“It's Just Gym”: Physicality and Identity Among African

Home , Cockiness (Love It), Strong Stuff

“IT’S JUST GYM”: PHYSICALITY AND IDENTITY AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENT GIRLS

STEPHANIE M. MCCLURE, MPH

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Dissertation Adviser: Dr. Eileen Anderson-Fye

Department of Anthropology

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

May, 2013 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

We hereby approve the dissertation of

Stephanie M. McClure

Candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree*.

(signed)_____ Eileen P. Anderson-Fye, EdD______Chair of the committee

______Atwood D. Gaines, PhD, MPH______

______Janet W. McGrath, PhD______

______Jonathan Sadowsky, PhD______

(date) October 31, 2012

*We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES______iv

LIST OF FIGURES______v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS______vii

ABSTRACT______ix

CHAPTER 1 – CULTURAL SYSTEMS AND PHYSICALITY 1

SECTION 1.1 – PROLOGUE SECTION 1.2 - AT THE INTERSECTION OF MYTH AND EXPERIENCE SUBSECTION 1.2.A - ENVIRONMENT AND ACCULTURATION SUBSECTION 1.2.B - TEASED INTO SILENCE SUBSECTION 1.2.C - THE ETHOS OF ACCEPTABLE PRESENTATION SUBSECTION 1.2.D – NON-HOMOGENEOUS RACIALIZATION SUBSECTION 1.2.E - MUFFLED AGENCY SECTION 1.3 – CONDITIONAL LESSONS SECTION 1.4 – MODELING PHYSICALITY-INFORMED IDENTITY SECTION 1.5 – THE STUDY SECTION 1.6 – A ROAD MAP

CHAPTER 2 – ADOLESCENT SETTING, ADULT STAGING 49

SECTION 2.1 - INTRODUCTION SECTION 2.2 – COMMUNITY, DESIGN AND METHODS SUBSECTION 2.2.A - COMMUNITY SUBSECTION 2.2.B - METHODS SUBSECTION 2.2.C - RECRUITMENT SUBSECTION 2.2.D – PARTICIPANT IDENTIFICATION SUBSECTION 2.2.E – TERMINOLOGY SUBSECTION2.2.F – SAMPLE DEMOGRAPHICS SUBSECTION 2.2.G. – DATA COLLECTION SECTION 2.3 – THE WHOLE ELEPHANT

CHAPTER 3 – UNMASKING THE SALIENCE OF GENDER 75

SECTION 3.1 - INTRODUCTION SECTION 3.2 – AN UNEXPECTED FINDING i

SUBSECTION 3.2.A – PROWESS UNDERGIRDS “LADY” SUBSECTION 3.2.B – MANLY ACTS AS MANLY LOOKS SECTION 3.3 - CONSTRUCTING PHYSICALITY THROUGH GENDER SECTION 3.4 - PHYSICALITY, PREFABRICATION AND ENACTED NARRATIVE SUBSECTION 3.4.A – GENDER AND THE MANLY WOMAN SUBSECTION 3.4.B – CLASS AND THE BLACK LADY ` SECTION 3.5 – RESISTING MANLY, EMBRACING LADY, TRANSFORMING BOTH SECTION 3.6 – CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 4 – PERFORMING, CONFORMING, RESISTING: PHYSICALITY AND THE NEGOTIATION OF IDENTITY 126

SECTION 4.1 – INTRODUCTION SECTION 4.2 – FROM UNEMBODIMENT TO BODY AGENCY SECTION 4.3 – QUERYING UNEMBODIMENT SECTION 4.4 – PE CLASS STRUCTURE AT PROGRESSIVE STEPPES HIGH SUBSECTION 4.4.A – PE ENGAGEMENT – INSTITUTIONAL SUBGROUPINGS SUBSECTION 4.4.B – PE CLASS ENGAGEMENT AMONG STUDY PARTICIPANTS SUBSECTION 4.4.C – WHO’S A PLAYER? SECTION 4.5 – SOCIAL DYNAMICS, EMBODIMENT AND ATHLETICS SECTION 4.6 – CULTURE IN PERSONS OR PERSONS IN CULTURE? SECTION 4.7 – FLESHING OUT UNEMBODIMENT SUBSECTION 4.7.A – THE MULTIPLE CONSTRUCTIONS OF GENDER SUBSECTION 4.7.B – ACCOUNTING FOR CLASS SECTION 4.8 – POLICING THE GROUNDS OF RELATIONSHIP SECTION 4.9 – SEPARATION AS RESISTANCE SECTION 4.10 – RESISTANCE, IDENTITY AND BODY AGENCY: TWO EXAMPLES SECTION 4.11 – CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 5 – DISCERNING, CONSTRUCTING, DERIVING: SCHEMATIC NARRATIVE TEMPLATES OF PHYSICALITY 218

SECTION 5.1 – INTRODUCTION SECTION 5.2 – EMPLOTTING PHYSICALITY SECTION 5.3 – POPULATING THE FIELD OF PHYSICALITY AND IDENTITY SUBSECTION 5.3.A – GO HARD OR GO HOME SUBSECTION 5.3.B – CONTROL IS FUN SUBSECTION 5.3.C – THE UNWITTINGLY UNFIT SUBSECTION 5.3.D – BIG GIRLS DON’T SWEAT SUBSECTION 5.3.E – SHARED BORDERLANDS AND BORDERLAND INHABITANTS SUBSECTION 5.3.F – A MULTIPLE OCCUPIER SECTION 5.4 – MAKING MEANING OF TEMPLATES AND MULTIPLE OCCUPIERS ii

SECTION 5.5 – OVERALL LESSONS

CHAPTER 6 – FRIENDS OVER FITNESS: PHYSICALITY AND PERSONAL NETWORKS 283

SECTION 6.1 – INTRODUCTION SECTION 6.2 – CULTURE, RELATIONSHIP AND BEHAVIOR SECTION 6.3 – NETWORK ANALYSIS SUBSECTION 6.3.A – PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND RELATIONSHIP SUBSECTION 6.3.B – IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY/TEMPLATE CATEGORIES SUBSECTION 6.3.C – IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY/NETWORK CONNECTEDNESS SECTION 6.3 – LIMITATIONS AND DISCUSSION SECTION 6.4 – CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 7 – CLAIMING PHYSICALITY AND HUMANITY 303

SECTION 7.1 – SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS SECTION 7.2 – LIMITATIONS SECTION 7.3 – NEXT STEPS SECTION 7.4 – FINAL THOUGHTS

APPENDICES 318

APPENDIX A – PARTICIPANT IDENTIFICATION BY TEMPLATE APPENDIX B – INTERVIEW GUIDE I APPENDIX C – INTERVIEW GUIDE II APPENDIX D – PERSONAL NETWORK GRID APPENDIX E – PARTICIPANT ANTHROPOMETRICS APPENDIX F – COLLAGE IMAGE COUNT APPENDIX G – PARTICIPANT YEARS IN DISTRICT APPENDIX H – HOUSEHOLD INCOME BY CENSUS TRACT APPENDIX I – SAMPLE DEMOGRAPHICS APPENDIX J – PHASE I SURVEY

BIBLIOGRAPHY______354

iii

List of Tables

Chapter 2 Table 2.1 – Participant template identification table 61

Chapter 4 Table 4.1 – BMI categorization for the sample compared with the 139 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System Table 4.2 – PE Class Categorization 146 Table 4.3 - Side-by-side comparison of BMI, institutional 170 categorization, and states of unembodiment (body agency)

Chapter 5 Table 5.1: Meta-matrix example 229

Chapter 6 Table 6. 1 – Proportion of relationship in which physical activity 296 was important by closeness category

List of Figures

Chapter 1 Figure 1.1 – Conceptualization of context 34 Figure 1.2 – Dialectics of identity 37 Figure 1.3 – Identity model, gender foregrounded 39 Figure 1.4 – Identity model with focus on self-experience 46

Chapter 2 Figure 2.1 – Identity model with high school as foregrounded 52 context

Chapter 3 Figure 3.1 – Focus group free association images 83 Figure 3.2 – Collage, CF4 85 Figure 3.3 - Collage, CF45 88 Figure 3.4 – Collage, GH60 94 Figure 3.5 –Dialectics of “appropriately gendered appearance and 97 deportment” Figure 3.6 – Range and boundaries of gendered physicality 97

Figure 3.7 – Collage, BG36 98 Figure 3.8 – Collage, UU14 113 Figure 3.9 – Collage, BG18 116 Figure 3.10 – Collage, GH43 124

Chapter 4 Figure 4.1 – Identity model, setting-focused 133 Figure 4.2 – Dissonance between self-experience and self- 147 representation Figure 4.3 – Dissonance between context and self-experience 147 Figure 4.4 – Collage, GH60 154 Figure 4.5 – Collage, GH43 157 Figure 4.6 - Collage, UU2 160 Figure 4.7 – Collage, GH5 171 Figure 4.8 – Context and self-representation muffle self- 185 experience (the shading of the elements represents their volubility) Figure 4.9 – Collage, UU50 187 Figure 4.10 – Collage, GH16 191 Figure 4.11 – Self-experience↔self-representaion consonance 192 (exhibited by GH16) Figure 4.12 – Collage, MO55 209 v

Chapter 5 Figure 5.1 – Identity model with gender as dominant context 220 Figure 5.2 – Quadrants of physicality 221 Figure 5.3 – Physicality scatterplot 223 Figure 5.4 –Collage, GH25 235 Figure 5.5 – Collage, CF28 243 Figure 5.6 – Collage, UU32 248 Figure 5.7 – Collage, BG54 262 Figure 5.8 – Collage MO26 273

Chapter 6 Figure 6.1 – Elements salient to physicality revealed by analysis 285 Figure 6.2 – Duration of alter relationship 289 Figure 6.3 – Collage, UU19 294 Figure 6.4 – Variance in importance of PA to relationship by 298 template category

Acknowledgements

It is said that no one succeeds alone, and I am certainly no exception to this

truth. On the journey of my doctoral education, I have been blessed with the support of

my family, especially my father, James McClure, who faithfully supplemented my

meager income and funded my pilot research project; and my mother, Joan McClure,

who was the chief recruiter for my pilot project. They also supported me in myriad other

ways, but their participation in the pilot project made their faith tangible.

I have also enjoyed the support of many old and new friends. I wish to

particularly acknowledge Carrie Sayers, who was always available for a grounding chat

to help me keep my eyes on the prize. Thanks to Patty Wolford and Lauren Lanham for

always showing up to help, whatever the task. Corine Sinnette and Nadia El-Shaarawi

were key listeners and encouragers. Thanks to Ruth Magtanong and Zoey and Joey for

the regular neighborhood walks that helped me keep going, and to Eric Kightly for his

stats help in the early days of data analysis. Mike Rueschman gave me the marvelous

gifts of setting up my database, transforming my accelerometer data, and gently guiding

my analysis of the same. Liza Pappas, my writing partner and dissertation-crunch coach,

was a godsend as I approached my submission deadline. Finally, I owe a great deal of the coherence of this work to the careful reading and thoughtful critiques of my

Dissertation Fight Club partner, Bridget Haas.

Through their questions, suggestions and critiques, my committee and professors have helped me find the anthropology in the research question with which I

vii entered graduate school, and the anthropologist within myself who could answer that question. Thanks especially to Eileen Anderson-Fye, Atwood Gaines, Janet McGrath,

Jonathan Sadowsky and Renee Sentilles.

I am deeply grateful for the generous financial support I have enjoyed from Case

Western Reserve University, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. Their funding was not only a critical part of making my dream of doctoral education into a reality; it was also demonstration of faith that means as much to me as the funds themselves.

Finally, I would like to thank Ronald Roberts, who helped me find my question, and insisted that I believe in my right to ask it and my ability to answer it.

viii

“It’s Just Gym” Physicality and Identity among African American Adolescent Girls

Abstract by

STEPHANIE M. MCCLURE, MPH

It’s Just Gym presents the findings of a study that explored how a group of African

American adolescent girls attending a suburban, middle-class high school in the

Midwest experience and enact their physicality in school settings. This study was

devised as an attempt to critically examine how local cultural context informs the

disproportionately high levels of obesity and the disproportionately low levels of

physical activity documented among African American females beginning at puberty.

The study aims were to (1) question the lay and scientific conventional wisdom

regarding body size and health promotion among African American females and (2)

present an alternate framework for exploring the institutional and social contexts in

which the study participants expressed that physicality. In this mixed methods

exploration that included surveys, focus groups, interviews, observation, electronic

activity monitoring, anthropometry and personal network assessment, school-based physical education and extra-curricular activities, gender, race and class emerged as key,

intersecting contexts of physicality. Relational strategies – including personal network composition and the circumstances of resort to separation – were explored, as were the participants’ experiences of recreational and functional exertion. Emerging from these ix

explorations is a set of accounts of body conceptualization and physical activity engagement among the participants that are characterized by patterns of similarity and

difference. These patterns reflect the dynamic operation of intersecting contexts, individual experience and relationship dynamics in these young women’s identities. That is, these patterns indicate that body conceptualizations and activity predilections among

the participants were the outcomes of a complex, yet not wholly individualized, set of influences, circumstances, perceptions and behaviors that are not readily predicted by any one category of identity. Thus, in addition to being a unique case study, the process by which these findings were obtained presents a model for investigation, analysis and

understanding of local contexts of physicality-informed identity across localities and

populations.

Chapter 1 Introduction Cultural Systems and Physicality

…but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet - Ntozake Shange

Prologue This research responds to the assertion that the low levels of physical activity among African American females relative to females of other races can be substantially explained by the African American norms of preference for larger female body size and non-size dependent positive body image. My research contests that assertion. I argue that because identity is dynamic and emergent, and because life context is multifaceted and intersectional, knowledge of within-group difference is as important to understanding lower levels of physical activity as is knowledge of between-group differences in levels of physical activity.

My research reports on a study of embodiment, identity, and health among forty-two African American adolescent females in a Midwestern, suburban high school.

It considers the question of how local cultural contexts - the “particular local world(s) in which cultural representations, collective processes, and distinct subjectivities come together” (Kleinman & Fitz-Henry 2007:57) inform perceptions of physicality and physical activity engagement among a group of forty-two African American adolescent girls. By doing so, it introduces and explores the concept of body agency – an individual’s experienced state of connectedness (or disconnectedness) between body

and self.1 Body agency is employed in a model of identity as a means of identifying and

explicating the similarities and differences in self-perceptions of physicality and degree

of physical activity engagement among study participants.

This chapter presents the literature review, analysis and synthesis that informed the design and implementation of this study and the analysis of its findings. The literature review takes as its frame a 2012 New York Times op-ed piece that, while not of seminal import in and of itself, handily captures some common assumptions that underlie what is known about identity and behavior (including health behavior) among

African American females in folk and scientific circles. Those assumptions include that race constitutes a “master status”2 (Fordham 2008) for African Americans, and that

selfhood among African Americans is indexical (linked to context and interaction) rather

than referential (singular and bounded by individual psychology). Given this “master

status” premise, adherence to what are recognized as racial norms would logically be a

primary criterion of recognizable personhood among African Americans, thus strongly determinative of their identities and behaviors (Landrine 1992). A related assumption is that the psychological legacies of slavery are currently observable as deeply patterned and essentially similar dispositions and reactions among the descendants of the enslaved. Applied to body size and physical activity, such assumptions would be borne out by study findings stating that body size among African American females reflects

1 For the purposes of this paper, “self” shall refer to individual experience and awareness of positionality with respect to others (La Fontaine 1985; Mead 1934). 2 That race is, in all circumstances, the primary identifier.

racial norms, and contemporary African American females’ attitudes and behaviors with

respect to physical activity reflect historical-political resistance to “wearing” their

capacity for physical labor.

Because these assumptions have some empirical basis, and seem to be

supported by the findings of published studies, there is a tendency to overlook the variation that is the product of any scientific inquiry - to obscure “the diversity of experience and location among African American women” (hooks 1992:52) that must be a part of any full understanding of human disposition and behavior. This dissertation offers an account of embodiment, identity and health among a group of African

American adolescent females that captures similarity and variation in body conceptualization and physical activity engagement among them.

To begin this broader account, this chapter challenges the assumptions identified above through a critique that engages literature in anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, and public health. The argument that context is dominant in embodiment, identity and health, but context is comprised of multiple, intersecting cultural systems (e.g., race, gender and class) with no one system displaying fixed dominance counters the assumption that race is the dominant factor affecting bodily perception and practice among African American females. Secondly, drawing on current identity theory in psychological anthropology, this study posits identity as an embodied, dynamic, improvisational, narrative process (Ortner 1996; Van Wolputte 2004; Ewing

2004) that is shaped by self-experience3 and self-representation4 as well as context.

3 I define self-experience as the phenomenally experienced individual body-self.

Finally, this study challenges the assumption of a historically conditioned disposition among African American females with respect to body size/weight using selections from published narratives that demonstrate African American females’ diversity of experience and location. These narrative selections suggests that while Butler’s (1993) observations about gendered bodies being discursively produced through and in time are applicable to racialized, gendered bodies as well, this discursive production manifests itself in experience of the individual body-self and is shaped by the spatial dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Conceived thusly, the body in identity is neither a complete material given nor a complete discursive construction. Rather, the body is, as Csordas has asserted, both the subject and object of culture (1988). Thus, the body’s existence as subject belies assertions of uniform identity at the same time that its existence as object imbues it with collective meaning.

The notion that identity is both socially constructed and embodied and emergent drove the development of this project and underlies its question and aims. In other words, there is, as Mead (1934) has stated, no self that originates outside social experience. And, at the same time there is an experience of self-in-body that is more than the internalization of collective perceptions and shared experiences. Specifically, this research proceeds from the following premises: (1) that context dominates identity, but the multiple -facets of context influence identity in a mutual, rather than a hierarchical manner; (2) that racialization5, though powerful in its temporal continuity,

4 I define self-representation as the web of interpersonal relationships in which an individual is embedded 5 “Those instances where social relations between people have been structured by the signification of human biological characteristics in such a way as to define and construct differentiated social

does not produce uniform discourse or meaning, but does, through intersection with

other facets of context, shape identity and behavior in discernible and patterned ways;

and that (3) as elements of identity, embodiment and relationships, while not separable

from context, influence it in particular ways that may be overlooked in an inquiry that is

context-focused rather than person-focused. This chapter applies these arguments to

what is less well understood about body image and physical activity engagement among

African American females: how context, self-experience and self-representation bear

upon physicality-informed identity and physical activity engagement among a group of

African American female adolescents. In addition to presenting the critique and

rationale that informed the study, the chapter presents the theoretical framework and

design of the project, and concludes with an overview of the chapters to follow.

At the Intersection of Myth and Experience: Black Female Bodies

On May 6, 2012, the New York Times published an opinion piece entitled, “Why

Black Women are Fat” (Randall 2012). Written by Alice Randall, an African American academic and novelist -turned-outspoken-advocate for healthy weight and physical fitness among African American females, the piece offered two reasons for the high rates of obesity among African American females – heterosexual gender aesthetics and politics. That is, Randall asserted that African American women are fat (1) because

African American men prefer women with larger bodies, and (2) because cultivating a larger body size is an act of unconscious political resistance against the lean, work-

collectivities. The concept therefore refers to a process of precise categorization, a representational process of defining an Other (usually, but not exclusively) somatically” (Miles 1989 in Barot and Bird 2001).

hardened bodies imposed on enslaved black females for four hundred years of this nation’s colonial and sovereign history.

Randall’s explanations may seem a plausible folk account of how things came to be this way. Her reasoning is supported by the plethora of studies of racial difference in body image and physical activity levels. Overwhelmingly, studies have found that African

American females tend to express positive body image at heavier weights than do women of other racial groups (Desmond 1989; Kumanyika 1993; Rand and Kuldau 1990;

Parker et al 1995; Hebl and Heatherton 1998; Fitzgibbon, Blackman and Avellone 2000;

Sherwood et al 2003; Sanchez-Johnson et al 2004, Kelly et al 2005; Roberts et al 2006;

Jefferson and Stake 2009; Sabik, Cole and Ward 2010). Some studies have found that

African American men prefer female partners who are overweight, and find thin female bodies less appealing (Allan et al 1993; Powell and Kahn 1995; Greenberg and LaPorte

1996).

Randall’s explanation also seems to speak to the rates of leisure-time physical activity among African American females, which are lower than those of any other US race/gender group (CDC 2010). In general, females most often engage in exercise to achieve a slimmer, more toned appearance (Anderson 2003). Satisfaction with one’s appearance at a larger body size, then, would seem to reduce or remove a principal motivation for engaging in physical activity for a female. Moreover, racial standards of sexual attractiveness and racial politics of body size seem also to be reflected in the precipitous decline in physical activity documented among African American females beginning at puberty – a decline greater than that of females in any other racial group

[Kimm et al 2002; National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) 2004]. The physical

maturation and increased capacity for abstract reasoning that marks adolescence may

in turn be reasonably expected to affect meanings and practices around racial/gendered

socialization. If aesthetic and political appreciation for larger female body size is part of

those racialized and gendered socialization processes, it makes sense that African

American girls’ physical activity behavior would change accordingly. And given the tendency for habits adopted earlier in life to persist in adulthood, it seems reasonable to

think that these norms play a significant role in African American females being the least

physically active US females by racial category.

The operative word here, however, is if. If the effects of all other factors

relevant to size and activity level are negligible for African American females, Randall’s

explanation makes sense. And if those aesthetics and politics manifest themselves

uniformly and invariably among African American females, then she has identified the

drivers of positive body image and lower physical activity engagement among African

American females.

Moreover, the implications of Randall’s explanation are broader than a particular

health attitude or behavior. They extend to the idea that a relatively fixed set of

dispositions inhere to “raced” bodies (harkening back to one of the original functions of

the race concept), and give rise to a set of even more fundamental conditionals

concerning embodiment and identity. If male preferences regarding female body size

are the primary consideration for females with respect to attractive bodily presentation,

heterosexuality is ubiquitous among African Americans. 6 If African American male

preference for larger, softer female bodies is unanimous and has no upper limit, teasing

and censure of African American females by African American males due to

overweight/obesity should be rare to non-existent. If body satisfaction primarily

concerns body size, then other aspects of body image (grooming, attire, body tone and

texture) should be demonstrably less important to African American females than size.

If larger body size among African American females is cultivated as an inextricable

aspect of the politics of racial socialization, then the experience of racialization among

African American females is universal, and local history, generational differences, class,

region, community and family dynamics have no bearing upon it. If African American females’ bodily conceptualizations and practices are shaped only by gendered racial identity, their individual bodies – their “phenomenally experienced individual body-

sel(ves)” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987:6) – should be largely absent from their

identities.

As this long list of conditionals suggests, the problem with Randall’s explanation, and with how the findings of many studies of body image and physical activity among

African American females are interpreted, is that none of the above-posited conditions

can be confirmed for African American females en masse. In fact, there is compelling evidence contesting each, some of which is the product of the present study. With the

6 Of course, heterosexuality is not ubiquitous among African Americans, though the precise number of lesbian and gay African Americans is unknown. One participant in the present study identified as lesbian (MO26). Because there was only one such participant, and because of the magnitude of sexuality as an element of identity, the question of how sexual identity affects perception and expression of physicality was not taken up in this study.

8 exception of sexual orientation, each of these conditionals will be addressed in turn in the discussion below.

Environment and acculturation

Of course, it is not only body image and body size preference that influence rates of overweight/obesity and physical inactivity among African American females; there are structural factors at work as well. Aspects of the built environment (traffic flow, presence of sidewalks/trails; presence/proximity of exercise facilities); neighborhood characteristics (safety, aesthetic appeal); economic concerns (transportation, membership and equipment costs); and role conflicts (responsibility as sole or essential wage earner and/or caregiver) have also been shown contribute to the lack of leisure- time physical activity in this group (Gordon-Larsen et al. 2004; Pate et al 1995; Walcott-

McQuigg 1995; Gatewood et al. 2008) at a greater magnitude than is true for the racial majority.

