; Kim Toffoletti, Deakin University & Holly Thorpe, University of Waikato Presider: Kim Toffoletti, Deakin University 1A Jennifer McClearen, University of Washington “Branding the Rebellion Against Postfeminist Body Discipline” This paper interrogates the growing cultural discontent with representations of thin and underfed white feminine bodies in postfeminist media culture. More specifically, I examine the trending emphasis in girls and women’s strength, fitness, and athleticism in contemporary brand cultures such as sports organizations and fitness apparel. Sarah Banet-Weiser argued in the 2015 NASSS keynote that the nouveau ‘strong is the new skinny’ advertising mantra is indicative of ‘popular feminism’—a discourse that includes the investment in increasing the self-confidence of girls and women through the consumption of sports and fitness brands. In this paper, I further argue that the contemporary branding of women’s physical culture positions the audience as savvy consumers who can recognize the assumed contradictions between white femininity and physical power. These brands imagine themselves as rebelling against protracted postfeminist notions of white femininity as physically weak and fragile and instead celebrating self-discipline and individual empowerment through the strong female body. However, as image after image of physically attractive white women demonstrate, this brand of empowerment is limited to bodies that maintain hegemonic femininity. The ‘empowered’ white feminine body becomes a vehicle for supporting neoliberalism, ignoring structural and symbolic inequalities, and maintaining white supremacy. 1A Jessica Francombe-Webb, University of Bath & Laura Palmer, University of Exeter “Footballing Femininities: The Lived Experiences of Young Females Negotiating the ‘Beautiful Game’” Within an era shaped by postfeminist rhetoric, female bodies are more visible within sports and beyond and ‘girls’ are being celebrated or chastised for their determination, their drive to succeed and their ability to seize life chances—they are construed as powerful actors with freedom to choose (what to buy, what sports to play, where to work). Anita Harris (2004) and Angela McRobbie (2007) eloquently represent these new ‘celebrated’ postfeminist subjectivities in the image of the “Future Girls” and “Top Girls” who are thought to have successfully transgressed gender barriers. Based on research focused on girls’ lived experiences of football, we look to shed light on the complex discourses of young femininity and the way that footballing femininities are embodied and negotiated in postfeminist times. Participation in football by females is increasing globally, especially within England where it is considered to be the number one sport for females. Football thus offers a particularly illustrative research setting to explore new modes of female subjectivity within a sporting context. Drawing upon data generated by a range of participatory methods this presentation looks to better understand the tensions of the postfeminist era for young females and their ‘can do’ subjectivity. 1A Molly Cotner, University of Colorado “She Likes the “D”!: A Critical Look at NFL Female Only Fan Clubs” Women currently account for roughly 45% of the current National Football League (NFL) fan base, and in in recent years the league has gone to great lengths to capitalize on this new and profitable consumer demographic. Attempts to exploit female fanship has led many NFL teams to create and promote spaces 1 Thursday, Nov. 3rd NASSS 2016 8 – 9:30 am where women can feel like true, exclusive, and powerful fans. This effort has primarily taken on the form of female only fan clubs. The purpose of this research is to observe these spaces and more importantly the women that operate within them. Thorough examination of these fan clubs reveal a discourse of post- feminist language and action in which women are encouraged, and actively engage, in ways that are highly gendered while simultaneously being drawn in and employing feminist ideals of empowerment and inclusion. These spaces, under the cover of including and recognizing the female fan, only help to expand the NFL’s consumer reach and profit margins while being fully supported by female members. This is despite the fact that the NFL has traditionally been a male-centered playground. With very little research done on this topic, this study helps to explore the ways in which women express themselves as fans and under what conditions they are allowed to do so. 1A Holly Thorpe, University of Waikato & Marianne Clark, University of Waikato “’Good Mums take care of themselves’: Examining the experiences of mothers who wearing activity- trackers within a digital community in New Zealand” This paper draws from Rosalind Gill’s (2007) conceptualization of postfeminism and Foucauldian thought to examine the experiences of mothers belonging to a digital community in New Zealand who wear activity-tracking devices. Analysis of interviews with 10 mothers suggest wearing the devices facilitated increased capacity for self-knowledge, which in turn prompted complex body projects requiring both practices of self-care and self-discipline. However, women actively challenged the ‘truth’ of information generated by the activity-trackers and negotiated this information alongside embodied meanings of ‘healthy’ motherhood. Women also described creating pleasurable connections with their bodies and social and physical environments, which were indirectly enabled by wearing the activity-trackers. As such, I argue that while activity-tracking technology acts to extend the workings of both disciplinary and bio- power, it does not produce total docility and may have unpredictable pleasurable effects that merit further theoretically informed investigation. Session 1B PALMA CEIA 2 Physical Disability, Sport and Public Engagement I Organizer: James Brighton, Canterbury Christchurch University, Kent Presider: Natalie Campbell, St Mary’s University, London 1B: Andrea Bundon, The University of British Columbia “Declassified: Athletes’ Stories About Disability Identities and the Paralympic Classification System” The International Paralympic Committee defines ‘classification’ as the system used to determine an athlete’s eligibility to compete in a para-sport and that also groups athletes for competition. The IPC and other para-sport stakeholders have spent considerable resources and energies developing a classification system intended to “minimise the impact of impairments on sport performance and to ensure the success of an athlete is determined by skill, fitness, power, endurance, tactical ability and mental focus.” However, little attention has been paid to the psycho-social effects that classification may have on individual athletes and specifically the potential consequences of labelling an athlete ‘unclassifiable’ or ‘declassified.’ In this paper, I draw on interviews with elite athletes to examine the role that being classified/declassified had in the formulation of their identities as athletes and as disabled people. In these accounts, the athletes tell stories of how, through their participation in para-sport and the process of being classified, they came to adopt various identities and how these identities were subsequently challenged and disrupted when they were declassified. I further discuss how the Paralympic Movement’s refusal to engage with the politics of disability or disabled identities has left sports organizations, athlete service providers and the athletes themselves ill equipped to cope with the issue of declassification. 2 Thursday, Nov. 3rd NASSS 2016 8 – 9:30 am 1B: Yu-Hsien Tseng, Athletic Department, National Taiwan University “Examining the Media Coverage of Female Paralympic Athletes in Taiwan’s Major Newspapers” While there was increasing research on sport, media and disability in western countries, sport media and disability was rarely mentioned in Taiwan. The history of Taiwanese disabled athletes who participated in the Paralympics dated to 1996 when they received glory for winning medals; however, little attention was paid to them, similar to the situation of female athletes in Taiwan. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the media representation of female Paralympic athletes, and to explore the gendered and disabled discourse in the content of Taiwan’s four major newspapers. This study employed discourse analysis of the newspaper coverage of the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 Paralympic Games. It was found that male athletes received more coverage than female athletes; however, with the higher athletic performance accomplished and more medals won by female paralympians, the coverage increased. Also, the media tended to represent “supercrip” images, and emphasized emotion and failure as the strategy to construct the stereotype of being a disabled feminine athlete. 1B: Brynn Adamson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “Dynamic Roles of Physical Activity for Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis” Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease resulting in a wide range of impairments and disabilities. These impairments and disabilities fluctuate in the case of relapsing-remitting MS. Relapses are periods of increased impairment and disability. Physical activity (PA) is an important