Performances of Ethos in 21St Century Sportswomen Lorin Shellenberger
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Training Bodies: Performances of Ethos in 21st Century Sportswomen Lorin Shellenberger Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Rhetoric and Writing Katrina Powell, Chair Bernice Hausman Paul Heilker Ann Kilkelly Kelly Pender February 20, 2015 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: rhetoric, ethos, athletics, women’s studies Copyright Lorin Shellenberger 2015 Training Bodies: Performances of Ethos in 21st Century Sportswomen Lorin Shellenberger ABSTRACT This study reveals the ways in which previous cultural narratives about race, class, and gender may influence how one performs ethos and how that performance of ethos is received by an audience. Through a rhetorical analysis of the performances of ethos by elite female athletes such as Brandi Chastain, Serena Williams, and Michelle Wie, this study demonstrates the dynamic interplay between these facets of identity, suggesting not only the inter-relatedness of these elements and ethos, but also that a contemporary account of ethos must acknowledge identities as fluid, and must account for race, class, gender, and embodiment as parts of an interlocking system of representation. A consideration of how ethos is performed in women’s sports is particularly important because elite female athletes represent a bit of a tension in feminist scholarship: by caring for and developing their bodies through athletic training, they are able to assert their presence in a traditionally male-dominated sphere, while on the other hand, the very structures of sport—one of the few social institutions where an ontological difference based on sex is not only reinforced but actually upheld as a moral of “fair play”—are situated in discourses that reinforce women’s difference from and subordination to men. This study argues that female athletes’ ability to shape and invent their physical bodies through athletic training also influences their ability to shape and invent their ethos. However, repeated bodily actions do not just signify one’s ethos, but actually work to constitute the individual. In this way, practices such as the care of the self and dedicated athletic training are not so much about the social impositions placed on the subject but on the work that these practices do in shaping the individual. Therefore, in order to understand ethos and the performance of ethos as an embodied practice, rhetorical scholars need an entire conceptualization of the role the body plays in the making of the self, and in particular, a conceptualization in which outward bodily actions are understood as both the potential for transforming and developing the self and the means through which such transformation may take place. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I began my graduate studies my advisor, Richard Leo Enos, often told me that writing the dissertation was a marathon, not a sprint. As a former collegiate track and field athlete with a strong aversion to any distance over 400 meters, the metaphor was not only apt, but particularly daunting. Behind every successful athletic performance is a team of individuals whose support, guidance, partnership, sacrifice, and yes, discipline, while not always immediately obvious, create the conditions and practices that foster such success. This is true here as well, and I wish to thank the various coaches, training partners, and support staff—in all their iterations—that have helped me along the way. First, my dissertation director, Katrina Powell, has provided the model of inspired teaching plus passionate research that I hope to emulate. Bernice Hausman, Paul Heilker, Ann Kilkelly, and Kelly Pender have all encouraged me to interrogate my own athletic training and disciplinary behaviors and have embraced this project from its early phases. Richard Leo Enos, Ann George, Carrie Leverenz, and Greg Spencer have all differently influenced my development as a scholar and my desire to learn and practice this art. My coaches of other art forms—Stefanie Brendl, Sterling Carvalho, Sophie Pirie Clifton, Tim Kawahakui, John Larralde, Jason Oatis, and Russell Smelley—all helped me discover and appreciate the creative potential of the body and the relationship between habits and developing the self. My training partners, whether running along side me (Kathy Kerr and KT Torrey), helping set the pace (Jen Glass and Meghan Moran), or providing much needed refueling (Jen Brown, Holly Huffnagle, Amy McMahon), all inspired me to keep going, to get back up when I hit the ground, to finish the race. My family has, from a very young age, instilled in me the joy of discipline and training, and just as importantly, the beauty and necessity of rest. Thank you for encouraging my training—in all its forms—and for providing a place to truly rest. Above all, I thank my husband, Jake, who has taken on all three roles—coach, training partner, support staff—and has somehow always known the appropriate time for each. I’ll always have “one more” for you. And finally, my dear child has taught me more about the creative and transformative capacity of women’s bodies than I could ever hope to understand through this study alone. I can’t wait to train with you. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ iv Chapter 1: Sport as Disciplinary Practice and the Moving, Trained Body as the Means of Transformation ................................................................................................ 1 Literature Review ………………………………………………………………... 5 Description of the Chapters ……………………………………………………. 23 Chapter 2: The Embodied Subject: Ethos, Epideictic Rhetoric, and the Care of the Self as Mechanisms of Subjectivity and Transformation ........................................... 27 Ethos as Performative and Embodied ………………………………………….. 43 Ethos and the Development of the Self ………………………………………… 61 Embodied Subjectivity …………………………………………………………. 73 Research Methodology ………………………………………………………… 85 Archive and Materials Used in Analysis ………………………………………. 90 Chapter 3: Exposing Training (Bras): Reading Brandi Chastain’s Penalty Kick Celebration as a Performance of Ethos ....................................................................... 95 Training Ethos in the Post-Title IX Female Athlete …………………………… 99 Training Ethos and Disciplining Subjectivity ………………………………… 106 The Girl Next Door: Situated Ethos …………………………………………... 110 Inhabiting Social Norms: “Safe-Sexy” (White, Heterosexual, Middle-Class) Femininity …………………………………………………………………….. 113 The Body and Situated Ethos ………………………………………..………... 117 A Fitting Response for a Final ………………………………………………... 120 A Woman, Celebrating Like a Man …………………………………………... 126 Inventing the Self: Inhabiting and Subverting Social Norms ………………… 129 Chapter 4: Training “Killer Instincts”: Serena Williams’ Deviant Black Ethos .. 140 Black Superhuman (or Subhuman) Athleticism: Situated Ethos ………………146 Inhabiting Social Norms: Ghetto Cinderellas and Political Action ………...… 152 Training (Black) Habits and Behaviors ………………………………………. 157 The Body and Situated Ethos: Deviant (Black) Sexuality ……………………. 162 Outbursts of Blackness ………………………………………..……………… 175 Chapter 5: Training Celebrity: Michelle Wie’s Entertainment-Driven Ethos ...... 186 Situated Ethos: The Drive Swing of a Man, With Feminine Grace …………... 191 Exotic Appeal: Inhabiting Social Norms ……………………………………... 197 Training a Bodily Ethos to Resist Social Norms ……………………………... 204 Reframing Resistance ………………………………………………………… 210 Inhabiting Social Norms, Training Celebrity …………………………..……... 218 Reshaping the Body, Reshaping Ethos …………………………..…………… 223 iv Chapter 6: Training an Embodied Feminist Ethos .................................................. 229 Implications for Women’s Ethos ………………………………………...…… 238 Is the Post-Title IX Athlete Feminist? …………………………………..……. 244 Training the Subject, Transforming Agency …………………………….…… 249 Works Cited .................................................................................................................. 255 v Chapter 1: Sport as Disciplinary Practice and the Moving, Trained Body as the Means of Transformation Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, women’s participation in athletics in the United States has soared. Women are participating in elite athletic performance in ever-increasing numbers and yet these opportunities have done little to subvert socially constructed gender norms which influence perceptions of women’s status in society. For example, the 2012 Olympics was proudly touted as the “Women’s Olympics,” with, for the first time ever, female athletes representing each of the countries participating that year, and yet this was also the first year that women were allowed to compete in more modest uniforms for international beach volleyball competitions, such as sleeved shirts or shorts of any type. Previously, women were required to compete in bikini-like uniforms, while men wore sleeveless shirts and shorts. Elite female athletes are particularly interesting as a site for feminist research because they represent a tension in feminist scholarship and also a tension in theories of the subject and subjectivity. Elite female athletes represent a tension in feminist scholarship because on the one hand, they subvert gendered expectations by participating