It is also not the case that all African American females are overweight or obese; that all endorse a larger body size, or that all eschew physical activity. In studies measuring body satisfaction, even though African Americans’ satisfaction rates were commonly higher than those of whites, a significant minority (as much as 40% of the sample in some studies) of African American females reported body dissatisfaction and the desire to be thin or thinner (Abrams, Allen and Gray 1993; Parker et al 1995; Altabe

1998; Smith 1999; Kelly et al 2005; Black et al 2006; Stern et al 2006). This variability in body satisfaction noted among African American females is often attributed to acculturation – adoption of the norms and practices of one group by another. In this

instance, the acculturation is posited to involve majority race female body size and

activity standards replacing those typically held by African Americans. Though

acculturation is most often evoked to explain findings of variability in body satisfaction

and body size norms among African American females (Root 1990; Abrams, Allen and

Gray 1993; Harris 1995; Nichter 2000; Roberts et al 2006; Poran 2006; Sabik, Cole and

Ward 2010), and is consistent with popular folk and scientific perspectives, both rational counterargument and empirical evidence challenge the dichotomy of “raced versus e- raced” (racially-determined versus acculturated) implicit in these explanations.

Countering acculturation

All racial categories are cultural creations. In the US, the racial categories of

“black” and “white” are cultural co-creations (Genovese 1976; Morton 1991; Mintz &

Price 1976). There is no state of absolute racial pre-exposure that may serve as a baseline for comparison of norms and practices between these two racial groups; all comparisons are relative. This is not to say that racialization and racial segregation did and do not exist, or that the race-based body norms and bodily practices that evidence said segregation are not observable. But it is to say that because the racial categories of

“black” and “white” are culturally co-constructed, either categorization incorporates consciousness of the counterpart. Racial norms, then, including those concerning bodily presentation and practice, are learned, and are simultaneously shared and variable within a group, as are all other aspects of culture. Unfortunately, the totalizing nature of racial categorization in the US (Higgenbotham 1992) means that the variability and complexity of African American females’ body-related perceptions and experiences has

not been well-documented. bell hooks (1992:59) asked two decades ago: “where are our autobiographies that do not falsely represent our reality in the interest of promoting monolithic notions of black female experience or celebrating how wonderfully we have managed to overcome oppression?” The monolithic tone of Randall’s opinion and the attribution of any noted variability to acculturation in the clinical literature suggest this question continues to be an important one, even though twenty years have passed.

This call for attention to the mutually informative nature of racial categorization and the variability that is a part of any categorization schema is not an abstract invocation of remote possibility and rare outcome; it does not deny the unequal power

relations inherent in racialization or their tendency to produce a certain predictability of

mindset. The terrain of encounter between groups is a space of unequal power (Ortner

1996), to be sure, and the undeniable existence of the racial power gradient is part of what makes the broad attribution of within-group variability in body image to acculturation credible. However, the mere fact of inequality does not necessarily dictate the attitudes or actions of a group. Power is not an independently existing, materially acquired condition. It is a product of both what we do and how we understand what we do, and is manifested in various ways, depending on the histories, dispositions and circumstances of those involved (Shawver 1999); it is a narrative that is in every way dependent on the situatedness of the storyteller.

In this study, for example, class and gender appeared to act in concert with race in matters of physicality. Middle class status (or aspiration to that status) appeared to carry expectations for “ladylike” (i.e., properly restrained, non-masculine) self-

presentation among many study participants. At the same time, as students in an affluent school district, study participants were exposed to a broad array of physical activity options compared to the less affluent urban and suburban districts from which approximately forty percent of the study participants had transferred. Consequently, though the majority of the study participants who took part in school-based physical

activity outside of PE were involved in basketball or track and field (the most common

pursuits among African American adolescent females involved in sports), there were

study participants who were in involved dance, theatre, swimming, softball, soccer, fencing and ice skating. One working class transfer student (who did not exhibit notable athletic skill or ability) expressed an interest in joining crew following a demonstration/recruitment event at school, despite there being no other African

Americans on the team.

As this example from the study data indicates, neither acculturation nor adherence to racial norms completely accounted for the physical activity choices of study participants. Rather, class, race and gender seemed to exert mutual, but not especially predictable influence among study participants individually and as a group.

Track and basketball were dominant but not exclusive physical activity pursuits. Time in district was a reasonable proxy for both middle class status and exposure to a breadth of physical activity pursuits, but participants who were transfer students expressed interest and were involved in activities other than basketball and track. Finally, most participants expressed concern with operating within the limits of femininity while expressing their physicality, though what constituted breach of those limits varied

among them. These data also indicate that even the mutual influence of class, race and

gender are not entirely determinative of physicality perception and expression –

supporting the proposition that even the power of these cultural systems does not

operate on a predictable or unidirectional gradient.

The argument for relativity and non-uniformity in within-race body norms is

further supported by studies that confirmed racial differences in body size ideals

between blacks and whites, but found no relationship between acculturation and eating

disorders (Molloy and Hertzberger 1998; Webb, Looby and Fults-McMertery 2004;

Aruguete and Nickleberry 2004). These findings counter the idea that African American

females are “culturally protected” from eating disorders and cast further doubt on the assertion that acculturation largely accounts for observed variability in body size preferences or physical activity engagement in this group.

Teased into Silence

Just as the argument for acculturation implies a uniformly larger body size preference among African American females that is not borne out upon investigation, so is the assertion of unanimous African American male preference for and African

American community endorsement of larger female body size challengeable upon investigation. Though there is evidence that female attractiveness is associated with a range of body sizes among African Americans (Flegal et al 2002; Webb et al 2004), there is also strong evidence that female fatness is censured. The derisive humor of “Yo

Mama’s So Fat” jokes have their origins in “the dozens,” a verbal game of trading insults played primarily by African American males at least since the early 20th century (Wald

2012). Dollard (in Dundes, 1973) argued that the game is a performance, and the

objective is to be wittier than one’s opponent rather than to insult the subject of one’s

remarks per se. However, the fact that female fatness is the subject of a tradition of

derisive speech play certainly complicates the narrative of larger female body size

preference and acceptance among African Americans. At the very least, it indicates this preference and acceptance is not without an upper limit, given that “so fat” is a size assessment that is subject to public ridicule in some circles. Perhaps more importantly, the dozens’ rendering of African American female bodies as objects of public sport (the dozens is played before an audience, and commonly involves insults directed towards females “belonging” to one’s opponent) suggests that gender norms and sexism are likely as significant to African American females’ perceptions and experiences of their bodies as racial norms and racism. It seems unlikely that exchanges between men about women would not be reflected in some way in the relations between men and women; neither does the historical prioritization of racism and its effects by African Americans of both genders militate against the existence or deleterious effects of sexism (hooks 1981;

Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003).

The recognition that African American female bodies are mutually objectified by racism and sexism raises questions about their inclusion in social science explorations of weight teasing and censure. Their experiences have tended to been interpreted in light of the consistent findings of positive body image relative to white females – as though a race-based finding of positive body image necessarily and directly mitigates against negative effects of weight teasing and censure. That is, there seems to be a

presumption that positive body image and negative experience of weight teasing cannot

co-exist. Consequently, studies published on this topic have examined the relationship

between distress experienced as a result of weight teasing, scores on psychometric

assessments of body satisfaction/dissatisfaction, and diagnosable pathology such as

depression or eating disorders (Akan & Grilo 1995; Almeida et al 2011) between races.

Teasing and censure regarding female bodily presentation as an element of intra-racial

dynamics among African Americans is virtually unexplored, even in qualitative

investigations of body perception, weight and eating disorders such as Thompson’s

(1994) study of eating disorders among racial and ethnic minority women. Thompson

portrays her African American participants’ experiences of their fatness being

denigrated within their families and communities as evidence of family acculturation to

majority race norms. Even if her characterization of the censure as “white” in origin is

correct, such a focus provides little insight into its effects, given that the perpetrators

and targets of the censure all identify as African American. Also, the age of Thompson’s

participants indicates that censure of female fatness among African Americans predates desegregation. Additionally, the personal narratives of writers like Margaret Bass, who recalls her mother’s struggles with weight (which foreshadowed her own) and her father’s “humorous” treatment of the matter during her childhood in Jim Crow Florida, lend credence to the idea that censure of female fatness among African Americans is not entirely attributable to exposure to majority race norms:

I remember my father's confirmation of that collective cultural attitude (that fat is deviant) when he sat on the side of the bed in a T-shirt, and my mother's wide- brimmed hat, mocking her, chanting "Two-ton Tony" at her while my brother

and I squealed with laughter and my mother cried. She was fat then - weighed well over two hundred pounds - but not even her own experience of a fat person's misery inspired her to tell me what was in store for me. Perhaps I was too young to understand the depth of her own sadness and shame, but I remember years of watching her count calories and eat dry toast and hard- boiled eggs. One of my mother's proudest moments was the day she celebrated one of her many big weight losses by buying herself an Oleg Cassini dress from one of the swankiest department stores in Jacksonville. My brother, Danny, and I called it her rug dress, for the material felt like the plush pile of the best carpet one could buy. The dress was beige with a collarless neckline; it had two pieces of material that dropped from the neckline and crossed each other, stopping just at her breasts. Size ten. Mom bought a beige hat to match her dress. The hat had feathers that lay neatly across her forehead like carefully combed bangs. "Two- ton Tony" had been buried somewhere under all that dry toast, and my new, improved, and much smaller mother emerged. That day, and all the other days my mother wore that dress, were among her happiest (Bass in Bennett and Dickerson 2001:221).

The emotional tone of this anecdote emphasizes the mother’s use of calorie restriction to attain a body that would not be ridiculed by her family. But the statement: “…not even her own experience of a fat person's misery inspired her to tell me what was in store for me” is what gives this anecdote its power as evidence that appreciation for fuller female figures and censure of fatness coexist among African

Americans. A self-described “chubby” child and fat adult, Bass’ vivid memories of her mother’s attempts to escape the “Two-ton Tony” label are not coupled with memories of Bass being urged to monitor her diet in order to avoid the same censure, or memories of lessons from her mother on the non-equivalence of body size and self- worth. Rather, the account suggests that the ridicule visited upon Bass’ mother primarily by her husband because of her size was primarily borne privately. It may be that this practice of separation – of revealing to no other household members the true emotional

weight of being stigmatized – precluded empathy. It may be that the memories of her

mother’s response to being ridiculed by her husband and children are limited in recall to

“and my mother cried,” because most of the pain those tears symbolized was not

shared. The public performance of victory that the “rug dress” represented and the

emotional weight of that victory are perhaps so vividly recalled by Bass because they were shared openly.

The findings of Thompson’s previously mentioned (1994) study of eating disorders among women of color support this interpretation. She reported that many of her participants “had a deep-seated and abiding sense of having to ‘go it alone in the world’” (p112). Rosalee, an overweight African American woman with binge eating disorder at the time of Thompson’s study, explained: “…it is not easy for me to let people know how much I hurt. It is a matter of image, pride, and dignity. Having someone know that I hurt that bad, maybe they will know that they can hurt me”

(p112). The prevalence Among African American females of this practice of not sharing wounded feelings as a matter of pride and for fear of attracting additional hurtful

treatment is surely worth investigating for its implications regarding the expression of

body dissatisfaction in this group.

The evidence that objectification of black female bodies and ridicule of large

female body size are not only products of majority race exposure, and the question of

how common the practice of solitary coping with emotional pain may make plausible

the notion that female body ideals among African Americans cannot be accurately

summed up by the phrase, “preference for larger female body size.” Rather, it seems

that the effects of sexism among African Americans must be given due consideration

alongside the effects of racism. Moreover, the value attached to positive self- representation relative to that attached to sharing negative experiences also seems worthy of investigation in terms of practices of separation and the effects of those practices on bodily perception and practice. This study undertakes this investigation in its exploration of the third model element, self-representation, and particularly how the participants employ separation from others in negotiating their physicality-informed identities.

The Ethos of Acceptable Presentation

The possibility that censure and appreciation of larger female bodies can both be observed among African Americans is challenged by the consistent findings of high body satisfaction and high rates of overweight/obesity in this group. There is an apparent logic to appreciation of larger bodies, high body satisfaction, and overweight; the co- existence of any significant group level censure of larger bodies, high body satisfaction and high rates of overweight/obesity seems a much less straightforward proposition. It is difficult to understand how high body satisfaction could exist in the face of significant censure by group members. It is even more difficult to understand how that censure could co-exist with rising levels of overweight.

The confusion continues until the assumption that body size is the principal component of body image is examined. For the majority of African Americans, this assumption seems not to hold. Smith et al (1999) found that appearance orientation, which they define as “cognitive-behavioral attention to appearance-related issues”

(p75) such as grooming and quality and style of attire, figured significantly into body

image for African Americans in general, and for African American females in particular.7

African American females’ appearance orientation scores were higher than those of

Whites of either sex or those of African American males. Body size dissatisfaction8

(which is not included in appearance orientation) was lower for African American

females than for White females overall, but was not static; body size dissatisfaction

among African American females rose with BMI strata. Studies have shown no

difference in body size dissatisfaction by race among obese women (Smith et al 1999;

O’Neill 2003; Grabe and Hyde 2006).

Examination of the components of body image, then, suggests that substantial

attitudinal and behavioral investment in positive self-presentation could be the primary

component of African American females’ overall positive body image, as opposed to

being a particular size. In other words, appearance orientation may have significantly

more importance than body size satisfaction/dissatisfaction among African American

females. Indeed, given the measured strength of appearance orientation, it may be that the consistent finding of positive body image is proxy for (what I am proposing is) a broader racial ethos: “In all circumstances and conditions, present yourself to others as an acceptable person.” The high appearance orientation scores measured in studies indicate that acceptable personhood includes being well-dressed and well-groomed.

7 Smith’s et al measured three components of body image in their study: Feel-Ideal Discrepancy (a measure of body size dissatisfaction); Appearance Evaluation (a measure of overall weight dissatisfaction); and Appearance Orientation (an indicator of the importance of appearance to the individual and of his/her investment in physical appearance) 8 Grogan (2007) defines body dissatisfaction generally as a person’s negative thoughts and feelings about his/her body. Body size dissatisfaction is a person’s negative thoughts and feelings about his her weight.

Neglect of self-presentation because of body size, or public self-denigration would violate this ethos; private feelings of body dissatisfaction that are not manifested in appearance would not. Acceptable personhood is about conduct rather than essence, and is a public and social rather than private and emotional enterprise; body size neither determines nor precludes it. Body size (and body satisfaction or dissatisfaction) is beside the point. Again, Margaret Bass’ memories of childhood are illustrative of this point:

I have vivid memories of treks to the "Chubby Shoppe" at Sears Roebuck or J.C. Penney's to buy clothes for me. My mom and I, frustrated by the limited supply and "ugly" clothes for fat girls, felt none of the joy mothers and daughters were supposed to feel on shopping sprees. "I get tired of shopping for you in these places," my mother said. "Other mothers can buy pretty clothes for their daughters; there are no pretty clothes for fat girls." (Bass 2001:220)

Bass’s mother demonstrates neither blindness to her daughter’s size nor preference for larger body size with her matter-of-fact statement, “there are no pretty clothes for fat girls.” But the frustration and disappointment she voices also does not seem to be an objection to her daughter’s size; it is a lament that for her daughter, size is a barrier to the imperative of being well-dressed. Finally, the mother’s attitude seems not to engage her daughter’s feelings about her body, or the mother’s feelings for her own, similar situation. It is perhaps this potential “drowning out” of body as subject in favor of adornment of the body object that the summary attribution of positive body image to African American females fails to capture. And it is perhaps the equating of public performance with private disposition that has masked the variable manifestations and effects of body size dissatisfaction within this group. The exploration of body agency

– the degree of connection between body and self – in this study begins to unmask

those manifestations by probing the participants’ experiences of individual body-self in

terms of physicality and their choices about how they wish to be seen and known by

others.

Non-homogeneous Racialization

The variable manifestations and effects of any condition cannot be easily

captured in a political conceptualization of that condition, as politically motivated action

presumes common cause with others. That is, politicization presumes within-group

agreement about the meaning of a given situation and what constitutes an appropriate

response to that situation; to entertain variable meanings and courses of action is, by

definition, politically ineffective. This is the chief limitation of Randall’s borrowed thesis9

that African American females’ preference for fatness is a form of political resistance: it

posits resisting racialization as the common cause informing their ideas and actions

concerning body size and physical activity. The thesis rests on the presumption that the

experience of racialization is unitary and ubiquitous, and as such it can and does account

for noted physical or behavioral consistencies within a group. This is a problematic

presumption for two reasons. The first is that the construct of race was coined to

identify differences between groups, not similarities within groups. While these two

things are logically connected, they are not actually identical. To reference an earlier

example, a finding of mean difference in body satisfaction between two groups does not

9 “(In Andrea Elizabeth Shaw’s provocative book The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies, (she) argues that the fat black woman’s body ‘functions as a site of resistance to both gendered and racialized oppression.’ By contextualizing fatness within the African diaspora, she invites us to notice that the fat black woman can be a rounded opposite of the fit black slave, that the fatness of black women has often functioned as both explicit political statement and active political resistance.” (NY Times opinion: “Why Black Women are Fat” May 5, 2012.

support a conclusion of identical body satisfaction within one of those groups. Secondly,

when racialization is applied as a primary frame for within group similarity, it tends to

preclude any consideration of within group difference. Racially-framed similarity tends to take the form of sonorous, “pre-encoded stories” (Morton 1991: xiv) based on racial types (e.g., “large and strong”, “positive body image”, “sedentary”). Pre-encoded stories of racial typology cannot accommodate divergent lived experience. Narratives inconsistent with the typology are subject to being dismissed as “racially improbable”

(in the case of African American women with eating disorders; Powers 1989) or analytically framed as “uniquely racial” (Thompson 1994) even when the complexities of the reported dynamics lend dubious support such essentialist interpretations:

body as metaphor for behavior …both Nicole and Joselyn were isolated from other African-American children. Their parents discouraged them from socializing with neighborhood African- American children, who in turn labeled them arrogant, thus furthering their isolation. Both were teased by neighborhood children for being chubby and light- skinned [Emphasis added; (Thompson 1994:31)].

body as ground of conflicting values Like most of the African-Americans in her community, Rosalee’s mother thought thin women were sickly and took her young daughters to the doctor because they weren’t gaining enough weight. But her father told her that she “had better not turn out fat like her mother.” Rosalee and her mother often bore the brunt of his disdain as he routinely told them that African-American women were usually fatter and less beautiful than white women (Thompson 1994: 31).

Though Thompson uses participant accounts like those above to argue,

convincingly, that eating disorders may be viewed as initially rational responses to

familial conflicts, personal trauma (including physical, sexual and emotional abuse),

racism, sexism and heterosexism in a society in which ‘normal’ body appearance is

22 narrowly conceived, she privileges racial typology over lived experience in her analysis by casting her participants’ experiences of censure as inconsistent with the “protective”

(Flowers 2012; Greenberg and LaPorte 1996; Hall 1995; Thompson 1994) racial norm of preference for larger body size. By failing to consider the possibility that the family conflicts and personal trauma her participants shared reflected intra and interpersonal responses to co-occurring racism, sexism, and classism at the level of the family rather than family conflicts and personal trauma that were race-specific, Thompson perpetuates the pre-encoded story of racial uniformity and the myth of race as culture by creating a new sub-category of “black eating disorders” and explaining her participants’ narratives as functions of that category.

Racial typologies may also be internalized. This internalization influences the meaning made of individual experiences and fosters their interpretation in typologically consistent ways. And while performing to normative expectations is a key part of social identity (Goffman 1959), regular recourse to racial typology as a frame for interpreting experience is not without cost to both a holistic identity and, some scholars have recently argued, to physical wellbeing. Though the iconic “strong (and large) black woman” is arguably a positive alternative to long-standing, externally imposed, pejorative racial images (e.g., Mammy, Jezebel), Beauboeuf-Lafontant (2005) asserts that “performing (unremitting) strength as one’s identity can lead black women to shoulder the types of daily stressors” (p107) that contribute to depression and/or compulsive overeating, both of which are factors in the development of obesity (Tull et all, 1999; Raikkonen et al, 1996; Raikkonen et al, 1999). One participant in Beauboeuf-

Lafontant’s 2005 study of African American women’s perceptions of strength, self and

embodiment, Traci, describes the internal and external consequences of an identity

characterized by “self-sacrifice and seemingly limitless endurance” (Beauboeuf-

Lafontant 2005:109):

….It’s just something you just learn. You try to instill it in yourself. “Well, mom told me to be strong, so I have to be strong like her.” And then you start following the example. And then once you see mom strong, grandmother strong, you very seldom see them cry that much. I very seldom saw them cry that much, but the strength was there. And that’s just, you just pick it up. And the next thing you know, what mom is doing, you’re trying to do it (Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2005:110).

However, silent, unremitting strength comes at an emotional price:

I just really didn’t think about nothing. You don’t, you’re not focused on anything, you’re not going anywhere. You just sit there and you’re at a standstill. “Well, what am I going to do?” “I don’t know.” “You don’t know?” You know, you just. You don’t know. You’re, probably you’re confused. You eat. It’s an exit. You eat…You don’t really have a reason. But it’s an outlet…It works for you. You don’t have to deal with anybody, because you just put food in your mouth…You don’t even taste the food (Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2005: 115).

While Traci, whose family valued “strength” in women in a manner consistent with the racial tradition, is overweight and a self-acknowledged binge eater, Rosalee

(quoted above), who is also overweight and a binge eater, experienced contradictory messages about body size from her parents. Her account of her father’s attitudes about female bodies conveys that for him, beauty (which he equated with whiteness and thinness), not strength, was the source of female value. While racialization affected family dynamics and self-image for both these women and possibly contributed to the development of their eating disorders, their experiences of racialization and the paths

that led them to binge eating were not the same. Given the dissimilar paths to

disordered eating experienced by the women in these examples, the posited racial-

political stance of “fat and free to resist lean and enslaved” seems inadequate to explain

the body size preferences of all, or possibly most, African American females. By explicitly querying gender and class along with race as cultural systems that mutually inform physicality with the aim of documenting variability, this study harkens back to Boas’ reflection that varying causes may produce like effects: “‘…the historical intricacy of the acting causes’ was so complex in the realm of ethnology that ‘the development of similar ethnological phenomena from unlike causes’ was ‘far more probable than its alternative’” (Stocking 1989:4). If disparagement of fatness and exhortation of

“strength” produce similar eating disorders within a racial group, it seems likely that varied circumstances could also produce similar disposition and action with respect to physicality. This study sought to explicate the varied circumstances that contribute to

those similar outcomes.

Muffled Agency

If the racial norm of preference for larger female bodies, the racial characteristic of positive body image, and the racial ontology of larger body size are all true and at the same time all vary in their manifestation among African American females, how can body culture and physical activity engagement in this group be understood? Randall’s theory, which is consistent with many others’, identifies group aesthetics and politics, but neglects what Ortner describes as the universal human quality of agency – “the sense of authorization to have one’s own point of view and desires”(Ortner 1996:17).

Actually, Randall claims agency in the matter of body size for herself: “my goal is to be

the last fat black woman in my family,” but she appears to feel herself the exception -

that a strong sense of the “phenomenally experienced individual body-self” is lacking in

African American females in general. The evidence suggests, however, that these

individual body-selves are not absent, but rather are frequently concealed or drowned

out by the dominant contexts of race, gender and class (hooks 1999). This dominance

occurs in the form of the pre-encoded stories of black female bodies as discussed by

Morton. These stories are promulgated both by and about African American females in place of their lived experiences. The essentialist nature of these stories, in turn, can pre- empt inquiry into the dynamics of African American females’ lives and identities by themselves and others. Fortunately, because African American females’ humanity insures agency, their individual body selves are present, if not always discerned.

According to Beauboeuf-Lafontant (2005), this circumstance of agency being

masked by pre-encoded stories can be seen in the practice and display of “strength”

among African American females. It may seem odd that her participant Traci’s

(discussed above) aspiration to the strength displayed by her mother and grandmother,

“I very seldom saw them cry that much,” ends in insensate food consumption, until one considers that “strength” in this usage refers not to cultivated or expressed physical prowess, but to the ability to absorb and endure unremitting hardship without complaint or expectation of relief. Beauboeuf-Lafontant hypothesizes that enacting the ethos of “the Strong Black Woman” can lead to the resort to food for comfort. The practice of disordered eating, coupled with expressed preference for and acceptance of

the larger body that often results, seem likely to mutually reify each other. Eating does

not violate the silent perseverance that is essential to “strength,” and increasing girth is

the embodiment of strength as the capacity to endure, continue or stand fast. However, while the practice of strength is a key component of Traci’s racialized gender identity, she recalls, after being diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension, beginning to reflect on the cost of strength to her individual body-self, and beginning to exert her own

“point of view and desires” after instituting a regimen of regular walks:

I started walking, and I said, “This isn’t. I’m not happy [in my marriage]. And if I’m not happy, I don’t have to portray this role anymore that for him I’m going to be happy…” You have to make a decision to go out and help yourself, and then you’re no longer thinking for just your daughter. You’re thinking for you as an African American woman. Because once you’re dead and gone, nobody’s going to know what happened; why you kept it inside…I took control over my life, then. And walking helped. I started thinking, and I started becoming bold [chuckle], I started making decisions… (Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2005:116).

It is intriguing that Traci began to access her subjectivity through movement; this reinforces the assertion that “strength” endorsed by and for African American females is not so much a kinesthetic quality as a quality of mind. This, in turn, raises questions about perceptions of physical prowess and notions of the degree of unity (or separation) between the body and the self among African American females. Traci’s experience of her “phenomenally experienced individual body-self” as the subject of her life (“you as an African American woman”) shows successful negotiation of subjectivity in the context of very dominant racialized gender dynamics. However, the circumstances under which she began to access and engage that body-self – subsequent to being

27 diagnosed with life threatening chronic disease – suggests that individual body self was difficult to discern.

Gender role socialization may partially explain this muting of the body-self. Hill

(2002), in one of the few contemporary studies of gender role socialization in African

American families, documented an endorsement of gender equality that varied by education and security of class status among the thirty-five families that comprised her sample. However, parental notions of gender equality emphasized domestic skill performance and (educational) preparation for the work force – in short, boys should be competent in homemaking and girls should prepare themselves for careers outside the home. Though parents discussed boys’ performance of masculinity in terms of appropriate toys and activities, no such concerns were raised regarding girls. The extant theory concerning this omission is that girls are generally allowed greater latitude with regard to gendered behavior than are boys in African American families. However, the documented sharp decline in African American girls’ physical activity behavior beginning in adolescence (Kimm 2002, NCHS 2004) suggests there may be more to the story. Could it be that families’ explicit socialization of boys into masculine physicality is accompanied by a tacit socialization against cultivation of physical prowess among maturing females? Such a notion seems more consistent not only with the low levels of physical activity among African American adolescent females, but also with the view expressed by some African American females that physical activity is foreign to their nature: “I can hear my body telling me to go outside…I can literally hear it telling me

what I need to do and I’m not listening. I enjoy being myself (italics added) and sitting

still” (Gordon-Larsen et al 2004:220).

Moreover, it may be that the strength of this posited explicit/tacit gender

socialization around physicality is affected by education and class status security in a manner similar to Hill’s findings regarding endorsement of gender equality. If it is true

that class-informed gender socialization within families can contribute to both similarity and difference in the expression of the phenomenally experienced individual body-self

among African American females, such a finding could provide valuable insight into the

issues of size and activity in this group that current, primarily race-focused explanations

do not.

Conditional Lessons

It may appear that using Alice Randall’s doubtless well-intentioned opinion piece

to articulate and critique the assumptions that underlie folk beliefs and scholarship

concerning weight, appearance and physical activity attitudes and behaviors among

African American females is setting up something of a straw man – creating a problem in

order to have something to solve. However, the assumptions documented above are

extant, and are regularly employed in investigations and explanations of identity and

health among African American females. They are imbued with power by virtue of being

so well-integrated into folk and scholarly knowledge as to be regularly mistaken for

necessary propositions – propositions that cannot be false. But as the critique above has

shown, these assumptions are questionable. To date, the scholarship that has

questioned these assumptions has primarily focused on the less than holistic treatment

of African American females’ social being that is common in the literature. Specifically, a group of scholars (hooks 1981, 1999; Higgenbotham 1992; Hill-Collins 1998a, 1998b

2004; Spelman 1988; Ferree et al 1999; Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009;

Bettie 2003; Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; Frost 2001) has argued that the totalizing nature of race in the U.S. has and continues to routinely eclipse, or at least subordinate, the ways that gender, class, local history, family history, etc., shape African American female lives, and, by extension, their health. This study contributes to that body of scholarship in its focused investigation of identity and physicality in a critical developmental period.

Additionally, the apparent lack of attention to females’ physical prowess in studies of gender role socialization among African Americans suggests that in addition to the necessity of a more holistic consideration of African American females’ social being to understanding identity and health in this group, consideration of health as a material, individual and locally enacted condition is required. This stance is consistent with a body of work in social epidemiology that advocates the conceptualization of health as embodied – “as a multilevel phenomenon, integrating soma, psyche, and society, within historical and ecological context, and hence an antonym to disembodied genes, minds, and behaviours” (Krieger 2005: 351). In its examination of context and embodiment, then, the preceding review serves not to manufacture an adversary, but rather to disrupt the camouflage of phenotypic commonality under which the varied life circumstances, lived experiences and physicality predilections and practices of African

American females are largely concealed.

That disruption has been accomplished in the form of four main points: First,

body image and physical activity engagement are shaped by cultural context, of which

race is but one, and not always the dominant, facet. Thus, even given a racialized body, race cannot be presumed to be the primary or most salient aspect of culture in operation in operation with respect to body image and physical activity engagement.

Secondly, body image does vary meaningfully by race, but the difference in body image between African American and white females may be more a function of differences in the importance attached to particular aspects of body image (i.e., appearance orientation vs. feel-ideal) rather than differences in the importance of the same aspects

between groups (i.e., AA and White feel-ideal scores). Third, norms among African

Americans concerning female body size appear to be at least dual in nature (both appreciation and censure of larger female bodies exist) and African American females’ experiences of and engagements with this duality appear concomitantly complex.

Finally, embodiment, in the form of experience of physical prowess and embodied social role performance, is neglected in explorations of body image among African American females, but is likely very relevant to physical activity engagement in this group. An inquiry that pays attention to these neglected considerations by treating physicality as an aspect of identity seems a reasonable first step toward amending of theory at the intersection of identity and health by including such embodiment considerations.

This theory amendment involves a shift from the current, problematic approach of using race, a system of categorization developed to describe differences between groups, to explain similarity within a group. It involves a shift to context-informed

31 explication of similarity and variability within said group. Context here refers to both intermediate and macro level structures and institutions; that is, context is both local and extra-local. On a local level, context references culture, “a complex historical and symbol system, constructed by invention and borrowing, that acts to instill long-lasting moods, conceptions, motivations and associated practices” (adapted from Gaines 1992).

The institutions and affiliations around which daily life is organized (e.g., school, family, church, peers, affinity organizations) are also included in local context. Extra-locally, context refers to broad social categories (e.g., race, gender, socio-economic status, nationality) and systems (e.g., global and national economies, state and national government entities) that may have a particular local manifestation, but that are set in motion and maintained outside the local milieu.

This insistence on a shift from race-informed to context-informed inquiry into body conceptualization and physical activity engagement among African American females is neither an endorsement of race-blindness nor endorsement of a hyper- individualism that renders collectivity moot. Rather, it stems from recognition that issues of body image and physical activity engagement are issues of identity. Identity is the experience of similarity with someone in the environment who is psychologically important (Ewing 1990:266). Context-informed inquiry takes a broad view of environment, regarding race as one facet of identity rather than as a metonym for identity. It recognizes that the facets of identity (e.g., gender, class, ethnicity, religion) affect each other, and thus may be examined singly, but do not function and cannot be understood as isolates (Figure 1.1). As such, context-informed inquiry advocates a

simultaneous holism and discernment that a perspective that invariably privileges race cannot supply. Race-privileging perspectives are equipped to neither readily make nor adequately explain the observation that apparently contradictory female body norms are extant among African Americans (celebration of the “Coca-Cola” shape and the

“thick,” female body, and censure of the “so fat” female body). They cannot account for the plurality of paths (e.g., racialized family beauty norms and racialized gender norms of strength) by which similar outcomes (disordered eating) may be reached. And particularly, race-privileging perspectives do not recognize other local or extra-local aspects of context (e.g., gender/sexism, class, history, family dynamics) as intersecting, rather than subordinate, systems of human action and meaning. The above critique of the assumptions underlying current understandings of (what will hereafter be referred to as) physicality-informed identity10 and physical activity engagement among African

American females carries another suggestion. It is this: consideration of the phenomenally experienced individual body-self (hereafter referred to as self-

experience) and the web of interpersonal relationships in which an individual is

embedded (Hsu 1985), (hereafter referred to as self-representation) are also important

to this process of amending the theoretical ground of identity and health. Beauboeuf-

Lafontant’s participant Traci’s sense of transformation was fueled by her regular walks:

“And walking helped. I started thinking, and I started becoming bold…I started making

decisions” (Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2005:116). Gordon-Larsen’s (2004) participant

10 That portion of identity that is embodied, where embodiment refers to, “the actualization or concrete expression of experience” (Oxford English Dictionary Online).

describes an oppositional dialog between body and self: “I can literally hear it telling me what I need to do (exercise) and I’m not listening. I enjoy being myself and sitting still.”

Figure 1.1 – Conceptualization of context

These statements express a dual, but not necessarily balanced experience of body - body as subject/body as object. The former account seems to describe a shift toward experience of the body as subject, while the latter account arguably describes a dominant experience of body as object. These and other, similar statements in African

American females’ narratives of body (Walcott-McQuigg 1995; Bennett and Dickerson

2001; Solomon and Byrd 2005; this study ) raise questions concerning the existence of

variable body-subject/body-object disposition in this group, and how that variable

disposition affects physicality-informed identity and physical activity engagement.

Finally, the strong appearance orientation documented among African

Americans is usually thought of solely in terms of what it conveys about body-related

social norms among individuals. However, when narrative accounts are examined for

the ways objectively identified norms such as appearance orientation are

operationalized in context, as the this study does, interesting possibilities for further exploration of how interpersonal interactions inform identity arise. I have already suggested that Margaret Bass’ story of the weight teasing her mother endured from her father, and her account of shopping for clothes with her mother as a chubby young girl

reflects an ethos of public presentation of oneself as acceptable, and a concomitant

ethos of private, unshared processing of negative interactions concerning “othered” physicality (e.g., female, fat, black). Presuming variability in the frequency of, nature of, and response to such negative interactions, one might expect to discern a range of practices of separation from others alongside the practice of positive presentation of self to others. The possibility that such practices of separation are present, and are part of a security/separation duality, offers insight into the coexistence of positive body image and weight concern documented among some African American females

(Levinson et al 1986; Parker et al 1995; Katz et al 2004; Stern et al 2006 ). The idea that appearance orientation is relational and manifested through acts of secure self- presentation and/or separation suggests that inquiries into how African American females’ physicality-informed identities are influenced by and manifested in the nature and structure of their interpersonal relationships might be enlightening.

Modeling Physicality -Informed Identity

Enriching the theoretical ground of physicality-informed identity, then, involves

conduct of the three amending explorations outlined above: context as a multifaceted,

intersectionally-acting influence on physicality-informed identity; the manifestations

and expressions of body as subject/body as object duality; and the manifestations and

expressions of security/separation duality – as both patterned and variable among

African American females. However, because the argument for within-group variability draws on the work of contemporary theorists who posit identity as a function of both the situational particularity in which a given culture operates and the agentive, psychic and experiential particularities of its members (Ortner 1996; Van Wolputte 2004; Ewing

2004), these explorations cannot usefully be conducted as the pursuit of three separate outcomes of interest. Rather, a person-centered investigation that treats these amendments as inextricable parts of a whole is called for – one that seeks to frame identity as emerging from the dynamic interaction of self experience (“a multitude of subject positions marked by many distinctions”; Sökefeld 2001:535), self-representation

(socially created selfsameness; Mead 1934; Hallowell 1976; Ewing 1990) and context (a multifaceted polyhedron of influence and action; see Figure 1.1) within individual lives.

Context

Self-experience Self- representation

Figure 1.2 – Dialectics of Identity

Figure 1.2 renders this idea graphically. The dynamic interactions represented by the arrows are best described as dialectics11 – continuous processes of opposition and

unification (Nuckolls 1996; OED online). Thus, the model, developed for this study,

accommodates concordant and conflicting input, (e.g., positive body image and weight concern). The darker color of context indicates that the dialectics into which it has input are dominant (though not determinative) in identity. This is in large part due to the scope, diversity and inextricability of context. Context’s facets (pictured in Figure 1.1 above) are local and extra-local, cultural and social, and context is the ground from which identity emerges. In addition, context itself is dynamic. Depicted as rotating in

Figure 1.3, the movement brings each facet into the viewing window in turn, at which point that facet, by virtue of its proximity to the other two model elements, exerts its

11 Nuckolls (1996) defines dialectic as – a conversation back and forth, leading to a development through various and apparently contradictory stages. More generally, it refers to a concept of knowledge and reality which differs from others in a particular kind of openness – a dialectical openness which preserves the tension between absolute and the relative, contingent and universal, mind and society. A dialectical system embraces the whole to which a problem belongs. Instead of dividing something up and considering it piecemeal – analytically – the dialectic totalizes, by seeking to characterize the relationship between disparate parts (p 25).

greatest influence on identity. Thus, the model suggests that gender, ethnicity, race,

class, etc.,12 may be examined as single constructs, but cannot be fully understood in isolation. Such is the analytic utility of the model: it facilitates categorical examination of

identity, but, by acknowledging the other facets of context and taking the dialectics involving self-experience (SE) and self-representation (SR) into account, it undermines

the tendency to imbue single facets with explanatory powers they do not possess.

Instead, employed in this study, it offers the opportunity to examine the “usual suspects” of context for what they do and do not tell us about those to whom they apply, and points to other facets that may bear significantly on the aspect of identity in

question.

Recognizing the scope, diversity, inextricability and dynamism of context

certainly affirms its influence on identity, whether or not one accepts the model’s

positing of a power differential between the dialectics into which context inputs directly

(Context ↔SE and Context ↔SR) and the dialectic (SE ↔SR) into which it does not

input directly. In fact, the notion of context-driven identity is at the heart of many folk

conceptions and much scholarly inference concerning body image and health behavior,

as this review has shown. But as many contemporary identity theorists have argued,

there is no essential, coherent, persistent self perennially available to present to similar

others (Tooker 2004; Van Wolputte 2004; Ewing 2004; Minnegal and Dwyer 1999;

Ortner 1996;). Rather, self-representation involves inter-psychic management of

multiple, temporary subject positions (Sökefeld 2001), and self-experience involves

12 The facets shown in the figure cannot be considered an exhaustive account of context.

cognitive and emotional states that may or may not be acknowledged by the individual

Figure 1.3 – Identity model, gender foregrounded

shared with others (Hsu 1985). It is in the dynamics within these two elements and in their resultant dialectic that the possibility of perturbing context’s dominance lies.

Applying the model to the story of Beauboeuf-Lafontant’s participant, Traci, illustrates this possibility. Traci’s longstanding endorsement of strength as the defining quality of black womanhood, “It’s just something you just learn. You try to instill it in yourself,” muffled her deep marital unhappiness, obscured the secondary value she assigned herself in her relationship with her daughter, and arguably contributed to her binge eating. Claiming those masked and unacknowledged parts of herself through her

regular walks can be interpreted as strengthening her SE↔SR dialectic and detaching

the truth of her life from the hegemony of “strength” as the defining characteristic of racialized gender (Foucault in Erickson and Murphy 2001). The model supports a reading of Traci’s narrative that links her previously non-reflexive internalization of racialized gender norms to the inauthenticity of her relationships with others and her recourse to insensate detachment from her embodied self through food. Her transformation can be read similarly. Regular physical activity fostered a stronger connection between her physicality and her sense of self. This in turn affected her self-representation, facilitating both examination and expression of the negative emotions she had previously masked in acts of nurturance and dulled with food.

The interpretation produced by using the study model in a post-hoc analysis of

Traci’s narrative is intriguing. It speaks to the critique leveled here that the current state of knowledge concerning weight body size and physical activity engagement among

African American females does not take into account experience of physicality or relational dynamics. However, this interpretation offers little in the way of information about how Traci’s perceptions and choices situate her with respect to others in her local world. What about Traci’s experience of her body made walking an option for accessing her emotional stagnation and addressing her disordered eating, as opposed to Gordon-

Larsen’s participant, who viewed physical exertion as antithetical to who she was?

What made Traci able to violate the possibly racially-informed relational practice of concealing emotional pain while Margaret Bass’ mother adhered to it?

Of course, these questions cannot be answered, because the comparisons they

set up are not valid. Though Traci, the unnamed participant in Larsen’s study, and

Margaret Bass’ mother share racial identity, and ostensibly some racial norms, there is

no evidence that the immediate circumstances that frame these women’s predilection toward activity or inactivity, their emotional isolation or openness, are similar. Lack of knowledge of these women’s respective local cultural contexts – the “particular local world(s) in which cultural representations, collective processes, and distinct subjectivities come together” (Kleinman & Fitz-Henry 2007:57) – supports the equally illusory suppositions that each is either a cultural isolate or a cultural clone. Use of the model under these conditions reduces its analytic utility to the production of anecdotes that, while compelling, have limited theoretical or practical value.

The Study

The task of enriching existing theory in the area of physicality-informed identity and physical activity engagement among African American females, then, requires systematic, person-centered inquiry and specification of local cultural context. In the research that is the subject of this dissertation, I undertook just such a local exploration.

As an exploration of within-group similarity and variability, this study sought to strongly

“talk back” to the accepted practice of assigning of master status to racial identity and considering other aspects of context as distinctly subordinate or minimally influential on identity. The intent of this talking back was not discard or dismantle racial identity, but to engage the notion that while racial assignment rests on no definitive physical or characterological uniformity, bodies designated as “black” in the United States are, have

been, and will continue to be racialized through discursive social processes that operate

through time, and in time and place. The operation and effects of context, embodiment

and relationship in identity can be neither assumed nor dismissed by science; they

should be studied, and medical anthropology is uniquely qualified for this work. This study, then, addressed some to date unasked questions concerning other cultural systems that inform identity, physicality and health among African American females. It engaged identity as an embodied phenomenon, and physicality as one manifestation of that embodiment; it examined the role of physicality in relationships of various degrees of closeness.

Adolescence is a highly relevant developmental period for this exploration, both epidemiologically and theoretically. Physical activity levels begin to decline for US females of all races at puberty, but the decline is most precipitous for African American females (Kimm 2002; NCHS 2004). Between 2001 and 2011, approximately 38% of black

female adolescents are overweight or obese compared to just 21.5% of white female

adolescents, according to the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS13). It

would be difficult to find a group of US youth for whom issues of body and health were

more pertinent. Finally, allowing that bodily perception and practice are issues of identity, and given that identity development is both a central preoccupation of adolescence (Erikson 1968; Feldman & Elliot 1990), studying the dynamics of identity at a time when they are highly in evidence makes theoretical sense.

13 http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/ss/ss6104.pdf

High school was chosen as the setting for this study because the model around which it is framed is a tool for person-centered investigation; that is, the model an analytic tool to study persons in culture – to gain insight into how persons are both subject to and the authors of the conditions under which they operate (Ortner 1996).

As such, the study required a setting that would support both micro (individual) and meso (cultural) levels of inquiry (the assumption being that macro or societal level systems like race, class and gender would be extant at the other levels). Reasonable size and variability (with respect to class, family composition, time in place) in the population from which the sample was chosen was also important. The setting needed to be rich enough in interaction among non-participants to provide a sense of the ground in which participants operated. Moreover, those interactions need to have sufficient structure to support discernment of participants’ perceptual and behavioral similarities and differences. Finally, adolescence is a time of life in which issues of identity are foregrounded. High school is arguably a local institution in which varied performers of adolescence are accepted but a certain performance of adolescence is expected. Therefore, high school presented particular opportunities and limitations in study implementation.

A Road Map

The research question that drove this study was: how do context, self- experience and self-representation bear upon physicality-informed identity and physical activity engagement among a group of African American female adolescents enrolled in

the same high school? This question was taken up in a nine-month study involving

forty-two African American females aged 14 -17. The six chapters that follow this one will present the design, methods, and findings of that study, and are outlined below.

Chapter 2 details the study population, setting, design and methods. It frames that presentation around a discussion of two theoretical perspectives on the study of adolescence. The first is the notion that adolescence is a preparatory stage for adulthood, and as such refracts the larger culture through the lens of development.

From such a perspective, studying identity and behavior among adolescents/in adolescence is important because it provides an opportunity to explore and intervene regarding patterns of circumstance and disposition among adolescents that will likely carry through to their adult lives. The second perspective views adolescents and the institutions that serve them en masse (e.g., schools) as a separate, youth culture that intersects with the adult world, but is its own space in many ways. Examining identity and behavior from this perspective lends itself to the discovery of within-group

variability, and to the circumstances and dispositions that produce that variability.

Because it was the intent of this study to identify both similarity and variability within its participants, these combined perspectives are reflected in the design and methods. The multiple types of data collected (participant observation, interviews, focus groups, collages, anthropometrics and accelerometry) reflect the multiple case study design.

The next four chapters present the data analysis and findings. A chapter is

devoted to each of the four main data analysis processes conducted. The first, discussed

in Chapter 3, is an analysis of two forms of the narrative data – the two semi-structured

44 interviews conducted with the participants and the physical self-concept collages created by the participants. This chapter presents emergent findings obtained in the initial, open coding of the semi-structured interviews and the image categorization and counts done with collages. As it happened, these early findings supported the notion of context as dominant, multifaceted, dynamic, non-hierarchical and non-sequential in identity. Specifically, the data suggest that race may not be the dominant cultural system in matters of physicality for this group – that gender, rather than race, is foregrounded, with significant, simultaneous involvement of class and race. This foregrounding of gender in matters of physicality is conceptualized as a sort of “manly line” – a boundary which most participants decline to violate, but whose location varies among participants. Chapter 4 continues to utilize the model (Figure 1.4) for theoretical and analytic framing and focuses on self-experience, the bottom left model element.

Using theory in embodiment, identity and critical race feminism, the first part of

Chapter 4 builds an argument for body agency [the experienced state of connectedness

(or disconnectedness) between the body and the self] as a useful and meaningful construct for exploring physicality as an aspect of identity. . Various study data

(interviews, field notes, collages, and accelerometry and individual participant case studies) are used to describe variable states of body agency and to characterize the respective dialectics between body agency and the other two model elements (context and self-representation). Through the case studies, context is affirmed as both dominant and multi-faceted, and class and place are demonstrated to have significant input into body agency. Case examples are also used to explore whether and/or how participants

employ practices of separation in their relationships with respect to their physicality,

and to suggest how these practices of separation might affect/reflect body agency. The

chapter closes with the assertion that body agency and the manner in which the

construct is used in the model seem to support their use to analyze the patterns and inconsistencies in the operation of systems, social relationships, and subjectivity within the physicality narratives of a local group of others – that use being the task of Chapter

Context

Body Agency Self- (self-experience) representation

Figure 1.4 – Identity model with focus on self-experience

Chapter 5 presents the culmination of the narrative analysis – the use of the model to direct analysis across the sample of participant narratives in order to identify and describe any discernible groupings within the sample. Unlike the previous chapters, which leaned analytically toward one or the other of the project aims, this portion of the analysis simultaneously addresses both project aims: to explore variability in physicality-informed identity and to explore similarity in physicality-informed identity.

Using two methodological tools described by Miles and Huberman (1994), the

46 conceptually-clustered metamatrix and the scatterplot, the participants’ narratives are thematically and graphically positioned relative to each other. That is, similarities between groups of narratives with respect to the model elements (“manly line” location, body agency and relationship/separation) are identified. At the same time, because each narrative is a snapshot of a dynamic process (physicality-informed identity), each occupies a particular place in its grouping – albeit a place defined by knowledge of the others. This rendering of similarity and difference in context is this study’s primary theoretical contribution - a testable framework for examining physicality-informed identity within a group that does not presume the primacy of that group identity with respect to the phenomenon in question.

The person-in-context focus that is the strength of the process detailed in

Chapter 5 does not serve all the model elements equally. The study sample and individual participants’ personal networks were not coincident; therefore, the examination of participants’ narratives provided only indirect information regarding the effects of their relationships on their physicality-informed identity. Participant personal networks were assessed directly via a questionnaire, and the analysis of these data is the subject of Chapter 6. Though the outcomes of this analysis are at best equivocal with respect to the role of relationship in the posited identity model, the findings detailed in this chapter are instructive in two ways. They appear to support current knowledge about the influence of relationships on behavior; and they raise interesting questions about the degree to which that influence is an effect of network composition

(who is in the network) or network structure (the nature and strength of ties between

network members). Determining how to better ask these questions and assess the answers comprises an intriguing next step in this line of inquiry.

Chapter 7 concludes the dissertation. It presents study limitations, implications of the study findings for theory, policy, and practice across multiple disciplines, and identifies directions for future research.

Chapter 2 Adolescent Setting, Adult Staging: Research Design and Methods

Living organisms are at the nexus of a large number of weakly determining causal pathways, and the classic method of studying such systems is to exaggerate the effect of one pathway while holding the others constant. When such experimental manipulation is not possible we have no recourse but to stand off and describe the system in all its complexity. – Richard Lewontin

Introduction

Anthropological studies of adolescence are generally approached from one of

two broad philosophical perspectives. The difference between these perspectives is not

trivial; it informs every stage of adolescent research from questions to analysis. The first

perspective takes the stance that adolescence is primarily a process – the period of transition between childhood and adulthood. Culture, from this perspective, is an environment for physical, mental, and dispositional preparation and training. Studies of adolescence/adolescents approached from this perspective focus on what this life stage reveals about the functioning of the larger socio-cultural environment (Barnouw 1985;

LeVine 1990; Schlegel and Barry 1991). In terms of culture and health behaviors, this perspective gives rise to investigations of how given aspects of culture shape adolescents’ transformations into adults with more healthy or less healthy lifestyle habits. The theoretical propositions of this research project - that physicality-informed identity is shaped by local cultural context and physicality-informed identity likely plays a role in any noted variability in physical activity levels – reflect this perspective.

The second philosophical perspective proceeds from the assertion that the process of becoming an adult and the state of being an adolescent are related, but not identical, and that the state of adolescence is physically, psychologically and socially unique. Because culture is seen as a system that both shapes and is shaped by the experiences of its members, this perspective posits adolescence as a life stage sufficiently distinct as to give rise to its own culture and f to merit social science inquiry.

With respect to culture and health behaviors, this perspective gives rise to person- centered, rather than category-centered investigation. That is, this perspective invites exploration of cultural categories through the lens of individual experience-in-context, and thus sees to document variability as well as similarity. Drawing on this perspective, this study sought to identify the range of body conceptualization in the study sample, and the ways that the dynamics of identity may inform that range. This study’s use of mixed methods and the analytic approach employed reflect the perspective that adolescence is biologically and culturally distinct.

These two approaches might at first be assumed to be unwise to address in the same project, as the former seems to lend itself to an exploration of outcomes, and the other to an exploration of process. However, they both play a role in this investigation.

Taken together, they represent a holistic view of adolescence and promote holistic exploration of adolescence. This concern with holism is reflected in the research question and is operationalized in its design and methods. A nine-month, mixed- methods inquiry into how context, embodiment and relationship interact and inform

individual body perception and prowess requires attention to outcome and process, to

person and situation, and this study attempted just that.

Adolescents understand and experience their bodies in ways that are particular

to their developmental and social position (Prout 2000). The questions of how

adolescent life contexts shape body conceptualization and how those

conceptualizations may, in turn, affect physical activity engagement prompts

examination of adolescent subjectivities and behaviors in a manner that engages both the transformational nature and cultural particularity of adolescence.

High school physical education is a particularly salient context for an investigation of physicality-informed identity among adolescent girls. This is because

“girls perceive(d) physical education as a space where the body has contested meanings” (Hills 2006: 545; Garrett 2004). Among the participants in this study, these contested meanings were reflected in institutional expectations concerning both intensity of engagement and gender-informed deportment in physical education class; in the dynamics of peer recognition and rejection; and in whether a given participant experienced exerting herself in PE class as more native or more foreign to her sense of self. Recalling the model of identity dialectics presented in Chapter 1, the more generic categories of “context”, “self-experience” and “self-representation” can be replaced with more specific ones reflecting the areas of contestation just named. Context becomes “adolescence situated in high school”; self-representation becomes “social security,” and self-experience becomes “body agency” (See Figure 2.1).

High School Physical Education

Body Agency Social Security

Figure 2.1 – Identity model with high school as foregrounded context

The institutional expectations that informed the context - adolescence in high school – were: show up on time; follow the rules; make an effort/be engaged; accept and respond constructively to feedback/corrective instruction; and be thoughtful and respectful in interactions with others, especially those in authority. Morning announcements, which were read by students, always ended with admonition to, “be safe, be respectful, be responsible.” With respect to physical education class, this admonition took on contested meaning in that it translated to the expectations that the girls be “good sports” in terms of participation, and that they simultaneously conduct themselves in a “ladylike” manner. A physical education instructor spoke admiringly of one study participant who engaged in the floor hockey game rather than standing along the wall like most of her female classmates, indicating that her demonstrated ability to play well and “conduct herself like a lady” was all the more admirable for being rare.

“Social security” describes a state of secure self-representation – the display of conduct and attributes that are acknowledged and affirmed by one’s cultural fellows

(those sharing the same role). Study participants displayed varying levels of engagement

in physical education class, but all demonstrated a concern with social positioning as an

element of that engagement – with presenting a “performance” of physical education

that fit with who they considered themselves to be in the context of school in general and physical activity in particular. Teachers’ attempts to change that positioning were generally met with passive resistance. Social security seemed to be a factor in extra- curricular participation as well; it seemed to inform, for example, an ethos of “just- enough effort” during the group warm-ups for track and field practice that seemed contrary to the level of effort demonstrated on an individual level by some participants.

Body agency refers to the lived body – the lieb, the subject. Informed by

Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (Weiss and Haber 1999) as well as Laing’s (1969) notion of unembodiment1, body agency encompasses the instrumental as well as the ornamental

- that is, it includes, but is not limited to matters of appearance. Moreover, like habitus, body agency is both conservative and dynamic – it is strongly informed by the existing social order, and is at the same time improvisational and emergent. Body agency captures the contribution of reflexive embodiment to identity; as a construct, its task is

to render observable the process of unconscious meaning-making around experienced

physicality (Giddens 1991, Ewing 1991, Cohen 1994). For many study participants, that

meaning-making and experience around the individual body-self was, in the school

setting, complicated by another imperative: to achieve a degree of comfort in one’s

activities and dealings, all the better to project competence, confidence and being in

control. This meant for some that trying new physical pursuits was out of the question;

1 Laing defines unembodiment as a sense detachment of body from self. The relationship between body agency and unembodiment will be explored in more detail in Chapter 4.

for others it meant that fitness level exertion was a risk they couldn’t afford to take; for

still others it meant invoking one’s physical capacity or prowess only under particular

circumstances. In short, some degree of body/self separation was common, though its

magnitude and expression varied.

It is these contested meanings – between PE participation and PE participation as a female, between meeting institutional performance expectations and insuring one’s recognizability among peers, between what one experiences and what one shows – that make it necessary to engage the dual perspectives of adolescence as transitional and particular. And just as the model proved useful for discerning those contested meanings and forming them into a research question, its influence is also discernible in the choices of target community, design and methods.

Community, Design and Methods

Community

The study was conducted over a period of ten months at a high school located in an inner ring suburb of a Midwestern US city, hereinafter referred to as Progressive

Steppes High School. The study sample was drawn from the population of 14-17 year old girls attending the school in the 2009-2010 academic year who self-identified as

African American wholly or in part.2 Progressive Steppes High was chosen for the study

for several reasons. First, the school district has a history of cooperation with research

2 There was one participant for whom African American was not her primary racial identity. However, because she considered African American to be part of her racial identity and she desired to be part of the study, she was enrolled.

endeavors and welcomed this project. Secondly, the city of Progressive Steppes has

substantial economic diversity as well as a sizeable African American population –

34.1%. The average per capita income for Progressive Steppes in 2009 was $47,784, and

only 5.4% of families live below the poverty level (US Census Bureau, 2005-2009 five-

year estimates). Thirdly, there is substantial class diversity – with class being indicated

by income, education, and employment – within the Steppes’ African American

population. There are African American families who have lived in Progressive Steppes

for multiple generations. These families tend to be affluent, professional, and college

educated. The families who have lived in Progressive Steppes for two generations or less

range in socioeconomic status from affluent to working class, may have various mixes of

college and non-college educated members, and are employed in various sectors. Also,

children who live in the one-square mile area of the post-industrial city that abuts

Progressive Steppes are eligible to attend Progressive Steppes schools. African

Americans comprise 51% of the population of the adjacent city. The per capita income

for this city in the 2005-2009 census estimate was $16,581, and 25.4% of families lived

below the poverty level (US Census Bureau, 2005-2009 five-year estimates). Thus,

Progressive Steppes High students represent a degree of class and income diversity

among African Americans that would typically be quite difficult to find in a single

community. As Hill (2002) has argued, generations in the middle class certainly seems to influence gender norms, so being able to draw the study sample from a mix of first and later-generation middle class families was particularly important.

Finally, though Progressive Steppes is in many ways uniquely well-suited for this

study, its progressive politics, diverse demographics and well-resourced public schools

have not made for markedly different population outcomes with respect to weight and

activity among African American adolescent females. In fact, the weight category

distributions in the study sample were very similar to the rates reported in a 2009

national surveillance instrument [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)].

My observation of PE classes and conversations with the physical education staff at

Progressive Steppes High left were also consistent with national reports of African

American girls’ tendency toward sedentariness. So for all that the political, social, and educational conditions at Progressive Steppes make it a rare research setting, the epidemiology of body size and physical activity engagement within the population of

interest do not threaten the theoretical generalizability of the study findings.

Overall, in terms of the model, the choice of setting both supported and

restricted the exploration of context. The diversity of Progressive Steppes’ African

American population supported explorations of class (in terms of both parental

education and generations in the district), race and gender. On the other hand, having

the school serve as the primary location for study activities limited ability to directly

assess the influence of family dynamics and other institutions (e.g., church). Permission

to conduct the study at Progressive Steppes High was obtained from the district’s

Director of Research. The school administration was cooperative and welcoming. The

principal provided a mailing list for recruitment contact and arranged for a meeting to

discuss recruitment possibilities with the faculty sponsors of an African American female

student group. The principal also arranged with the director of physical education to

have the study’s “home” be in that department. This meant that the physical education

department was the place that students picked up and turned in materials and

equipment. The PE department was also the rendezvous point for interview

appointments in many cases. The physical education director was also instrumental in

securing private meeting rooms, providing attendance information for students enrolled

in the study, and helping the investigator coordinate study activities with the academic

schedule. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the investigator’s university.

Methods

The broad aim of this project – to explore whether the experience and expression of physicality varies in a distinguishably patterned way within categorically designated groups (i.e., within racial groups), and how those patterns are shaped by local cultural context - supported an embedded, single case study design (Yin 2003). As indicated above, Progressive Steppes High represented a critical case with respect to demographics and resources. The economic and class diversity within its African

American population, and the high level of material and philosophical support for physical education, athletics and performance at the school provided a unique opportunity to explore how a range of socio-cultural and individual realities interact with institutional structures and resources. Such an exploration requires a number of types of data to capture the phenomena of interest and establish the validity of the

57 findings. Moreover, because this study draws on theory that posits identity as dominated by context, dynamic and emergent, it sought to both directly query participants regarding their physicality dispositions and practices and to elicit those aspects of physicality-informed identity that might not be reflexively available to participants. For these reasons, the study employed a variety of methods: a survey, accelerometry, observation, egocentric network analysis, anthropometry, free lists, physical self-concept collages, and interviews.

The investigation was conducted in two phases. The plan for Phase I involved recruiting 100 participants to complete a survey. The intent of the survey was to characterize the sample in seven domains that the literature suggested might have bearing on body-based identity [income (Sallis et al 2000); number and gender of parents/guardians in the home (Davison & Birch 2002); family gender and body norms

(Holm-Denoma et al. 2005); parent education/occupation (Sherwood et al 2004); family connection to the American South (Sherwood et al. 2003); male vs. female resident siblings (Harris et al. 1995); having multi-racial vs. mono-racial friendships

(Abrams & Stormer 2002)]. The survey results were also to be used to select fifty participants for Phase II from among the original one hundred in such a way as to insure optimal sample variability.

The remainder of the data collection activities occurred in Phase II. The combination of qualitative and quantitative methods used in this phase was intended to

characterize physicality informed identity among the study participants and those

aspects of the local context that shaped physicality-informed identity.

Recruitment

Recruitment took the form of letters mailed to eligible students’ homes, presentations health and physical education classes, and a presentation to the membership of a student organization comprised primarily of female African American students. The mailing consisted of a letter introducing the study and inviting participation, consent and assent forms. The letter was sent to the parents of each girl whose name appeared on a mailing list compiled in cooperation with the high school administration. Consent and assent forms were likewise provided at the end of the class and meeting presentations. Students interested in the study were asked to return the forms by mail or to a secure drop off location in the physical education department.

Interested students also provided contact information so that the principal investigator could follow up on expressed interest and answer parent questions.

Sixty-two sets of consent and assent documents were received by the principal investigator. Participants were then contacted to complete the Phase I survey. Upon this contact, two parents reported that their daughters’ schedules would not permit them to participate in the project, and one parent reported that her daughter was no longer interested in being a part of the project.

Participant Identification

For purposes of confidentiality, participants were assigned a six-digit study numbers throughout the data collection period and for most of the data analysis. In this dissertation, however, participants are identified by a pseudonym composed of the initials of the narrative template or category name3 with which they came to be identified and one or two digits of their study number (See Table 2.1 and Appendix A).

The narrative template names (and initials) are Go Hard or Go Home (GH); Control is Fun

(CF); The Unwittingly Unfit (UU); Big Girls Don’t Sweat (BG) and Multiple Occupiers

(MO).

The choice to use this admittedly abstract identification system should not be interpreted as an attempt to depersonalize or dehumanize the study participants.

Rather, the investigator wished to use a system of identification with some meaning attached to maintain a coherent connection with the data - the narrative data in particular.

Terminology

One participant characteristic that repeatedly came up in the analysis was the length of time they had been students in the district and how many generations of their families were Steppes graduates. Throughout this report, the term “Steppes babies” is

3 The principal product of this study, the narrative template names are descriptive titles applied to sets of summary plot points for groups of participants with similar physicality-informed identities. “Multiple Occupiers” is not technically a template, but is rather a category created for the four study participants whose narratives reflected more than one template category. The process of deriving these categories is fully explained in Chapter 5.

60 used to refer to participants who had been students in the district since kindergarten or first grade. “Steppes legacies” refers to students who had older siblings, parents or other family members who were graduates of the high school.

Table 2.1 – Participant Template Identification

Category Characteristics Participants Go Hard or Go Home • Finds intense, skilled GH5; GH7; GH16; GH25; performance GH43; GH60 enjoyable • Sees personal prowess as a gender exception

Control is Fun • Views physical CF1; CF4; CF24; CF28; activity as a means to CF31; an end CF33; CF34; CF39; CF45; • Values ladylike CF53; conduct CF58

The Unwittingly Unfit • Values comfort and UU2; UU6; UU14; UU17; pleasure over skill UU19; UU20; UU32; UU40; • Verbalizes body UU50; UU61 dissatisfaction

Big Girls Don’t Sweat • Sees play as part of BG3; BG8; BG11; BG18; developmental past BG22; • Treats gender as BG29; BG35; BG36; BG37; primarily a quality of BG47; BG54 mind

Multiple Occupier • Narrative draws from MO15, MO26, MO55, two of the above MO62 categories

Sample Demographics

As has been mentioned previously, study participants were 14-17 year old

females enrolled at Progressive Steppes High who racially identified as African American

wholly or in part. Of the 42 participants who completed all study activities,

approximately 76% (32) were 15 or 16 years old when they enrolled. Fourteen percent

(6) were 14 years old, and 9.5% (4) were 17 years old. Almost 60% of participants

identified their primary caregiver’s education level as bachelor’s degree or less; nearly

36% of primary caregivers held graduate or professional degrees. For secondary

caregivers, the rates were 72.2% (bachelor’s or less) and 27.8% (graduate/professional).

Sixty-nine percent of participants had a household size of four or less. Approximately

40% had no adult males living in the household and 57.1% had no minor males living in the household, whereas there were no households containing no adult females, and

16.7% of households had included two adult females (Appendix I).

There was an attempt to collect household income information in the survey, but many participants did not know their household income. Using the address provided by the school, an estimate of mean and median family income by census tract (5-year estimates, 2006-2010) was obtained for each participant. Study participants lived in ten census tracts whose annual median incomes ranged from $32,049 to $121,000

(Appendix H). However, because many of Progressive Steppes’ neighborhoods contain a mixture of single and multiple family dwellings, it is possible that the household incomes

62 of those participants living in multiple family buildings are not accurately represented by the tract median.

Participants also differed in the number of years they had been students in the

Progressive Steppes District (PSD). Thirty-eight percent (16) of the study participants had been students in the district for their entire educational careers. Approximately

27% (7) of the participants who had transferred to the district had done so more than five years prior to the study year (2010); the study year was the first year in the district for only three participants (Appendix G). Most of the participants’ parents had moved to Progressive Steppes or the eligible enrollment area of the adjacent urban city because of school district’s excellent reputation. Two students had transferred to PSH from the same private, single sex school because of divorce-related changes in family finances.

Twenty-seven participants (64.2%) were PSH “legacies” – that is, they had older relatives who had been students of the district (Appendix G). In most cases these older relatives were siblings, but some participants’ parents, and one participants’ grandparent, were graduates of the high school. Legacy status was hypothesized to be a partial proxy for what Hill (2002) described as generations in the middle class, and, by extension, an indicator of more progressive family norms concerning female gender and physicality (i.e. likely to show comparable encouragement and support of girls’ and boys’ physical activity participation). It seemed likely that participants whose families had been middle class for a greater portion of their history would be more likely to

participate in regular physical activity at or outside of school. This hypothesis was

informed by study findings that involvement in organized physical activity is positively

associated with socioeconomic status (Gordon-Larsen et al, 2004; Walters et al 2009).

Family gender norms were also queried in the survey and in the interview (see below).

Data Collection

Survey. Fifty-nine enrolled participants were scheduled to complete the Phase I

survey. The survey was administered after school in the cafeteria on days set in cooperation with the school’s physical education director. Of the fifty-nine, seven were unenrolled after three appointments to complete the survey were scheduled but not kept. One participant was discovered to exceed the age criterion upon completing the survey. She was informed of her ineligibility for the study and unenrolled. One participant, a foster child, completed the survey but was reported as no longer residing with the her foster family upon contact to schedule Phase II activities. There was also no response to attempts by phone to schedule Phase II activities with two other participants, siblings residing in the same household. At the end of Phase I, forty-eight surveys were completed.

The survey drew upon established measures for its composition. For example,

items assessing family income, family composition and family education were taken

from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Queries

regarding body norms for same and opposite sex children were based on the Parent

Influence and Weight Teasing domains of the McKnight Risk Factor Survey (MRFS). The survey also included the Perceptions of Eating, Exercise and Body Size scale (PEEB; Stern et al. 2006).

In the original research plan, fifty Phase II participants were to be selected from among one hundred enrolled Phase I participants based on their survey responses.

However, because of the overall goal of having between forty and fifty participants complete the entire study, no such survey-based selection took place. Rather, all enrolled participants who agreed to continue to Phase II through the process of verbal re-consent specified in the human subjects protocol were accepted into Phase II. Phase

II began with forty-eight enrolled participants. Forty-two participants completed all study activities.

Accelerometry. Phase II data collection began with accelerometry. The original study design called for four, three-day bouts of accelerometer data collection.

However, due to delays during the recruitment process (intervening winter holidays, end-of-semester examinations) Phase II began approximately one month later than the specified in the study timeline. Moreover, because of the vagaries associated with distributing and collecting equipment (participants would forget to pick up, return or wear their device on the assigned day), completing a round of accelerometry for the sample took approximately eight weeks rather than the estimated five weeks.

Consequently, data collection ended in August rather than in June, and one bout of accelerometer data collection was dropped from the protocol.

Accelerometery began in February. To ensure that the activity of one weekend

day was captured in every bout, participants were assigned to wear the devices either

on Thursday, Friday and Saturday with return on the following Monday (Period 1), or

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with return on the following Wednesday (Period 2).

There were ten accelerometers, so up to five participants were assigned per period. To

schedule accelerometry, participants were contacted by phone or text message on the

Monday or Tuesday evening prior to their assigned pick-up day to ascertain that they

would be at school to pick up the device and would be able to wear it on the assigned

days. A reminder phone call or text message would be made or sent on the evening before the assigned pick up day.

At accelerometer pick up, participants were given a Ziploc bag containing the accelerometer and a small log book (Appendix K). Participants were asked to note in the log book the time they put the device on and took it off each day. Additionally, they were asked to make a note in the log book if they took the device off before bedtime, and why they did soothed bag was labeled with the wear dates and return date.

Participants were also instructed/reminded regarding how and when to wear the accelerometers at each pick-up. For the summer bout, the accelerometers were either delivered to the participant’s home or the participant and investigator met at the public library for the exchange. Forty-two participants completed all three bouts of accelerometry.

Analyses conducted with the accelerometer data included: proportion of the

sample that completing the required monitoring (600 minutes per day on all assigned

days); sorting of the sample by predominant activity level (sedentary; moderate activity;

moderate-to-vigorous activity; vigorous activity); correlation of moderate-to-vigorous

activity duration with body mass index; correlation of moderate-to-vigorous activity

duration with narrative template categories; and association between activity levels and

personal network characteristics (n-components, n-cliques).

Focus groups. The focus groups served two purposes: (1) to debrief the participants’

experiences using the accelerometers; and, (2) to elicit age group norms body

concerning bodily presentation and physical prowess from the participants in interactive

manner. One set of focus groups were conducted in the first two months of Phase II

(February and March). Ten focus groups were conducted. On average, five girls participated per group. Focus group activities included a free listing exercise, a free-

association exercise using magazine images, and a physical self-concept exercise

modeled after the work of Thomsen, Bower and Barnes (2004). The free listing exercise

was the first focus group activity. Participants were asked to list things they could do to

or with their bodies, and then to group listed items that seemed similar. Next,

participants were shown a group of three images cut from a magazine and asked in turn

to say one word in response to each of the images. Finally, participants were asked to

create a collage in response to one or more of four questions: (1) how would you

describe yourself physically; (2) what physical aspects do you aspire to; (3) how do you

want others to see you; and (4) what do you want others to know about you. The focus groups lasted about 75 minutes on average.

Analysis of the free lists included average number of items, the number of items concerning grooming or adornment versus activities, and sedentary versus non-

sedentary activities. The results of the free association informed the interview guides,

particularly the questions regarding gender-appropriate appearance and deportment.

Analysis of collages included a count of which questions were answered, and in what proportion; image counts (images of beings, images of objects, and words/captions); categorization of collage elements (ornamental, instrumental or abstract/symbolic); and memoing concerning the degree to which the participant’s collage confirmed, expanded upon, or contradicted the views expressed in the interviews. Finally, the collages were examined for ways that the words and images used corresponded to model elements and contributed to the participants’ narratives of physicality-informed identity.

Interviews. Each participant completed two semi-structured interviews. Each

interview lasted 50 minutes on average. The first interview included guided interpretation of the physical self-concept collage and discussion of the participant’s positive and negative physical activity influences. The participant’s opinion and

experiences of physical education in high school, perspective concerning how gender

differences do or do not affect participation in physical education and experiences of

customary and maximum physical exertion were also discussed (See Appendix B,

Interview Guide I). If applicable, the nature and frequency of contact with family living in

or from the American South, with particular focus on gendered conduct norms, was

discussed.

Participants were asked for permission to perform the measures at the end of the interview. After verbal assent was given, the participant’s height, weight and waist

and hip circumference were taken. Height was measured first, followed by weight.

Participants were measured in light clothing with their shoes off. Each measure was taken three times. Waist and hip measures were taken with the participant clothed, but if upper body clothing was thick or the participant was wearing multiple layers she was asked to remove clothing so that the measurement was taken through only one layer.

Waist and hip measurements were also taken three times.

The second interview explored the participants’ personal networks and delved

further into gendered norms of physical appearance and performance. Participants

were asked to complete a chart (See Appendix D – Personal network grid) listing the

initials of three categories of people: friends, close friends, and “people I know” (defined

as people with whom the participant interacted on a regular basis but who they would

consider neither friends nor close friends). Participants were asked to detail the age,

sex, length of relationship, circumstances of relationship (school, work, church, friend of

friend, etc.) and race or ethnicity for each named person. Additionally, the participants were asked if physical activity was an important aspect of their relationship with each named person (and if so, the types of activities shared). Finally, the participant was asked to indicate which of the people listed knew each other. There was no lower limit

on the number of relationships named, but the upper limit was fifty-seven people (the

number of rows available on the form).

To explore gendered norms of physical appearance and performance,

participants were asked to state whether they agreed, disagreed, or partially agreed

with three statements, and to provide an explanation for their response. The three

statements were:

• Males are naturally strong; females are naturally weak

• It is ok for males to strive to achieve their maximum levels of strength,

speed, skill or physical endurance. Females may seek to be fit, but should

not seek to achieve their maximum levels of strength, skill, speed or

physical endurance.

• Males have greater energy reserves than women; therefore females

should be careful to conserve their energy so that they have enough to

complete all their tasks

In addition to their own views on the above statements, participants were asked whether the adults in their lives and the people listed on their network chart would agree or disagree with their opinion. The interview ended with questions about gender role performance (what things should females be good at; what things should males be good at), and perceptions of differences in power by gender.

Two analytic processes were used with the interview data. For the first, the

entirety of interview one (except the anthropometry) and the second half of interview

two were transcribed for each participant and entered into Atlas ti. Transcripts were

read and text segments categorized into hierarchical levels of coding using the question categories from the interview guides. Additional codes were added as they emerged through the process of analysis. Thematic content analysis (Miles and Huberman 1994)

was employed in coding the data. Discrepant data was also coded. This analytic

approach produced the findings detailed in Chapters 3 and 4. Specifically, these findings

specified the model elements relevant to physicality-informed identity in the sample

and setting, allowing substitution of the more generic “context, self-experience and self-

representation” with more specific constructs: “appropriately gendered appearance and

deportment, body agency and relationship/separation.”

The second analytic process also comprised two steps. The first step involved a close reading of the interviews and creation of a meta-matrix (Miles and Huberman

1994) of interview excerpts that reflected operation of the newly-specified model

elements in each participant’s account of herself. Use of the meta-matrix facilitated

data compilation across the sample, allowed focus on specific elements of each

narrative, and mitigated against the “flattening” of context in the interpretive matrix to

some degree (Miles and Huberman 1994:178).

Each participant’s excerpts were then summarized into one or two statements

per element, forming an interpretive matrix (Miles and Huberman 1994). The summary

statements were compiled into sets of “plot points,” or key narrative building blocks

around which a given individual constructs an account of herself (Mattingly 2008: 19).

Thematically similar sets of plot points were grouped. The result of this grouping was

four relatively distinct schematic narrative templates (SNTs) of physicality-informed

identity (Wertsch 2008). The findings from this analysis are detailed in Chapter 5.

The information from the participants’ network grids was input into the personal

network software program Egonet for analysis of network characteristics. The output

for each individual analysis network was compiled into a spreadsheet for analysis across

the sample. This spreadsheet was also loaded into SPSS to execute the desired tests for

association (Chi-square, ANOVA, correlation).The data were examined for association

between the number of relationships in which physical activity was important and

number or closeness of network members. Tests for association between monitored

activity levels (accelerometry) and network characteristics (n_components, n_cliques), and for association between narrative templates categories and network characteristics were also conducted.

Observation of structured physical activity. Twenty-six (62% of those who

completed all study activities) of the participants were observed in during structured

physical activity (PE class, sports practice, or a sports event). A standardized instrument

(SOFIT; McKenzie 2002) and field notes were used to document physical activity during

PE but was not feasible during sports practice and sports events. Also, because of

difficulties encountered with monitoring PE activity for a consistent period (student

tardiness, unexpected change of class location, poor sight lines in outdoor venues),

SOFIT scores are not reliable and were not used. Field notes were used, rather, to

document context and as a supplement to participants’ self-report of their level of

engagement in physical education classes.

The whole elephant

Examined separately, each form of data collected in this project gives an effect

not unlike that of the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each captures something

about physicality-informed identity that is potentially important, but no one man – no

one data type – captured the phenomenon of physicality-informed identity in its

entirety. Each contributed meaningfully to the task of describing the complex

interaction of local cultural context, physicality-informed identity, and physical activity

behavior. But because of that complexity, and because this study seeks to articulate

those interactions’ range of expression, a meaningful combined account of the study

findings cannot simply be a listing of the results with subheadings by data type. Nor can a meaningful account of the findings merely examine the degree to which one category of findings confirms, disconfirms, or is neutral in relationship to the other, though such relationships are certainly important.

For example, tests of correlation were used to assess the relationship between the narrative template categories (GH, CF, UU, BH and MO) and the accelerometer output and network characteristics respectively. But the validity of the narrative template categories does not rest solely on the strength of their correlation with these objective measures. Rather, because this study is person-centered, and examines

73 within-group variability, a lack of linear association could be viewed as suggestive of a non-linear relationship rather than no relationship. Such a finding would be entirely consistent with what is known about the relationship between what humans know and what they do. Integration of this study’s data, then, will entail foregrounding the results of the narrative analysis, and querying each data category in turn, “What do these results contribute to the explication of a theoretically generalizable set of body-based identity narratives?” The next four chapters will present the principal findings of this systematic inquiry.

Chapter 3 Unmasking the Salience of Gender: Revealing the Intersection of Gender, Class and Race in Physical Appearance and Prowess Norms

I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am strong as any man that is now. - Sojourner Truth, as quoted in her speech at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio by the Salem Anti-Slavery Bugle

Here's one of the great things about getting grown: you learn that you've been duped. I spent much of my adolescence and young adulthood punishing myself for not being born and raised the proverbial Regular Black Girl. I tried to use my body and my sexuality to become her. It might have worked if the Regular Black Girl were an actual human being. But she doesn't exist. She is a toxic cocktail of White supremacist, misogynist stereotypes - Sapphire with a Jezebel chaser.

Akiba Solomon, “The Free Black Woman”

Introduction

Variability in gender norms was one of the factors the literature indicated might contribute to variation in body agency and physical activity engagement among the study participants (Holm-Denoma et al 2005). Embodiment theory and studies of the effects of gender role socialization on sports participation support the idea that

“traditional” gender norms – norms that posit female bodies as more soft than firm and more passive than active – may produce an experience of the body as separate from the self that discourages engagement in physical activity (Young 2005; Blakemore 2003;

Hardin 2009). However, studies of gender role stereotypes among African Americans

75 have found that they perceive each other as more androgynous and less typically sex- typed (Harris 1994; Herzberger and Molloy 1998; Sloan & Dade 2000). On the other hand, comparison of gender role perception among African American female athletes and non-athletes found no significant difference between the two groups, with both groups espousing more traditional views about women’s roles in caring for the home and in childrearing. (Rao & Overman 1984).

Scholars have theorized that the less typically sex-typed view of role performance stems from the long history of African American adult females’ dual roles as low-wage earners in physically demanding jobs who also shouldered the majority of the domestic responsibility in the family, whether in two-parent or single-parent households (Taylor , Gilligan and Sullivan 1995; Hill 2002). Nearly 30 years later, this endorsement of traditional roles is echoed in the responses of this study’s participants.

Many (53%) named traditional gender role tasks like cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children responded to the inquiry, “Are there things females should be good at?”

The evidence from the sports history and sociology literatures further obfuscates, rather than clarifies matters with respect to gender norms and body conceptualization among African American females. Sports historians have documented celebration of African American female athletes among African Americans, asserting that demonstrations of female athletic prowess have long been a source of African

American racial pride (Zirin 2008; Cahn 1995). They have also documented a consistent construction of African American female athletes in terms of race and gender rather

than their talent, commitment and prowess as athletes (Lansbury 2001). That is,

admired African American female athletes have been most often lauded within their

communities as emblematic of or instrumental to racial progress – for being successful

in their chosen sport and maintaining gender-appropriate appearance and deportment

despite their athleticism (Vertinsky and Captain 1998; Lansbury 2001; Hill-Collins 2004).

As Edward Temple, coach of the Tennessee State Tigerbelles and the Olympic gold-

winning 1960 400-meter US women’s relay team noted, “None of my girls have trouble

getting boyfriends. They are young ladies first – track girls second” (Cahn 1995: 133). He

was not alone in this sentiment; rather, his statement echoed a widely-expressed

concern among African Americans that the female who was too athletic, too “mannish,”

risked her destiny as a wife and mother (Vertinsky and Captain 1998). This “femininity

first” concern arguably persists in the present, exemplified by the glamorous long nails,

flowing hair and one-legged unitards of Florence Griffith-Joyner, the choice of model-

beautiful Lisa Leslie as one of the faces of the WNBA when the league launched in 1997

(McPherson 2000), the dramatic, high-fashion athletic wear favored by the Williams sisters, and the concomitant attention afforded these athletes’ appearances within the

competitive arena and outside it.

Thus, the literature gives conflicting pictures of historical and current operation

of gender norms within this racial group, and give rise to the question, ‘which is it?’ Are

traditional gender norms less in play among African Americans than among other races

in the US because of African Americans’ unique status history? And if they are less in

play, what accounts for the evidence of group concern with appropriately feminine

appearance and deportment by African American female athletes? What accounts for

the similarity between athletes and non-athletes with respect to endorsing traditional

gender roles? And what accounts for the endorsement of traditional gender roles by the participants in this study? Conversely, if there is evidence that traditional gender roles inform body conceptualization and physical activity among African American females, how can this finding be understood in light of many African American females’ historical and current performance of non-traditional gender roles in terms of household headship and economic contribution?

This chapter will engage these questions through three arguments. The first argument concerns study findings of broad – though not identical or ubiquitous – concern with appropriately feminine appearance and deportment among study participants. The second asserts that in this concern, study participants are, at least in part, engaging longstanding US racial tropes that portray black femininity as inherently questionable (hooks 1981; Hull 1993; Hill-Collins 2004;Solomon and Byrd 2005).

Engagement with these tropes occurs among participants through multiple cultural systems. This analysis will examine gender, class and race respectively as the cultural systems through which these tropes are transmitted. The third argument asserts that the study participants actually experience and engage these tropes through gender, class and race simultaneously rather than hierarchically. This is in part because intersectional (Hill-Collins 1998, 2004), or mutually constructing engagement with these tropes offers study participants a degree of agency in self-representation that a

hierarchically ordered engagement (race first, followed by gender and class) does not

readily afford.

As categorical social systems, gender, class and race all impose boundaries on

thought and action, but the conditions under which the boundaries operate are not

identical, and neither are the boundaries of the categories themselves. Established

relationships can trump the understood consequences of norm violation. For example,

in Ewing’s work among Turkish-German girls, one of her participants recalls beginning to

wear a headscarf in the sixth grade. This new attire produced no change in her classmates’ behavior towards her, though most were non-Muslims. Rather, the

participant’s sense was that “even with a visible marker of identity such as the

headscarf, her classmates did not in everyday interaction constitute her in terms of this

categorical identity, but rather in terms of her unique histories with each of them… as

“friend”, “smart girl”, etc.” (Ewing 2004:125).

Moreover, gender boundaries operate differently across class. African American

families that Hill (2002) identified as first generation middle class1 expressed

ambivalence concerning matters of gender equality, particularly with respect to the

performance of traditional masculinity by their male children. In contrast, African

American parents who were second generation middle class and above tended to more

fully embrace gender equality. In this study, 45% of participants answered “very true” to

the statement, “In my family, the standards of behavior for males and females are

1 Hill defined this group as educated families whose families were poor or disadvantaged in the preceding generation.

pretty much the same,” and 65% of the participants responding “very true” to that statement lived in homes where the primary caregiver held a bachelor’s or graduate

degree. However, in those same households, no participants responded that their

physical activity/fitness levels were unimportant to their mothers, while nearly 30%

reported that their physical activity/fitness levels were unimportant to their fathers.

Taken together with Hill’s observations, these findings suggest that class and family

gender norms are likely both important to adolescents’ physicality-informed identities

but that one should not be assumed to be indicative of the other.

If racialized gender norms influence the meaning of physical prowess; if

knowledge of person can mitigate non-normative appearance; if class and time shape

gender norms, and gender shapes family dynamics, the sufficiency of any single cultural

system to determine identity in all circumstances is certainly in doubt. This chapter not

only demonstrates the explanatory insufficiency of such a single-system perspective; it

offers an alternative view of physicality-informed identity as “…social practice that unfolds in local moral worlds” (Garro 2011: 304). In short, it presents evidence that

participants’ perceptions concerning appropriate physical presentation and

demonstration of physical prowess were a product of both encoded racialized gender norms and expressions of agency fostered by their life histories and experiences.

An unexpected finding

As analysis of the narrative data for this study progressed, an unanticipated commonality emerged – a concern with preserving a physical appearance and

performance consistent with traditional2 femininity was expressed in the free association exercise conducted during the focus groups, in the collages, and in the interviews. While this concern with how the cultivation of physical skill and capacity might threaten others’ recognition of one’s femininity has been documented among adolescent females of other races, (Colley and Gregson 1986; Dwyer 2006; Hardin

2009), this study’s data suggests that there may be a particularity to the cultural construction of this concern that warrants closer attention.

Free association

The free association exercise took place during the focus groups. Each participant was asked to respond to each of three images with one word. The images used in the exercise were primarily of female athletes and celebrities; the majority of the images were of African Americans. The original purpose of the exercise was to stimulate the participants’ thinking with regard to physicality in preparation for constructing their collages; there was no plan to try to associate the responses with particular attitudes. And in fact, some of the participants’ comments were simply descriptive (e.g., singer, runner). However, as the focus groups proceeded, a critical mass of comments rejecting appearance and deportment that participants considered

“manly” formed. Figure (3.1) shows three images that generated consistently negative comments. The image of the R&B singer Ciera, on the top left, generated the response

“slut” from one participant. Others commented negatively on her open-leg posture and

2 “Traditional” femininity refers to dress and deportment that conveys softness, decorative appeal, and receptive sexuality.

the display of her abdominals, which they deemed inappropriate – in their words,

“nasty”. Continuing clockwise, the most common comment about Marion Jones was

that she had “man arms.” Her defined abdominals were also generally, though not

universally, regarded with disfavor. The image of Dara Torres, at the bottom left, also

generated largely negative responses – one of the more striking comments was

“anorexic”.

Collages, collage interpretation and interviews

During the focus group, each participant constructed a physical self-concept

collage (n =42). Analysis of the collages included sorting collage elements into three

categories: ornamental – primarily conveying an aspect of appearance or adornment; instrumental – conveying action; and abstract/symbolic – conveying intangible qualities, or qualities of mind (See Appendix F). The number of ornamental elements was 2.58 times the number of instrumental elements; the ornamental and symbolic elements were roughly equal in number. This suggests more of a concern with appearance than prowess, which is consistent both with the documented high concern for appearance and with the disproportionate rates of sedentariness documented among African

American females as a group. However, a subset of the collages contained an additional dimension that is not as readily reconciled with the existing literature. These collages contain mixtures of fitness/athletics-associated instrumental elements, ornamental elements concerning fashion or grooming, and abstract/symbolic elements such as the words “ladylike”, “hardworking” and “nice.” In these collages, fitness/athleticism is

82 portrayed (and/or explained by participants during collage interpretation) as subordinate to the image of femininity they wish also to portray, or as part of a carefully-managed balance between how they see themselves and how they are seen by others.

Figure 3.1 – Focus group free association images

Prowess undergirds “Lady”

In her collage, CF4 (Figure 3.2) placed the image of her “ladylike” self centrally,

with her athletic self positioned above and to the left. She describes herself as

“athletic”, but desires others to see her as “ladylike” and “confident.” While she doesn’t

necessarily see the two as contradictory, it seems the lady is more of who she desires to

be, particularly in the eyes of others:

CF4: …Um… I put ladylike and confident because right now I’m in the…change from being the sporty girl to a more girly girl…aspect because I’m a part of a cotillion, so I’m getting’ like transfer—(SMM: you’re getting transformed?) transformed into a lady. SMM: So um, does that mean that you leave the sporty girl behind? CF4: Oh, no, not completely. It’s just that I know when not to like always wear jeans, and when to like, wear more girly stuff, so, I continue to like, have that image too, so…it’s more of a balance between the two now. SMM: Okay so you’re, you’re sort of tryin’ out the—the—the more girly-girl image. What’s the, um…w—what’s the benefit of the girly girl image to you? CF4: Uhhm….people see both sides of me. Like, I’m—I am an athletic person but also like, I am more of a …girly girl or a soft-centered person…so…it shows both sides of me rather than the person being strong all the time, which more people see as an athletic person.

CF4 describes and has portrayed a conscious shift in her physical presentation from the visible prowess of the soccer player on the left side of her image to the slender, polished, “ladylike” and “confident” yet “soft-centered” central image. Her comments indicate that she doesn’t desire to completely abandon her “sporty girl” self (she identifies her sports participation as the source of her confidence in the collage by drawing an arrow from the word “confident” to her soccer player image). Yet, the assertion that she desires a balanced presentation between sporty girl and girly-girl,

“people see both sides of me” is challenged both by the size and placement of the

84 soccer player image compared to the other two, and by her self-assessment, “I am more of a girly-girl or a soft-centered person.” A more accurate description of her transformation, then, may be that she is moving the sporty girl beneath the surface of her identity in favor of the “girly-girl,” or lady, she feels is being produced through her participation in the cotillion.

Figure 3.2 – Collage, CF4

CF45’s collage exemplifies the distinction between how one sees oneself and

how one is viewed by others – she literally drew a dotted line down the middle of her collage, dividing “me” from “others”, and placed a representation of herself diagonally in across the middle, spanning that line (Figure 3.3). Though she clearly expressed concern with being healthy – a big part of which was being height/weight proportionate

- she identified “athletic” as how others saw her. She viewed others designation of her as athletic favorably because it reflected the consistent effort she invested in everything she did. However, she did not feel this designation was accurate because she felt her skill level in athletics was only fair. She greatly preferred performance (dance and being on the majorette squad) to sport:

CF45: And I think I divided it, like me and others…I think this side is how others view me (SMM: mm-hmm)…um… SMM: the right side? CF45: Yeah (As professional, a hard worker, and dedicated, um… SMM: Ok, so this (referring to the lower right image) is the, hard-worker- dedicated piece… CF45: Yeah, mm-hmm. And…this…some people view me as athletic SMM: Venus? CF45: mm-hmm. And I don’t really view myself as athletic. SMM: Do you play tennis? CF45: No. SMM: ….. so people see you as athletic (045: mm-hmm) but you don’t think of yourself as athletic (045: yeah). Can you say more about that? 045: Um, I think that, like once in my gym classes, or like Steppettes that I do, um, sometimes we go on jog and I, I used to play track as well, but then I stopped, um …just any type of games that I, I would play, um…people always say that, “oh, uh, (named self), yeah, you are athletic” with whatever games that I, that we play it could be like field hockey or something like that…and I would score, or I’ll make a basket or something like that, and um…in gym, I guess they would see me as being like a good player, or knows the game well, but then if I actually go on a team, I would be like, uh, um…how can I explain it…I would be like the player that doesn’t get as much game time, or…I would consider myself as being not as…athletic as like if I was actually on a team that focuses on that, um sport or something like that. With the gym class where everyone just doesn’t

really know the sport, I, I’m, s..uh, I’m shown as like, um, athletic, or know the game really well or something like that. Um, and…(sighs)…let’s see…um…with the hard-working and dedicated, I feel that I am hard-working and dedicated, but like, I feel that I can work harder, um, and I can do…not do more, but like, ah, put more effort in everything that I do, um, and everybody else should see as is me like, doing really well, and working hard and, um, I guess comparing it to themselves maybe. Um…but for me I feel like I can definitely work harder, and, put more effort, um, and…I think that’s it.

Through her comments, this participant shows a high degree of insight into both

her own ability and how she is perceived by others, but it seems clear that for her the

two are not and cannot be completely separated. She identified the image at the

bottom right of her collage as symbolic of her willingness “to work hard” in order to

maintain her self-experience as healthy and her school-based self-representation as

athletic. However, the placement of the collage elements – “hardworking” bottom

lateral, “athletic” higher and more medial – suggests that the narrative of her collage is

not so much an embrace of the majority culture body ideal as it is a statement of her

commitment to doing what she feels it takes to embody the unmistakably gendered

central figure in the collage personally and socially. Likewise, CF4’s collage portrays a

particular feminine self-representation - a self-experience of athleticism which she has

consciously overlaid with softness and attention to grooming.

Manly Acts as Manly Looks

Accompanying the theme of manifesting femininity was a theme eschewing an overly

muscular or manly presentation. Images of visibly sculpted, muscular female bodies were

included in only four of the forty-two collages. By contrast, disparagement of excessive muscle

Figure 3.3 - Collage, CF45

definition and gender inappropriate levels of physical exertion were common themes that emerged during collage interpretation and in the portion of the second interview devoted to exploration of gendered physicality. These injunctions against “manly”

presentation and performance were made by a broad range of participants, including

those who were involved in competitive athletics, and those who identified

overweight/obesity as a physical attribute they did not desire. One such participant

recounted an instance in which she discontinued working with a personal trainer at her

gym because, in her view, the trainer pushed for a level of physical performance from

her that was inappropriate for a female:

CF31: …when I, I first joined the gym I got a personal trainer, and he work(ed) me out. So hard, like I like never really work out that hard, like he worked me out like, he would work out like, a football player. Like I was like, “Um, I’m 14 years old, I am a girl like why are you working me out this hard?” I’m like, “I’m just like, starting, just to get the feel of the gym, and you’re just like, pushing me to like, my full extent” I’m just like, “it’s not gonna work, I’m not using this personal trainer. I can do it by myself, on my own.”

This participant’s comments demonstrate clearly the importance of the modifier

“appropriate” to this finding of gender role concern being a factor in the study

participants’ expressions of their physicality. CF31 was not objecting to physical activity

per se. She joined a gym, arranged to work with a trainer, and expressed her willingness to “do it by myself, on my own” when the trainer’s ideas about appropriate levels of exertion and hers did not match. Moreover, CF31 had been involved in athletics since she was very young – she told stories of skateboarding as a younger girl, of being on the swim team in a neighboring community, and of being the only African American female on the school golf team. Her athleticism was not in question in her mind. “Appropriate gender presentation and deportment” aptly captures this idea of tempering physicality in service of femininity.

Another participant clearly identified the level of muscularity demonstrated by

WNBA star Candace Parker in a photograph used in the focus groups as a breach of femininity. She located the roots of this sense of breach in what she recognized as community-based gender norms:

UU14: ‘Cause like, I mean, muscles are good, but I don’t like when—I like when you can show off your muscles but when there’s too much, like when—males could have a lot of muscles, but women, I dunno, it just doesn’t… look right. ‘Cause you’re brought up in a community that, Eew, girls aren’t s’posed to be as strong as boys,” so if girls look as strong as, or stronger than boys then they’re gonna look horrible…

The concern with appropriate gender presentation and deportment is certainly clear inUU14’s comments, but her statements suggest that both the source and the manifestation of the concern may be different for her than for CF31. UU14 is concerned not only that “girls aren’t s’posed to be as strong as boys;” she is convinced that “if girls look as strong as, or stronger than boys then they’re gonna look horrible…” Though personal aesthetics undoubtedly informed her distaste for Candace Parker’s defined arm muscles, her primary concern seemed to be with her community’s likely perception of a female with visible musculature as an instance of gender trespass. UU14 was active in the school performance ensemble, which had a significant dance component, but she eschewed calisthenics and other types of conditioning activities as “boring.” On the other hand, CF31, who also had strong views against female display of muscularity beyond a certain point, expressed this concern as a personal view rather than as a concern with how others would view her. And her (relative) embrace of muscular conditioning is evidenced by her going to the gym (a voluntary activity).

The interviews’ explicit explorations of gendered physicality norms also support

an association between a certain level of physicality and masculinity among study participants. For example, 40% of study participants interpreted the question regarding pursuit of “maximum skill, strength, speed or endurance” among females as “desire to be a bodybuilder” (See Guide for Interview II, Appendix C). While almost all the participants who interpreted the question in this way affirmed the rights of females to pursue any desired physical performance goal, they also made it clear that they had no personal aspirations in that direction. Moreover, there seemed to be, in the minds of some participants, an association between high-level physical performance and modes of self-representation that participants considered to be masculine, and, by definition, particularly undesirable when exhibited by females:

SMM: (reading an interview item) It’s a good thing for males to try to achieve their maximum in strength, skill, speed or endurance. It’s ok for females to seek to be fit, but they shouldn’t try to attain their maximum in terms of strength, skill, speed or endurance. GH7: Hmm. Um, I agree with that statement because the w…if a female works too hard you could…hurt yourself or whatever, pull, pull a muscle….. I mean, if you want to be a, I mean, if you…if they want to be a bodybuilder, I mean, go right ahead (makes sound of distaste). Umph-um. But like, like, it’s basically meant for females to be fit, instead of cocky like, like, um, like males are. SMM: Ok, so now, you’re kinda mixing attitude with physicality. In your mind, does that go together, does that kind of…super-assurance go with being like, fit at your maximum? GH7: Ummm. Mmmm. Uh…I don’t know (giggles). SMM: Ok, so…guys who are super-fit, are they cocky? GH7: Some of them are. It’s that…yeah. SMM (laughs): And it doesn’t sound like something you really like. GH7: I mean I, I do like some cockiness, but not a lot. No! SMM: So is it less attractive for women to be super-cocky than it is for men to be super-cocky? GH7: I think it is less attractive for a female to be super-cocky (giggles with last word).

GH7’s response echoes that of UU14 above in that she (implicitly) frames her

distaste for females’ pursuit of maximum physical capacity as a response to social

norms, “it’s basically meant for females to be fit, instead of cocky like, like, um, like males are” and equates visible muscularity with masculinity in a rather absolute way.

She further equated appearance with essence (masculine = muscular; muscular = cocky; therefore, masculine = cocky AND cocky female = unattractive), and presents this formulation as a statement of social fact.

The tenor of GH7’s remarks are particularly interesting in light of the fact that she is a dedicated track athlete who by her own admission loves the weight room and lifts more than she should during the track season. Though she weighed only 85.6 pounds, she could press nearly 200 pounds with her legs. Moreover, she did not join with the majority of the participants in her focus group in disparaging Marion Jones’ well-defined abdominals, but rather proclaimed to the group, “I have a six-pack.”

GH7’s seemingly contradictory statements powerfully illustrate the inconsistency in the literature in terms of what is “known” about gender socialization among African

Americans, and what is “known” about perspectives on gendered physicality among

African Americans and among African American females in particular. In the 21st century

US, the explanation of “acculturation to mainstream norms” would mean that GH7

would cultivate her own physicality as she does and heartily endorse other females

doing the same, but she does not. The explanation of “more androgynous and less

typically sex-typed” gender norms would suggest that she would not endorse a more

traditionally bounded feminine physicality, which she does. The answer to these

participants’ concern with appropriately feminine presentation and deportment, and

particularly the varied manifestations of that concern, then, does not lie in what is

“known.”

Another participant (GH60) chose for her collage images of WNBA stars Candace

Parker and Lisa Leslie and track star Marion Jones. Interpreting her collage in the first interview, she identified the images of the two sports figures as responding to the question, “What physical attributes do you aspire to?” In fact, this participant’s collage elements were primarily instrumental – they concerned physical training or athletic competition (see Figure 3.4). And while her use of these images was aspirational, it was not wishful; this participant was the only female to play on either team in the annual faculty-student basketball game. It may be that the rules were such that everyone on the team got floor time, but her mere presence as the lone female in a very masculine milieu speaks both to her passion for the game and her self-confidence. The sole ornamental element in her collage, however, was also telling: the cut-out phrase, “hair transformation,” which she explained as a desire to have straight, flowing hair – as opposed to the thick, kinky-curly, voluminous tresses that grew from her head. This participant’s body ideal, then, can be said to combine performance and appearance -

strength, skill and power as part of an essential femininity that can be verified through

the simple act of “letting her hair down.” Her physicality-informed identity, then,

features high exertion and skilled performance and includes feminine presentation.

Figure 3.4 – Collage, GH60

An interesting contrast to the views on appropriate levels of physical exertion offered by the participant discussed above is the view expressed by BG36 in her first interview. This participant also seemed to indicate in her collage that longer (and ostensibly flowing) hair was a physical attribute to which she aspired (Figure 3.7). She identified the black and white shot of the model as representing her body size category,

“I am plus size.” The image of Gabourey Sidibe, star of the movie “Precious,” represented courage and beauty: “I feel that you gotta be a real strong person to look that bad in a movie;” and, “I think she’s beautiful.” This participant’s collage is also notable for its relatively few instrumental elements – two written words (run, walk – though she eschewed running in her interview), and one constructed phrase, “no sex.”

Moreover, her stated idea of an appropriate level of physical exertion clearly stopped well shy of the fitness objectives for the physical education class devoted to core fitness, which she described with disdain. Her remarks do not convey that she sees herself as weak; rather, her comments indicate that she feels attempts to build fitness capacity that cause discomfort are inappropriate:

BG36: When you work out you’re not supposed to kill yourself. You’re supposed to be like, “Oh, ok. (pause) Now I want to go eat an apple or something.” You’re not supposed to feel like, “errrrgh.” SMM: Ok. So have you ever felt like that? BG36: yes SMM:…that, that, that elaagh. BG36: yes SMM: When, when was that? BG36: When, uhhh…this gym class - it’s called core? SMM: Oh, yeah. BG36: That’s ridiculous. I don’t understand why anyone would want to do that with their spare time. That’s ridiculous. I was…I was sore after gym. SMM: mm-hmm

BG36: I like, really? No. You’re not supposed to be…I mean soreness is ok, but like, I was sore, like I couldn’t [even]…my thighs hurt and everything.

It is tempting to assume a tacit reference to gendered physicality in BG36s

remarks that corresponds to the images in her collage, but her next remarks indicate her

perspective is a bit more complicated than that. Despite her insistence that physical

activity should not cause physical discomfort, BG36 rejected the idea that “females are

naturally weak” (see Guide for Interview II, Appendix C) in her second interview, stating,

“I know a lot of boys I’m stronger than…” However, she also expressed a personal

distaste for obvious muscularity as “manly” and “not feminine,” which is consistent with

her rejection of fitness-level exertion. Taken together with her collage, these statements convey a body agency that is dominated by personal standards for feminine presentation – courage, and beauty that emphasizes grooming, personal style, and curvaceousness – and to which body size is not central. Her physicality-informed identity includes some sense of prowess, but that prowess is not particularly prominent, nor is it something that BG36 seems very interested in cultivating.

Constructing Physicality through Gender

Though it is also tempting to interpret the sharp contrast between the body agencies of GH60 (high-level, skilled performance with feminine presentation) and BG36

(physical exertion dictated by necessity and bounded by comfort) as representative of an athletic girl/ girly-girl dichotomy among the study participants, taking all the above examples together reveals a more complex picture. The concern with femininity is

96 consistent in presence, yet variable in degree and expression. Rather than a dichotomy, the data appear to identify a self-experience/self-representation dialectic that is dominated by gender among study participants – one that involves relationally- sanctioned gender norms and experientially derived, gendered appearance and performance boundaries (Figure 3.6).

Gender

Recognizable Self-experience Femininity

Figure 3.5 –Dialectics of “appropriately gendered appearance and deportment”

Figure 3.6 – Range and boundaries of gendered physicality

Figure 3.7 – Collage, BG36

Physicality, prefabrication and enacted narrative

Identity categories are often accompanied by sets of thematic descriptors meant to convey what are held to be the principal qualities and dispositions of those so categorized. These descriptors, or tropes, as they shall be called hereafter, are both different from and similar to the schematic narrative templates discussed by Wertsch

(2008) and identified for the study sample in Chapter 5. They are different in that tropes are stereotypes – typically (though not always) non-member generated and primarily negative generalizations sustained by power differentials and a resort to tautology in the face of challenge. For example, Powers (1990) recalls her attempts to seek help in her struggles with overweight and binge eating disorder being dismissed by the school counselor: “In African American culture women are not viewed as sex objects (p78).” The implication of the counselor’s statement was: You are an African

American female, and African American females do not have eating disorders because weight-related appearance is not of concern to African Americans. Therefore, your weight-related appearance cannot be of concern to you, and you cannot have an eating disorder.

Schematic narrative templates, on the other hand, are shared, member- recognized and enacted explanations of “who we are and how things came to be this way” rather than essentialist categorizations. A participant in Duncan and Robinson’s study exploring the health and fitness practices of African American women in college explained the low priority assigned to exercise among her same-race peers as a by-

product of caring for others at the expense of oneself. This self-disregard is essential, in

her experience, to what it means to be an African American woman:

Yeah, it's [exercise] not a priority because you got your kids . . . you're everything to everybody as a Black woman. Even as a little kid, as a young girl in your household, you're responsible for helping with those kids, if Mommy's not around. . . . If Mommy has to work or something, your education, anything else comes secondary to your family... So as a Black woman you're socialized, you're trained to be that way. You grow up being everything to everybody, and you don't think about yourself (Duncan and Robinson 2004:91).

The focus group participant is evoking the ethos of “strength” identified in both

folk and scholarly explorations of African American female identity. The implication of

“strength”, in this instance, is that being raised an African American female instills the imperative to care for others before oneself, no matter what: “as a Black woman you're

socialized, you're trained to be that way. You grow up being everything to everybody,

and you don't think about yourself.” Though this ethos has been and still continues to

be a source of racial pride, recently scholars have come to question the effects of

enacting “strength” on African American females’ physical and mental health

(Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009; Taylor, Gilligan and Sullivan 1995; Harris

1995). Of course, both the situations presented above are demonstrations of negative

effects of racialization. Having others fail to recognize one’s distress (as in Powers’ case)

and consistently choosing not to prioritize one’s own needs (exemplified by Duncan and

Robinson’s participant) can produce the same outcome – impaired wellbeing.

As the above examples demonstrate, tropes and templates are similar in that as cultural constructions, their existence is stable. Their stability derives from being embedded in the complex web of human social relations. Because they are often

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employed non-reflexively, they function to inscribe the conditions they describe (e.g., asexual, self-sacrificing). The tropes’ basis in the material reality of phenotype masks their essential constructedness, as this chapter’s second opening quote by Solomon and

Powers’ story demonstrate. The enacted, instilled nature of narrative templates contributes to their acceptance and durability, and is illustrated by Duncan and

Robinson’s participant’s explanation of the prominence of self-sacrifice in the performance of African American womanhood. Moreover, both Powers and Duncan and Robinson also arguably invoke the racial trope of Mammy – the asexual, obese black woman whose identity is comprised solely of unflagging commitment to nurture and care for others, often at her own expense.

However, “you cannot have this concern (body dissatisfaction and eating disorder) because you are black,” and “not making this issue a high priority (physical activity as an aspect of wellbeing) is a by-product of who we are racially” are not equivalent statements. One “endorses racist-sexist mythology by presenting old images as fact” (Morton 1991: p. xiv) and discounts conflicting experience; the other engages

the same mythology but transforms it from phenotypic destiny to social role performance – an aspect of self-representation. Additionally, while the essentialism of

Mammy as “fat and sexless” can only result in dismissal of any conflicting experience,

the narrative template of self-sacrifice accommodates reflection, and thus the

possibility of template modification. Building on this reasoning, Duncan and Robinson’s participants’ gender-framed views on physicality can be seen as part of a narrative template that indirectly, through the cultural systems of gender and class,

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engages/resists the racial tropes symbolized in the chapter’s opening quotes. The first quote, from Sojourner Truth’s address to the 1851 Women’s Rights Commission, represents the Manly Woman trope, which, though it has a substantial racial component, this study’s participants primarily addressed through the cultural system of gender.

Gender and the Manly Woman

Though as a human being, the totality of Sojourner Truth’s existence can in no way be captured by a set of physical descriptors, the excerpt from her famous speech, quoted at the beginning of the chapter, captures the key characteristics of the Manly

Woman – powerful, muscular, masculine, and, by inference from the first three characteristics, ugly. Truth’s assertions that she can “carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it,” while made in the context of asserting women’s equal capacity to engage in public life, also invoke one aspect of the “questionable” nature of raced womanhood. That is, stereotypes concerning the physicality of black women cast them as more primitive or animalistic than their white counterparts – as possessed of a physical capacity that makes them not only “bad” (i.e., not appropriately feminine) women, but nearly men (Morton 1991). The characterization of black female physical prowess as evidence of a primitiveness and manliness that is abnormal and detrimental is not merely a historical fact; it has been and is particularly applied to black female athletes, both by members of the majority race and by other African Americans.

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For example, in the wake of the success of African American female track and

field athletes in the 1948 Games, Olympic official Norman Cox proposed that the

Olympic Committee, “create a special category of competition for the unfairly

advantaged ‘hermaphrodites’ who regularly defeated ‘normal’ women” (Cahn 1995:

111). Later in the same decade, Althea Gibson’s refusal to tie her success in tennis to the

cause of racial uplift resulted in members of the Black press decrying her choice as evidence of the detrimental effects of highly skilled physicality on the female psyche:

When girls are able to play “boys” sports well and better than boys, they acquire “tomboy” labels. In later life these “tomboy” finds herself victimized by complexes. Miss Gibson is no exception. She has a way of going into her hard shell and refusing to come out of it [Lacy (1957) in Vertinsky and Captain 1998].

Interestingly, the press commentary’s referral to Gibson’s “hard shell” acquires a quality of timelessness when one recalls CF4’s expressed wish to present herself as a more “soft-centered person” rather than someone who is “being strong all the time.”

And there is ample evidence that these two statements are not “outliers” occurring fifty-two years apart. This perspective did not sunset with the “Ozzie and Harriet” era, and was not stemmed by the feminist movement or the advent of Title IX. It has continued to inform media portrayals of black female athletes in a variety of sports, from figure skating (Debbie Thomas and Surya Bonaly in the 1980s and 90s) to track and field (Florence Griffith-Joyner in the 1980s and Caster Semenya in 2009), to tennis (20th

and 21st century tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams). References to the performances of these athletes regularly attribute their success to a “natural” athleticism and power rather than the discipline and skilled performance expected of

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someone who has mastered her field of endeavor (Cahn 1995; Bruening 2005).

Moreover, these athletes’ “real” gender has been frequently questioned either implicitly

or explicitly. In one of the most notable instances in recent history, radio sports

commentator Sid Rosenberg referred to Venus Williams as an “animal,” opined that the

Williams sisters were “just too muscular,” and opined that Venus and her sister had a

better chance of posing nude for National Geographic than for Playboy (New York Times

online; June 18, 2001).

For black females, then, the overt cultivation and expression of their physicality

carries a risk that is peculiar to racialized gender – the risk that their personhoods will be

reduced to a narrow set of physical descriptors that are likely to be assessed in social

milieus as questionably feminine, decidedly abnormal, and inherent to racial identity.

That is, as a metonym for primitivism, black can eclipse female in the realm of

physicality, as the above-cited examples concerning black females in sport demonstrate

(Cahn 1995; McPherson 2000; McKay and Johnson 2008). Study data suggest participants respond to this ambient risk by abjuring both masculine behaviors

(exemplified by GH7’s expressed distaste for “super-cockiness” in females) and masculine (muscular) presentation, because of the attached social jeopardy:

CF31: Like if they still feel girly inside, and they still, like, like, wear like girl dresses and everything, but they have a six-pack, then like, that’s what they do, but like, if I, just to physically see them, and like I never like, met them or anything then, yeah, my like, pre-assumption would be: manly…[later in the same interview] it just…looks…wrong…to me, like it just doesn’t look right, like, if you’re like, a, if you’re a girl, and you’re supposed to be like, walking, or just being a girl, and you’re just like, walking around, and you’re with like, these sculpted muscles and everything, it just doesn’t look…feminine to me, like how girls should look.

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With these comments, CF31 sheds important light on what may have appeared

to be contradictory narratives – her regular participation in athletics, her interest in

maintaining fitness and her unwillingness to participate in what she considered to be a

gender-inappropriate training regimen. The contradiction is resolved here - femininity is

a matter of both how one feels about oneself and how one looks to others, though questionable looks open one up to negative judgment: “just to physically see them, and like I never like, met them or anything then, yeah, my like, pre-assumption would be:

manly…” Participating in athletics, working out at the gym, and ending her work with

the trainer form a consistent narrative of cultivating a particular (not visibly muscular)

feminine appearance, and tailoring the cultivation of her prowess to that end.

It seems, then, that advocating, practicing and presenting femininity serves to

mitigate the attribution of masculinity that inheres to black physicality. However, as the

data indicates and as ”manly line” (Figure 3.6) illustrates, the advocacy, practice and

presentation of femininity among study participants is not formulaic; though femininity

is widely ascribed to, no universal prescriptions or prohibitions were endorsed. Rather,

the aspirations ranged from sports, skinny jeans, multi-colored fingernails, and the

caption, “sexy tomboy” to glamorous, mostly full-figured women and the caption “best

dressed”. This recognition of a range of feminine presentation also evidenced in the

qualifiers used by CF31 in the previous inset quote: “Like if they still feel girly inside, and

they still, like, like, wear like girl dresses and everything, but they have a six-pack, then

like, that’s what they do…” Seventy-two percent of participants expressed similar

sentiments, either in the context of talking about desirable physical presentation or in

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response to the gender norms statement in Interview 2 that ended, “females may seek

to be fit, but they should not try to attain their maximum in skill, speed, strength or

physical endurance.” The most common response to this question was some form of

“females should be able to do whatever they want, but personally, I am not interested in that.”

Moreover, several participants explicitly or implicitly rejected any categorization

as adequate to capture their personhood. Rather, as Cohen (1994:178) suggests, they appeared to “read collectivity (categorization) through their experience as individuals.”

Five participants answered “as me” in their collages in response to the question, “how do you want others to see you?” and six specifically rejected a “one-dimensional” presentation as exemplified by this quote from CF4’s interview:

CF4:…‘Cause when you see athletic person they’re in shape, they’re…not all necessarily muscular but like… they’re just—they have that s—you have that stereotype of like, “Oh, she’s muscular so she’s athletic, automatically and then I guess some people wouldn’t like take the time to see more into it. SMM: Okay. So—so … it sounds like you think that being too toned would make you… appear one dimensional to people. CF4: Mm-hmm. SMM: Is that right? CF4: Yeah. I rather be seen as multi-dimensional - I don’t know if that’s the right word but – I’d rather be seen in different perspectives rather than just one stereotype.

The desire to “be seen in different perspectives,” to have physical prowess

included, but not preeminent, in how one is perceived by others, indicates an awareness

of modes of self-representation involving cultural systems other than gender – namely,

it signals an engagement with class. This is not to say that class does not figure into the

Manly Woman trope. After all, in her earliest form, the Manly Woman was not just black

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and a woman; she was a slave. The trope was originally a caricature of women who occupied the lowest position in the US socio-economic hierarchy - whose physical presentation and prowess (the latter being the product of a life of hard labor, though declared innate), indelibly marked lowest class status and its accompanying lack of gender privilege. Therefore, as an historical gender subcategory distilled from essentialist constructions of race and class, the Manly Woman trope alone offers limited options to “be seen in different perspectives.”

There is, however, another trope with which study participants appeared to engage in their collages and narratives of gendered physicality. According to Morton

(1991), this trope was born of the endeavor by the 19th African Americans intelligentsia to decouple race (black) and class (lowest) that began with Emancipation and accelerated through the Civil Rights era. Constructed by (primarily male) African

Americans, and informed by their aspirations for the status advancement they believed accompanied demonstrable progress toward their race’s “civilization”, the new trope was an attempt to supplant the essentialist contrast between “bad” (black) women and

“true” (white) women with a racialized class counterpart - The Black Lady.

Class and the Black Lady

[Her] highest mission was caring for her home and children, serving as her husband’s helpmate and maintaining the highest standards of morality. (Beatty in Morton 1991:41)

Articulated and promulgated to counter the negative stereotypes of black women as tough, muscular, aggressive, emasculating, avaricious and wildly promiscuous, the Black

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Lady trope was adapted from the ideals of the 19th century cult of true womanhood

(Morton 1991). As the quote above from Beatty’s study of early 20th century African

American social mores suggests, the trope characterizes the Black Lady as asexual, home-centered, dignified, reserved, well-groomed and well-spoken. The attainment of

domesticity, self-restraint and refinement - unmistakable markers of traditional, gendered, middle-class status - was seen as essential to freedwomen’s progress by members of the black intelligentsia like William Wells Brown and George Washington

Williams. These men promoted the project of racial uplift among whites and blacks alike. Attainment of ladyhood was seen as black women’s singular contribution to this project – and integral to any legitimate claim by blacks to the American dream of socio-

economic advancement (Morton 1991).

This view may seem quixotic when juxtaposed against the longstanding reality of the importance of black women’s wages to their families’ economic viability, regardless of their marital status. It may seem quaint when juxtaposed against the rhetoric of modern feminism. However, in part because of its associations with macro-level social norms related to social acceptability and status attainment, the Black Lady trope has not

only persisted for over 100 years, but has been explicitly embraced by many African

Americans. Hill Collins (2004) points to both media images like Claire Huxtable of the

1980s Cosby Show and celebrated persons like Oprah Winfrey as compelling examples

of the modern/present day Black Lady. As “media figures”, they demonstrate how the trope has remained true to its foundational tenets of well-groomed, well-spoken, sexually restrained femininity whose wholesome sensuality is confined to the domestic

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sphere (Claire Huxtable). This image of unwavering rectitude is combined with an ethos

of uncomplaining hard work and commitment to personal uplift for the benefit of others

(Oprah Winfrey). In the present study, one participant was particularly clear in

articulating her advocacy for traditional feminine role performance, and explicitly connected that performance with gendered physicality in a way that is highly reminiscent of the Black Lady trope:

BG18: I believe in old fashioned types of relationships where … not exactly where the woman is barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen cookin’ dinner or something but to where the man is the provider and like the sole provider and does things and is like … has nice body and woman’s just supposed to be like … whatever. Not whatever, but she’s not supposed to be all ripped and everything.

Though this participant’s statement is particularly notable for its explicit advocacy of traditional domesticity, other participants displayed similar attitudes in their responses to questions about gender-related skills. When asked what things they were good at, (65%) identified domestic skills like cooking, cleaning, and taking care of young children. When asked what kinds of things females should be good at, (57%) replied in a similar vein. Other, related responses to this question included “being nice”, being well- groomed with respect to one’s clothing and hair when appearing in public, and the quotation, “being called a nice girl is way better than being called a bitch,” used in two collages.

The references to niceness point to another reason for the persistence and embrace of the Black Lady trope – because the alternative, in terms of racialized, class- referenced gender, is the “bitch.” The bitch, Hill-Collins (2004) argues, is a re-working of

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the slavery-forged image of black females as innately bad, and is commonly applied to

working class and poor black women whose behavior is obstreperous, non-compliant,

aggressive and/or sexually suggestive. Study participants largely eschewed “badness,”

and even when they expressed what could be called an age-appropriate desire to be

sexually appealing, they also decried “sluttiness”:

UU14: Noooo, I don’t even know why I picked this [referring to collage caption, “hot” (Figure 3.8)]. But, I think it’s ‘cause I was in the moment and I saw the pretty girls in the magazine [and] I was like, “I wanna be that girl and be hot.” But I don’t wanna be hot, I wanna be beautiful and not trashy. ‘Cause most of the times girls who, no offense, who are… I dunno how to say it… sluttily clothed… are portrayed as hot most of the times. But you can also be…not. You can dress like this [referring to own attire] and people will be like, “oh, you’re hot” but most time they’re probably wearing a whole bunch of makeup and all that other stuff.

Given this stark dichotomy of presentation options (hot and trashy or nice and

beautiful), and the decidedly middle-class environment of their school (e.g., female

students were commonly addressed as “ladies” by adult authority figures as an

expression of both expectation and acknowledgement), the majority of study

participants’ apparent embrace of the Black Lady trope, or aspects of it, is not surprising. However, it is also not surprising that even as the historical Black Lady trope is discernible in the participants physicality narratives, those narratives are not exact replications of the trope. Tropes do not, as argued previously, serve to narratively connect, or emplot (Mattingly 1994), context, self-experience and self-representation; they can only signal the presence of these identity elements.

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This limitation in the nature of tropes is represented by the second opening

quote. In the essay from which the quote is taken, Solomon (2005) recounts her struggle with what she understood at the time as dichotomous racial selves – the “authentic”

Regular Black Girl – “Sapphire (bitch) with a Jezebel (slut) chaser” – and the

“aspirational” Black Lady more consistent with her rearing in a stable, 1980s middle- class African American family. However, Solomon’s conclusion that both images constrain, rather than articulate, self-experience is arguably reflected in various assertions by this study’s participants – from the view that words provide more accurate representation than images, to the concern with being seen “as me,” and “in different perspectives.” And though, unlike Solomon’s essay, none of this study’s participants disclosed significant psychological distress during study activities, some did reveal an inconsistency in the negotiation of their physicality with respect to these tropes that could signal either struggle with or transformation of them. For example, BG18, who was quoted above as an advocate for “old-fashioned types of relationships” reminiscent of Black Ladyhood, also asserted that females are more powerful than males. Though this assertion seemed primarily to reflect the higher value she placed on mental prowess relative to physical prowess, she also touted her ability to hold her own with most boys she knew in terms of physical performance:

SMM: …so, do females have power? BG18: yes. SMM: Do males have power? BG18: To a certain extent. SMM: So males and females don’t have power in the same way. BG18: Um…well males and females are equal, but, females have more power than the male does.

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SMM: Ok. In what way do females have more power? BG18: Uhm…I’m gonna go with my original statement. We’re smarter because we use more of our brain. SMM: Ok. So women have…are…have more power because they’re able to use more of their brain (018: mm-hmm). Ok. Um…so how do they show that ability to use more of their brains? How do they show their power? BG18: By having memory. By um….hmmm….well I can’t really…I can say for myself? SMM: Go for it. BG18: Ok. Um…I speak more fluently than most of the boys that I know …um…I can do things longer than most of the boys that I know, like physical activities. Even though I might not like it, I’ll still go before…them ‘cause I wanna prove that I can do it too. SMM: Ok. BG18: Um…what else…running, I can beat most of the boys.

Juxtaposed against her earlier advocacy for relationships in which the male “is like the sole provider and does things,” and the observation she made in another interview about the difference in energy level displayed by girls and boys during PE,

“they have lots more stamina than I do,” BG18’s assessment of her physical ability relative to her male peers seems more than a bit odd. Coupled with her exertion self- ratings (3 out of 10 for PE and 6 out of 10 for recreational swimming), the conclusion that her statements regarding her physical prowess are materially inaccurate seems more than reasonable. Why, then, would she make such claims?

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Figure 3.8 – Collage, UU14

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It is possible that BG18’s assertions that she possesses greater endurance and

speed “running, I can beat most of the boys” than most of her male peers are more statements of reminiscent conviction than recent experience – that they are more about

her desire to assert power based on a memory of childhood dominance than her ability

to express power physically in the present. This seems likely, actually, given that the

statements are made in a context of asserting females’ superiority in mental acuity and

her personal verbal fluency.

However, BG18’s suspected conflation of physical capacity and mental

conviction also says something about her physicality-informed identity. Her likely

inaccurate assessment of her physical abilities reveals the function of the narrative

formed by her responses – how she engaged racialized gender, physicality, and

relationship. She combined her endorsement of traditionally gendered appearance and role norms with a relatively low valuation of physical prowess in herself and others. She viewed cultivation of visible muscularity in females and males as unhealthy: “if [you are very muscular and] you get dehydrated or something or if you don’t eat or something then your body has nothing it can break down; it just has muscle tissue.” She valued a well groomed and fashionable appearance as important to social acceptability and as a

“trick” to gain relational entree for her “real” self: “Like I want you to see me and like the way I look and then I’m gonna capture you and show you the inside.” Finally, she

lauded females’ generally superior intellect, but characterized her ability to intimidate

others with her intellect as “masculine.”

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Interestingly, BG18 appeared neither aware of the inconsistencies in her self- narrative, nor distressed by any conflicts within herself or with others such conflicts would seem likely to engender. Her demeanor suggested that her statements, in her perspective, only appeared to be in conflict. In terms of gender and physicality, the data suggest that she embraces the idea of appropriately gendered presentation and deportment as a matter of body, but embraces particular qualities of mind that she considers masculine, and useful, as well. It seems, also, that she ultimately associates power over (i.e., ability to establish dominance or effect change), with masculinity and that she claims that exercise of psychological power for herself. In short, BG18’s narrative embraces the corporeality of the Black Lady, but her mental gender boundaries are not quite so sharply drawn. Such a condition of body/mind separation – of unembodiment (Laing 1969) – puts her statement, “Like I want you to see me and like the way I look and then I’m gonna capture you and show you the inside”, as well as her collage (Figure 4.9) in a new light. The collage contains only objects and words – ostensibly the things she uses to “capture you and show you the inside.” It appears that

BG has simultaneously embraced and transformed the trope – that the Black Lady, for her, is truly and exercise in staging (Goffman 1959) – a personae she projects, but does not inscribe onto her innermost self.

Resisting manly, remaking lady, transforming both

The complex, apparently contradictory nature of BG18's responses is not unique; her fellow participants’ responses to the querying of their physicality functioned in a similarly perlocutionary manner. That is, their responses seemed to be the result of

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Figure 3.9 – Collage, BG18

their interpreting and enacting the gender axiom, “resist manliness; embrace ladyhood,”

in light of their own experiences and relationships, rather than merely reproducing the

axiom as a social fact in their physicality-related dispositions and actions. In other

words, the participants seem to have transformed the tropes into narrative templates of

physicality-informed identity. The study finding that what constitutes trespass into manliness or appropriate femininity varies among study participants supports the notion that participants emplot the axiom as an part of their identity narratives – they incorporate and interpret it in light of their self-experiences and self-representations.

Through these enacted narratives, the tropes themselves are transformed, but in ways

that reflect the “expectations and understandings gained through participating in a

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specific social and moral world” (Mattingly and Garro 2000: 3). In the example above,

BG18 demonstrated a view of her physicality as driven by traditional gender norms and

what seemed to be significant mind/body separation, or unembodiment. Moreover, her

assertions about the nature and expression of power were consistent with “strength” – a quality that is fundamental to the Black Lady trope (Harris 1995; Beauboeuf-Lafontant

2009). Strength in this sense does not refer to physicality, but to the commitment to, as

BG18 says, “go”…even though I might not like it.” To strength in this sense, muscular

skill, power or endurance is arguably beside the point. BG18’s employment of “resist

manliness; embrace ladyhood,” then, only marginally addresses physicality as manliness

because for her, physicality and self are largely separate.

On the other hand, CF1, who responded “slut” to the picture of Ciera during the

focus group exercise, explained in one interview that she didn’t care for the singer’s

clothing or posture, but admired her defined abdominal muscles. Though an excellent

swimmer (she was a Red Cross certified life guard), CF1 quit swim team after a year in

part because training for competition had given her what she described as “man

shoulders.” Also, she named “being nice” as one of the skills females should have. Like

BG18, CF1’s physicality narrative is complex, but not inconsistent. She was concerned

with gender-appropriate physical presentation, but that concern, for her, took the form of calibrating her performance in order to maintain the desired presentation (a strategy similar to that of CF31), rather than dismissing physicality as unimportant. She wished to have sculpted abdominals, but not necessarily to flaunt them; she was proud of her skill as a lifeguard (she twice told a story about being chosen at work to demonstrate a

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difficult rescue technique), but did not wish to wear her skill in the form of “man

shoulders.” The importance she attached to niceness reflects the congeniality with

which the Lady (regardless of race) is perpetually charged, but her concern with fitness

and her lifeguard skills suggest that what constitutes a trespass into “manliness” is

informed by social norms and personal experience in more or less equal parts.

These are but two examples; some version of “resist manliness; embrace ladyhood” was identifiable in almost every participant’s account of gender and physicality. But as these examples demonstrate, enacting this axiom is not a simple matter of complementary action. Resistance can be no discernible muscularity or flat, defined abdominals; ladyhood can be perseverance in doing what is necessary “even if I don’t want to” or being nice. For adult African American females, resisting manliness can be accomplished by embracing ladyhood even as physicality is performed – if the performance of physicality is balanced by demonstration of traditional gendered behavior and/or heroic effort in caring for others. McPherson’s analysis of another aspect of the WNBA’s media portrayal of its players whose physical presentations are less stereotypically feminine provides excellent examples of this:

…much was made of the pregnancies of several players, as well as the battle with breast cancer of Cynthia Cooper’s mother, Mary Cobbs. Opening shots of the first championship game featured Houston Comet Sheryl Swoopes with here nine-week-old son, while much of the game’s commentary regarding Coop also detailed her nurturing and caretaking qualities. One announcer noted that Coop’s season was “made all the more remarkable by the personal struggles she’s had this year…not only looking after her mom but raising nieces and nephews…somehow she has juggled it all.” Many of the players emerge as superwomen, able to excel at both “traditional” and exceptional femininity (McPherson 2000:189).

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The WNBA, through its web site and other public relations, as well as the wider press coverage, presents black women as “good colored folk,” as simultaneously accommodating and accommodated. In the endless stories detailing Cynthia Cooper’s dedication to both her ailing mother and her adopted nieces and nephews, and in her “escape” from Watts to suburban Houston, Coop is portrayed as overcoming blackness and urbanness, an acceptable image of black femininity for an era of conservative multiculturalism (McPherson 2000:193).

As McPherson’s analysis demonstrates, the Manly Woman can be transformed through class into the Black Lady. This mechanism of transformation confers legitimacy

on female physicality and power by underwriting it with maternity, nurturing and

sacrifice on behalf of others. However, adolescents cannot readily employ this

mechanism of legitimation without violating middle class norms concerning timing of pregnancy and sanctioned social status (married) when pregnant. Teenage girls also do not typically have the resources to be able to provide materially for others in ways that are consistent with middle class norms. Being an unmarried teen mother with

(presumably) limited educational prospects risks being branded as “bad” – as lower

class – in the larger cultural milieu. And while biological maternity is not required for the demonstration of nurturing and sacrifice, significant responsibility for others’ care or material well-being is arguably not conducive to pursuit of self-fulfilling experiences like participation in performing arts or sport. It is also something a marker of less- advantaged class status.

The advantages that accrue to girls of middle class status with respect to cultivation of physical prowess were clearly demonstrated by a small group of study participants. In addition to the material resources associated with middle class status,

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most enjoyed family encouragement/support/exemplars in their endeavors, and most

were “Steppes babies” – they had been students in the school system for their entire educational lives, or from an early age. Approval of their activities by family and/or family role models helped make physical activity normative. Institutional recognition as

“of Steppes” strengthened their claim to the “lady” category and provided additional sanction to demonstration of physical prowess. For example, the high school’s athletic director offered an unsolicited opinion of GH43 as a one of the rare girls who “plays hard in gym and still acts like a lady.”

Of course, there are African American female adolescents who cultivate their physical prowess in the absence of this legitimizing class image. However, the general finding of lower levels of physical activity in general, and less sports participation in particular, among African American females relative to their white counterparts (NCHS

2004) is consistent with the small number of this study’s participants who comprised this group of enthusiastic, skilled and successful athletes and performers. It is possible, then, that the manner in which gender, class and race intersect through the “resist manliness” half of the Manly Woman/Black Lady trope, in the absence of particular status, relational or experiential conditions, acts to constrain rather than expand exploration and expression of physical prowess in African American adolescent girls generally.

Because its primary system of operation is class, rather than gender, engaging the trope through the other half of the axiom, “embrace ladyhood” may more readily

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accommodate broader exploration and expression of physical prowess. Ladyhood is synonymous with middle-class or higher status. Middle-class status marks the onset of a broader range of life opportunities and choices. With respect to physicality, ladyhood

increases access to organized activities (sports, the arts), the primary mode of physical

activity for underage girls (Walters et al 2008), as opposed to spontaneous, or “pick up”

play. Moreover, while Title IX has increased females’ access to high school and college

sports across the board over the last forty years, middle class girls are both more likely to attend high schools with robust sports programs and more likely to attend college

(Colabianchi et al, 2012; Walpole 2003) than their poor and working class counterparts.

So middle class girls are more likely to be reared in environments in which involvement

in organized physical activity is sanctioned, or even expected. The trope transformation

in this instance is that ladyhood, as a proxy for middle class status, now itself deters indictments of manliness for physically active females. The definition of appropriately feminine appearance and deportment is more expansive in a middle-class context.

The collages of two study participants who are siblings (GH43 and CF45) provide strong evidence of this expanded context and the options it offers in terms of how to enact, “resist manliness; embrace ladyhood”. The collage of CF45 (Figure 4.3), discussed

earlier, could easily be dubbed, “The 21st Century Black Lady.” The overall impression

the collage gives is of contemporary, middle-class femininity – from the central image of

the slender, well-groomed and fashionable young woman to the depictions of exercise

and healthy eating. There is consistency with the traditional Black Lady image in several

respects. However, by constructing a permeable barrier between how she is known by

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others (e.g., professional, goal-oriented, and athletic) and what she knows about herself

(beautiful, black and sexy) CF45 both embraces and expands ladyhood. In her collage,

physical prowess is thoroughly integrated into the big picture. Overt resistance of

manliness is unnecessary (as it was for BG18, but for different reasons).

CF45’s sister, GH43, constructed a collage (Figure 3.10) that likewise embraces

ladyhood and presents ornamental, instrumental and symbolic elements as well-

integrated (as opposed to compartmentalized). However, GH43’s collage conveys a more individualistic message than her sister’s. She divided her collage as well, but horizontally (and with a wavy line) and placed her athletic self in the bottom half of her collage and her more ornamental self in the top half. She explained her choice this way:

GH43: Um…let’s see…well, basically I just wanted show that I had like, kinda like two sides of me, one being the athletic side and one being like a fashion, kind of girly side? Um… SMM: Oh, I see. Yeah, ‘cause here’s the line….(043: mm-hmm)…above and below GH43: Yeah. And it, I just basically wanted to stress the fact that I’m like really athletic, but I also um, am, as like into like fashion and, ah, clothing and things like that, a lot of jewelry; I love jewelry, and (giggles). Yeah, so. That’s basically it. And then also I put b-ball for life, basically meaning I like, really want to continue playing basketball for the rest of my life, or try.

Like her sister, GH43’s physicality narrative embraces and expands Ladyhood, but does so by declaring athleticism to be a foundational aspect of her person -

supporting, perhaps through cultivation of a fit body, her ability to wear fashionable

attire. She is a lady because she projects, and expects to be seen in, multiple

perspectives. That is, she expects to be recognized for her skill at sport and her fashion

sense, for being attractive and physically competent because that is what middle class

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status provides – a broader range of life choices. Indeed, the similarities and differences

in the way these two sisters enact “resist manliness; embrace ladyhood” reflect that

range of choices.

Conclusion

The high salience of gender to physicality-informed identity demonstrated in this

group of African American adolescent girls likely does not represent a unique

circumstance among African American females. The concern with appropriately

gendered appearance and deportment expressed consistently by participants is part of

the legacy of racialization. Casting black females as “dirty, licentious, physically strong,

and knowledgeable about….evil” (Palmer in Morton, p 12) – the opposite of true (white) women - is a longstanding practice in the US, and is still observable among the racial majority as well as among African Americans themselves. Norms emphasizing domesticity and virtue among African American females are in in some regards reactions to their being cast as marginally female or bad (Hill Collins 2004), and thus are part and parcel of that same legacy of racialized gender.

These competing norms have long since been culturally codified into a set of racial tropes – thematic descriptors meant to convey a set of essential qualities. These tropes evoke vivid imagery, and thus are easily transmitted, pervasive and enduring. The tropes considered here, the Manly Woman and the Black Lady, are no exception to this.

Their historical valence persists; the importance of resisting manliness and embracing ladyhood came through clearly in most of the participants’ narratives.

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Figure 3.10 – Collage, GH43

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However, it is also clear from the data that what constituted trespass into manliness and

embrace of ladyhood differed among the study participants. These differences suggest that

participants intersectionally engage the multiple cultural systems (specifically gender, race and

class) that inform their identities in crafting their physicality perceptions and practices. It further

suggests that this engagement is improvisational rather than formulaic, and as such can support

a rich, complex set of perceptions and practices, given the proper contextual, relational and

experiential tools. In other words, the participants featured in this chapter seem to have

transformed their tropes (categorical descriptions of racialized physicality, with undertones of

gender and class) into templates (explanatory narrative frameworks of physicality informed by

gender, race and class). It remains to be seen, however, whether and how these individual

transformations have common themes, and whether those themes support systematic

assessment of physicality-informed identity in the sample. This is the task that will be taken up in the next chapter.

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Chapter 4 Performing, Conforming, Resisting: Physicality and the Negotiation of Identity

…it is only if we pay attention to how we differ that we come to an understanding of what we have in common. - Elizabeth V. Spelman

Introduction As a study of persons in culture, the ultimate goal of “It’s Just Gym”’ is theory-

building at the intersection of embodiment1, identity and health. This chapter reports

on the results of one round of narrative data analysis using the identity model

introduced in Chapter 1. The framework for this analysis includes assertions about the

nature of identity and embodiment advanced by theorists in psychological

anthropology, women’s studies and critical race feminism. It engages theory concerning the context-dominant and contingent, emergent and negotiated nature of identity, particularly among cultural “others” (Ortner 1996; Ewing 1990; Killoran 1998; Mattingly

2000; Mattingly 2008). It engages theory concerning the structural plurality and particularity of identity – i.e., that the lived experiences of African American females are not the sum of “essential” experiences of race and gender (Spelman 1988). It engages theory concerning how simultaneous, though not necessarily proportionate experiences of objectified corporeality and the body as the subject and object of culture are managed.

This framework reflects the three premises upon which this study was based.

The first is that identity is informed by multiple cultural systems (e.g., race, gender, class, media, institutional norms) and by interpersonal (e.g., family and peer

1 embodiment – the actualization or concrete expression of experience (Oxford English Dictionary online)

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relationships) and intrapersonal factors. The operation of these influences is dynamic,

rather than uniform. This means that identity is negotiated, and emerges through emplotment2 of those systems and factors (Mattingly 2000), rather than being strictly

dictated by them. The following example, excerpted from Tara McPherson’s essay,

“Who’s got next?” captures just such a process of negotiation. McPherson recounts an

exchange with the daughter of a friend concerning the girl’s new WNBA Barbie –

actually Christie, Barbie’s black friend:

I asked my friend’s daughter how she liked the doll, and she said it was “pretty fun” but looked a lot more like part-time model and Los Angeles Sparks player Lisa Leslie than like Teresa “T-Spoon” Weatherspoon, since the WNBA Barbies don’t have “any muscles” or T-Spoon’s signature cornrows. Personally, she liked T-Spoon better as a player “because she’s really physical; all those muscles are the bomb.” She went on to explain that sometimes she pretended the…doll was T-Spoon anyway….at other times she imagined she was T-Spoon and the doll was both of them, and they both had more muscles than any of her Barbies did (McPherson 2000: 184-5).

This young girl owns and plays with Barbies – the quintessential American girls’

toy. Though in the last thirty years Barbie’s world has ostensibly expanded to include

the breadth of activities and career options now available to women, the physical

presentation that distinguishes Barbie, and which is arguably intended to be as much a

focus of girls’ aspirations as the occupations represented by the doll’s outfits, has not

changed (Dittmar, Halliwell and Ive 2006). The discrepancy between the doll’s physical

presentation and that of the professional women basketball players the young girl most

admires has not escaped her notice; yet, her play does not conform to conventional

2 Borrowing from Mattingly’s concept of therapeutic emplotment, I define the emplotment of identity as the continuous process of combining and recombining experiences of context, relationship and embodiment/unembodiment into a narrative structure that is enacted through discourse and practices.

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wisdom regarding how Barbie influences girls’ self-perception (Holmqvist, Frisen and

Anderson-Fye N.d). She does not transfer her admiration to the player whose physicality more closely reflects that of her doll. Rather, she mentally transforms both herself and her doll into the visibly muscular, highly physical player that she most admires. The object of her play is traditionally gender consistent and politically race consistent (black Barbie dolls), but the content of her play challenges gender conventions.

Participant UU14 in the present study offers a contrasting example of how racialized gender identity can vary when she asserts that she likes playing football , that she wishes girls were allowed to play at her school, and she abjures significant muscle definition as unfeminine. Her comment on a photo of WNBA star Candace Parker in a sleeveless evening gown is illustrative of her views concerning the aesthetics of female physicality: “her dress is for someone whose muscles aren’t—isn’t like….that bulky.”

She cites the rigorous physical conditioning engaged in by her brother, who plays college football, as a level of physical activity engagement that she does not desire to emulate. “He works out too much,” she declared. She also expressed dislike of intense conditioning activities like “drills and suicides…cause it’s not fun.” UU14’s idea of desirable physical presentation is arguably more along the lines of “more toned than defined,” and is consistent with more traditional gendered body norms.

While the young girl in McPherson’s essay and UU14 both express interest in competitive sport, the former admires and aspires to readily discernible and regularly expressed physical prowess, and the latter, despite her aspirations to play football, does

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not. And while one might point to age/developmental stage with respect to sexuality as

a likely source of that difference, such an explanation is not entirely satisfactory. The

young girl is playing with a sexualized toy in a manner that seems in some ways to

consciously subvert conventional sexuality. By contrast, UU14, an adolescent, seems unconscious of the contradictions between her aspiration to play football and her gender norm-based distaste for the degree of muscularity and type of physical conditioning football typically involves.

This reversal of awareness seems contrary to development theory – that is, conscious engagement with gender norms seems more consistent with the abstract reasoning typically associated with adolescence (Muuss 1996). Moreover, gender norms and personal aesthetics regarding muscularity, clearly factors in these two examples, are not accounted for by the dichotomy typically employed when describing appearance norms among African American females (i.e., as consistent with documented racial norms or as transformed by acculturation to majority-race norms).

Indeed, considerations like interest in and enjoyment of physical activity and aesthetics of muscularity and prowess are not typically explicitly included in female appearance norm assessments. The assumption seems to be, rather, that the option to adhere to or abjure majority culture ideals concerning weight and shape comprises the material and cultural universe of female embodiment, at least in the United States. Specifically, the attribution of “positive body image” commonly applied to African American females presumes a non-specific, “larger” body ideal and disconnects desired physical appearance from physical performance in ways that these examples suggest may not be

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accurate. This chapter will present data and analysis in support of a more complex, and

arguably more accurate, set of relationships.

The notion that there is an indeterminate, “larger” body size standard to which

the majority of African American females adhere conforms to the notion that singular cultural categories like gender and race capture between group differences and within-

group differences. Within-group differences are explained as effects of acculturation –

exposure to out-group ideas and actions sufficient to displace norms more common to the group of origin. This assumption is challenged by critical race feminism, and by this study’s second premise. Critical race feminism asserts that the moral stance of assigning equal value to all human lives should not result in the erasure of difference:

…not paying attention to embodiment and to the cultural meanings assigned to different forms of it is to encourage sexblindness and colorblindness. These blindnesses are vicious when they are used to support the idea that all experience is male experience or that all experience is white experience…..That healthy regard for the ground of our differences from men is logically connected to – though of course does not ensure – a healthy regard for the differences between Black women and White women (Spelman 1988: 130).

Building on the idea that difference and commonality are both of value in understanding human experience , this study’s second premise is that because identity emerges in an ongoing, dynamic process, and the context in which identity is enacted is multiple and intersectional, it cannot be accurately ascertained by examining a singular aspect of culture (e.g., race, gender, class, place). This premise connects with critical race feminism through the argument that singular aspects of culture can account for within-group similarity, but only culture in its most accurate, holistic sense can accommodate both within-group similarity and within-group difference. Understanding

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similarity and difference is essential to meaningful knowledge of identity and health

behavior. Both the young girl in McPherson’s essay and UU14 are African American

females who expressed an interest in sports. Yet, their personal aesthetics with respect

to muscularity and their sense of what their game of choice requires physically are quite

different. What accounts for these differences? Are they largely due to macro-level and

institutional cultural systems – e.g., racial and gender norms, exposure to media and marketing, school-based opportunities for physical activity – or should embodiment and relationships be considered along with these systems? This chapter will demonstrate how the model introduced in Chapter 1 (Figure 4.1) was used to examine the premise that the interaction of systems, social relations and subjectivity (i.e., context, self- representation and self-experience) in individual lives creates discernible patterns of similarity and difference in embodied identity among of study participants.

Finally, this study’s person-centered stance and its exploration of participants’ experiences of physical prowess and physical activity engages Young’s theorizing regarding the cultural construction of female embodiment – specifically that among females, actions involving gross motor control, skill or power tend to be characterized by relative insufficiency and ineffectiveness (e.g., “throwing like a girl”). Young saw this circumstance, in part, as reflecting the common (though not universal or identical) female experience of the body as primarily the object, rather than the subject, of culture:

To be sure, any lived body exists as a material thing as well as a transcending subject. For feminine bodily existence, however, the body is often lived as a thing that is other than it, a thing like other things in the world. To the extent that a woman lives her body as a thing, she remains rooted in immanence, is

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inhibited, and retains a distance from her body as transcending movement and from engagement in the world's possibilities (Young 2005: 39).

Laing (1969) terms this sense of the body as detached from the self unembodiment, and posits it as a condition that may be engendered by circumstances of material

“otherness” – by a non-normative physical presentation. The analysis presented in this chapter connects Young’s and Laing’s notions, and posits that unembodiment is

“othered” embodiment – that just as embodiment implies a simultaneous and mutual bodymind experience (body as the subject of culture), conditions of material otherness are the ground of body/mind separation (body as the object of culture). In US culture, male bodies index action (control, skill and power), and white female bodies index beauty and sexual appeal3. Black female bodies, partially inhabiting both categories

(race and gender), index neither. African American females in the United States, by this reasoning, may be seen as likely to experience unembodiment by virtue of their multiply

“othered” bodies, and to experience that unembodiment as a context-dominant, intersectional experience, rather than an additive one.

3 Use of the racially inclusive designation “male” here is not meant to imply that racialization has no effect on black male embodiment, but rather to point out that the effects are not the same between blacks of opposite sex.

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Adolescence in high school (context)

Self-experience Self- representation

Figure 4.1 – Identity model, setting-focused

Findings in descriptive, qualitative studies of attitudes towards physical activity among African American females support the notion that unembodiment may be a relevant construct – that some African American females may view recreational exercise as foreign to their nature (Gordon-Larsen 2004); may consider control of weight or size

- the most common reason for physical activity engagement among women - unimportant relative to other life responsibilities (Walcott-McQuigg 1995); or may see physicality as less relevant to social selfsameness than qualities of mind(McClure N.d).

However, the findings of these studies also suggest that unembodiment is not a singularity - a uniform result of cultural imprinting. Rather, it is more likely that, as Leder

(1992) argues, understanding female unembodiment requires attention to, “particular homogenizing and normalizing images and ideologies concerning ‘femininity’ and

‘female beauty’ to which women in any given culture are exposed” and the “unique configurations that make up each person’s life” (p206).

The assertions that cultural “otherness” may produce degrees of unembodiment and that unembodiment is informed by ideology and experience resonate with the third

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premise of this study: that investigations of culture, the body and health that employ

appearance norms (body image) as a proxy for attitudes towards physical prowess and

role performance likely capture the influence of culture on persons but likely miss vital

aspects of the operation of persons in culture. Indeed, the attribution of acculturation

most often invoked to explain variability in body image among African American females

presumes that dominance of “black” “normalizing images and ideologies concerning

appearance” are usurped by “white” “normalizing images and ideologies concerning

appearance.” Such “culture in persons” explanations do not satisfactorily account for

the imaginative play of McPherson’s young WNBA fan, for UU14’s aspirations to play

football and avoid what she considers to be excessive muscularity and physical exertion,

or for the co-existence of positive body image and weight concern among African

American females documented in several studies (Abrams, Allen and Gray 1993; Parker

et al 1995; Altabe 1998; Smith 1999; Kelly et al 2005; Black et al 2006; Stern et al 2006).

The third premise, then, suggests that manifestations of relative unembodiment may be

a useful starting point in the quest for insight into physical prowess and role

performance attitudes as functions of persons in culture.

In summary, the analysis presented in this chapter demonstrates that physicality informs identity in varied ways within a group that is frequently characterized as relatively homogenous in this regard. That variety is effected by the dynamic nature of identity itself, by the plurality of contexts that shape identity, and by identity’s operation as a socially-performed, embodied state. Examining the embodied experiences of African American females as multiply “othered”, and therefore

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simultaneously embodied and unembodied persons in culture revealed both the range of those experiences and their commonalities.

From unembodiment to body agency

Proceeding from the above assertion that a persons in culture perspective is needed to understand how physical prowess and role performance figure into identity, this chapter introduces the construct of body agency, and demonstrates both its function in the model posited and its utility in discerning patterns and inconsistencies in

a local set of identity narratives. The notion that body agency describes states of relative unembodiment produced by “othered” status was taken up first in the analysis.

The accelerometer and anthropometric data were examined for patterns of activity, body proportion and fat distribution consistent with the hypothesis of body agency varying among study participants. Field notes taken during physical education classes and sports practices, along with interviews and collages were then examined for evidence of unembodiment. This examination affirmed the manifestation of body agency as relative among the study participants; that is, its presence was not uniform in degree or manner among them, and was affected by school structures and social dynamics. Next, a set of case examples were examined for evidence of unembodiment in an effort to discern how other, macro-level cultural systems, like gender, class and race informed physicality-informed identity.

While certain systems, such as gender, were prominent in many cases, there did not appear to be any one system that was strongly determinative; there was no clear hierarchy at work. Rather, analysis of the participants’ visual and verbal narratives

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indicated that the apparent prominence of one cultural system (e.g., class), does not

and cannot capture the functional operation of context as an integrated phenomenon.

Finally, additional case examples explored the notion and effects of dissonance between

identity elements and how the circumstances of this dissonance could be seen as both

affecting and reflecting body agency. This analysis showed body agency to be a

theoretically robust construct – one that is able to account for similarities and

differences in disposition and action with respect to physical presentation and prowess

in the sample – and established the model as a reasonable framework for examination of those similarities and differences.

Querying Unembodiment

Activity level, BMI, and Waist-hip ratio – markers of unembodiment?

The idea that physical presentation reflects ability/capability is logically appealing and has a certain degree of face validity. For example, it is reasonable and likely correct to assume that a substantially overweight person has a sedentary lifestyle.

Additionally, the idea that physical presentation predicts both behavior and attitudes inheres to cultural categories that have a long history of conflating appearance and essence, like gender and race. The findings of between-group studies of physical activity and overweight would seem bear out these assumptions: US males tend to be more active than US females, and African American females are the least active relative to females of other US racial groups [National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) 2004].

African American females also contribute disproportionately to the high obesity prevalence rates within their racial group [National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

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2004]. These facts might lead one to expect this study’s participants to be largely sedentary and predominantly overweight or obese, based on their race and sex.

However, human morphology is influenced by a myriad of factors, including heredity (for which race is not a sufficient proxy), age, sex, social and physical

environmental conditions, in addition to behavior. Also, there is no single, objective

standard of human materiality; humans interpret their own and others’ physical

presentations and behaviors through culture. That is, norms concerning how the body

should look and perform, as well as the attendant power dynamics of particular body

categories (race, gender, class, dominant, non-dominant, newcomer), are culturally

particular. Therefore, taking both biology and culture into consideration, the

relationship between bodily presentation (size, proportionality) and physical activity

behavior seems likely to be indirect. One may ask, then, not only to what degree

measures like body mass index (BMI), waist-hip ratio and accelerometry are accurate

measures of height/weight proportionality and body fat distribution at a given point in

time and movement intensity over time, but also to what degree correlation between

any two of these measures might suggest varying states of unembodiment. Such an

examination was, in fact, one aspect of this study’s analyses.

Forty-two participants completed the first interview, at the end of which height

and weight measurements were taken. Participant BMIs were calculated from these

measures (see Appendix E). Based on the guidelines provided by the US Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), none of the participants were underweight (BMI

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in the 5th percentile or less for age), 55% (23) were at a healthy weight, 31% (13) were

overweight, and 14% (6) were obese.

Frequency analysis of the accelerometer data revealed that the participants were sedentary for most of the time that their activity was being monitored. While approximately 82% (40/48) engaged in moderate or vigorous physical activity for at least five valid days 4of the nine days they wore the accelerometers, only 15.9 minutes per day were spent in moderate activity on average (range 0 – 105 minutes), and only

1.4 minutes (range 0 – 35 minutes)were spent in vigorous activity on average. The moderate activity mean for the sample is only 28% of the CDC’s recommended 60 minutes of at least moderate daily physical activity. However, participants only wore the accelerometer for three days at a time, and around 20% reported that they engaged in swimming and/or cycling fairly regularly – neither of which is detectable with accelerometry. Participants who played contact sports (e.g., soccer) were given the option of removing the device for practices and games if they were concerned about falling on the device, and one participant reported doing so. These factors no doubt contributed to the lack of correlation between BMI and minutes spent in moderate to vigorous activity. There was likewise no correlation between waist-hip ratio and minutes spent in moderate to vigorous activity. Finally, the Progressive Steppes school district is known for its academic rigor. Given that the bulk of the study took place during the academic year, and many of the study participants expressed aspirations to attend college, the high rates of inactivity, while of concern, are not surprising.

4 “Valid days” of accelerometry = device worn continuously for 10 hours or more.

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Sample size and sampling method preclude statistical comparison of the study data with national data for the purposes of generalizability. However visual comparison of these findings raise interesting points for consideration. The first is that the BMI profile of the sample is relatively consistent with national surveillance data for African

American adolescent girls, with PSH trending slightly higher than the national average in the overweight categories, as seen in Table 4.1 below.

Table 4.1 – BMI categorization for the sample compared with the 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System

BMI Category It’s Just Gym/PSH YRBSS (2009) (2010) Healthy 54.8% (17.5 – 23.8) 64.10% Weight Overweight 30.9% (25.5 – 29.6) 23.3% Obese 14.3% (32.5 – 38.5) 12.6 %

In terms of physical presentation, the study participants fit the national profile of high rates of sedentariness, overweight and obesity among their race/sex group.

However, their risk profile in terms of body fat distribution/central obesity is not the same as that for BMI. Only 17% of the participants had waist/hip ratios that placed them in the moderate (ratio between .81 and .85 – 3 participants) or high risk (ratio > .85 – 4 participants) category for weight-related health conditions. Two participants classified as overweight had waist/hip ratios over .85, and one participant classified as obese (BMI

32.5) had a waist/hip ratio of that placed her in the low risk category with regard to central obesity (.69). This inconsistency concords with the finding by Daniels, Khoury and Morrison (1997) that BMI does not measure percent body fat equally well across

139 adolescent race-sex groups. It also suggests that using measures of central obesity, combined with BMI, to assess issues of weight and health could be beneficial in this group in two regards. First, a combined assessment could decrease the likelihood that a participant with healthy lifestyle habits and a BMI just outside the healthy weight range and a low-risk waist-hip ratio would assess herself as “fat” (e.g., CF28). Secondly, the assessment of central obesity could be used to open a discussion with overweight participants with higher risk waist-hip ratios about body shape (apple vs. pear). Such a discussion could alert them to the fact that their risk for obesity related disease is actually higher than their BMI alone would suggest. In this way, health education could sensitively militate against the rationalization of excessive girth as “curviness” – an attribute claimed by many of the overweight study participants (although many of the participants who applied the “curvy” descriptor to themselves also aspired to smaller waists).

In this study, then, direct measurement of physical proportions and accelerometry provided important, but incomplete and inconclusive information about physical activity and weight-related health risk. The study participants appear predominantly sedentary but are not predominantly overweight/obese. The predictors of size-related health risk concord among less than 20% of the participants and do not correlate with each other at all. And while the lack of relationship between these measures affirms that physiognomy does not dictate physiology, the answer to the question of whether varying degrees of unembodiment might be “written” on the participants’ bodies in the form of size, proportionality, and level of activity is also “no.” However, it is the case

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that the measures discussed above are context-free, but experience and meaning of size and activity are not. It was to context-based observation and narrative that the analysis turned next.

PE class structure at Progressive Steppes High (PSH)

Physical education (PE) classes and sports practices were observed for eight of the

nine months of the study period. Progressive Steppes school district requires students

to complete three semesters of physical education in high school. Two of these must be

accomplished under the auspices of the high school physical education department.

Physical education is required in the freshman year. Freshmen are assigned to PE classes by the physical education director. Upperclassmen are able to choose from among the classes offered in their scheduled PE period. Most students complete the PE requirement by the end of their sophomore year. Typically, juniors or seniors enrolled in PE have either become students in the Progressive Steppes district after their freshman year, have failed PE previously, are taking extra PE credits in lieu of academic course work or study hall, or choose to take PE because they genuinely enjoy it.

After the freshman year, students have the option of completing the balance of their required physical education credits through independent study. This mechanism allows students to receive PE credit for participation in school-sponsored sports or for supervised physical activity pursuits engaged in outside of school (with permission of the physical education director). Students completing independent study must submit documentation of hours commensurate with the in-school PE requirement and a report of their activities to the physical education director in order to receive credit. The

141 overwhelming majority of study participants (90%) had completed or planned to complete their physical education requirements through the classes offered at school.

Those who gave reasons for choosing not to pursue independent study either did not wish to undertake the additional paperwork or enjoyed PE. Family economics may have influenced these decisions as well (i.e., parent(s) may have been unwilling/unable to incur the costs associated with such activities), but no participant named cost as a reason for not pursuing independent study.

Because grading periods at PSH are around five weeks long, students taking PE in a given semester can potentially be exposed to four different activities (e.g., basketball, volleyball, weight training, and softball). In addition to sports-oriented PE classes that included soccer, tennis, floor hockey, basketball, football, volleyball and softball, classes offered by the nine-person faculty included an array of personal fitness options: weight training, cardio-fitness, core strengthening, fitness boxing, fitness walking, and stress management/yoga. This array of classes reflects both the department’s responsiveness to students’ interests (the fitness boxing class was developed subsequent to student requests) and its mission of fostering a lifelong habit of regular physical activity among the students.

PE engagement – Institutional subgroupings

Students’ interest and engagement in school-based physical activity was to some extent reflected in their PE class assignments and/or selections. And though there was no tracking process for class placement per se, by the end of the spring semester, student presence in a given PE class appeared to fall into a loose categorization based

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on institutional (faculty) perceptions/expectations of students’ ability, interest and level

of participation. I observed this informal sorting to result in three groupings of students

that I dubbed engaged, compliant, and resistant. A similar self- categorization was

noted with respect to choice of PE classes by upperclassmen. There were classes of

mostly males in which enthusiastic, higher-energy play was the norm (engaged).

Compliant classes tended to be majority female classes in which consistent engagement and moderate physical exertion were encouraged but not required. Resistant junior and senior students tended to populate male-dominated classes (e.g., basketball) in which

“real” play took place, but in which students of both genders who seemed not to care

for PE (or about getting more than a passing grade) were permitted to participate

minimally as long as they did not leave the area or become disruptive.

These categorizations appeared to reflect not only differences in student

behavior, but also differences in institutional expectations of students. Engaged

students demonstrated competence, consistency and enthusiasm in PE. They dressed

for class, arrived on time (for the most part), and interacted as part of the class

throughout the period. The expectation of engaged students seemed to be that they

possessed a working knowledge of games and would be largely self-directed in play, or

that they would attend to, recall and follow instruction in fitness classes. Compliant

students usually dressed for PE and took part in class activities, but demonstrated

inconsistent focus and enthusiasm and were less self-directed than the engaged

students. Their play/participation also tended to be less skilled. The expectation of

compliant students seemed to be that they would participate in an acceptable manner,

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but would require some direction and occasional boundary reminders. Resistant

students were frequently late to class and either failed to dress or only partially dressed

for PE (e.g., wearing sweatpants and a fitted or low-cut top and heavy jewelry or

wearing sweatpants over their jeans). It was not unusual for the instructor to have to

cajole resistant students into activity, and even then their play was often sporadic or

listless. Resistant students might walk away in the middle of a game or simply stand

against the wall and talk to their friends for most of the period. Skill level was difficult to

assess due to their low level of engagement. The expectation of resistant students

seemed to include dressing for class and executing basic conditioning activities or

engaging in low-level skills practice or activity on the periphery of the main action.

As the preceding descriptions suggest, the categories of engagement were also

notable for their strong correspondence to sex. The majority of boys participated in PE

classes at what seemed to be a moderate to vigorous level. Engaged students were

nearly all male; resistant students were nearly all female. Compliant students were also

more likely to be female, though there were male students who occupied this category

as well. 5 Even in the cardio and core classes, in which girls predominated, the few boys

who were enrolled demonstrated notably greater focus, effort and consistency than

most of the girls. Compliant boys who were less skilled in the game being played tended to substitute boisterous activity for competent play, while compliant girls with lower skills seemed to circumscribe their efforts (only attempting to play a ball within arm’s

5 There was an additional category of male students I categorized as “disruptive.” In my observation, these male students tended to be assigned to the “compliant” classes led by the PE director or one of the senior male staff members.

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reach; minimal running and jumping; frequents stops or incomplete sets during

conditioning classes). Another avenue of engagement for compliant students was low-

competition activity. For example, there was a shooting game called “knockout” created by the faculty to occupy students with low desire or ability to play a “real” game of basketball. The behavior of resistant students was less gender-distinct. Though resistant males were few in number, both sexes in this category engaged in class minimally or not at all.

Twenty-six (54%) of the participants were enrolled in physical education during the study period. Just under half (12) of the participants enrolled in PE were freshmen, and were thus assigned to a class by the physical education director. Of the 26 study participants enrolled in PE, I categorized five as engaged; the remaining 21 were relatively evenly divided between the compliant and resistant categories (see Table 4.2).

Two of the five engaged students were upperclassmen.

PE class engagement among study participants – indications of unembodiment

The observed institutional categorization scheme for student attitudes toward and behaviors during physical education is consistent with the documented, more precipitous decline in physical activity levels among adolescent girls compared to adolescent boys (National Center for Health Statistics [NCHS] 2004). However, there were instances in which the institutional scheme did not seem to fit individual study participants. Specifically, there were participants who represented themselves in their interviews, collages, and observed behaviors outside of PE class in a way that was inconsistent with their PE class placement and/or behaviors. Though no categorization

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scheme is infallible, I argue that these inaccurate categorizations and/or inconsistent

behaviors reflect instances of dissonance between participants’ experiences of their

physical performance/prowess and how they were perceived institutionally, how they

behaved with their school peers, or both. That is, the way that the “engaged, compliant,

resistant” categorization failed to capture participants’ experiences of their physicality is

consistent with the idea of one set of identity model dynamics conflicting with the

remaining two – with dissonant self-experience and self-representation, or dissonant

context and self-experience (see Figures 4.2 and 4.3). I argue next, with case examples, that dissonance between how participants saw themselves and how they were seen/categorized informed what Leder (1990) described as a “split….between the body I live out and my object-body (p96),” ( here termed body agency) among study participants. As a reckoning of unembodiment, body agency is not a measure of optimum integration or manageable separation, but rather an account of relative separation of body and mind.

Table 4.2 – PE Class Categorization

Class Placement Engaged Compliant/Resistant Student Categorization Engaged GH7 UU50 GH5 MO26 GH43 MO62 Compliant CF58 BG22; UU32; UU40; CF4 MO15 UU20; UU17; CF31; CF34;BG6; UU61 Resistant *** BG54;BG8; BG11 ***there were three enrolled participants who fit into this cell but who did not complete the study

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These next examples will show that, as a manifestation of the demands of othered status, any degree of unembodiment presents challenges. They will further show that body agency both informed and was informed by participants’ experiences in their PE classes and/or their participation in athletics.

PE Class (context)

Body Agency Player Status (self- (self-experience) representation)

Figure 4.2 –dissonance between self-experience and self-representation

PE Class (context)

Body Agency Player Status (self- (self-experience) representation)

Figure 4.3 – Dissonance between context and self-experience

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Who’s a player?

One striking example of self-experience/self-representation dissonance was

observed in some “engaged” PE classes. Though males dominate both in numbers and in

terms of being the principal actors in basketball, floor hockey, and flag football, PE

classes at PSH are co-ed. Two of the four or five girls who were observed playing

basketball, floor hockey and flag football with boys were study participants who were

also upperclassmen. Though the fact of their participation itself indicated strong

interest in play, the girls’ tendency was to play the periphery rather than being in the

thick of the action, (guarding the net in floor hockey, playing the outside in basketball),

and to work at least in tandem (on only one occasion was a sole female player

observed). However, their play, and indeed most co-ed play observed during the study

had a parallel quality; that is, there were two sex-specific groups who played alongside

rather than with each other. The boys dominated the games, keeping possession of the ball most of the time and scoring most of the points. This was particularly notable in football. Boys routinely usurped girls’ attempts to catch the ball. GH5 objected to this

behavior:

GH5: I always liked football, …so I decided to play touch football, but then they would never throw me the ball, so I was like… SMM: Yeah, I noticed they kind of pa-, bypassed the girls when they…‘cause they (seem to) think you guys can’t throw or catch. GH5: Yeah, I…we proved them wrong a couple of times, but… SMM: Yeah, I saw you. GH5: Oh, you did? (giggles briefly) SMM: Yeah, I was, I was out there watchin’, ‘cause I was interested, because you and your friend were among the few girls, who, who signed up for touch football, and then, you seemed genuinely interested in playing.

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GH5: (voice takes on a higher pitch)…never passed us the ball! They never passed us the ball.

There were no male participants in this study, so it is impossible to know the

boys’ rationale for excluding the girls from critical aspects of play. However, other

recent studies exploring adolescent physical activity in a school setting indicate that

often, boys find girls to be “less athletic, competitive, and skillful at sports” (Taylor 2006;

Fagrell et al 2012). The “parallel play” observed during PE classes seems to bear out this finding, as does my observation that the boys in PE class seemed uninterested in engaging in intense, competitive play with girls. Being excluded from play with boys was not a concern expressed by most study participants, but for those who expressed a desire to play, as GH5 did, being excluded seemed frustrating. From the standpoint of embodiment theory, however, it is possible that the girls’ practice of “playing the outside” of male-dominated games actually served to reinforce the boys’ exclusionary practices. That is, by positioning themselves on the periphery of play and essentially waiting to be recognized and rewarded with inclusion when the ball entered the space they had staked out seemed to communicate inhibited intentionality (Young 2005: 37) on the part of the girls. Inhibited intentionality is movement that projects discontinuity between aim and enactment (Young 2005: 37). The nature of the girls’ involvement in the action may have been interpreted by the boys as a request for recognition of their subjectivity as players: “We want to play if you will let us.” This conditional positioning may have afforded the boys the option to treat them not as play peers, but as “others”

who are likely to compromise play and whose participation must thus be limited.

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The point here is not, “even girls in this study who express an interest physical activity don’t engage fully;” rather, it is that the inhibited intentionality I am theorizing is at work in this example is emergent rather than inherent. As Young argues, it is shaped by experiential and sociocultural dynamics, not by “a mysterious quality or essence that all women have by virtue of their being biologically female.” Inhibited intentionality is produced by a “set of structures and conditions that delimit the typical situation of being a(n) (adolescent female) in a particular setting, as well as the typical way in which this situation is lived by the (young) women themselves (2005: 30-31).”

GH5 had been involved in competitive sports since she was very young. She reported that she helped her friend, the quarterback of the football team, hone his throwing arm by playing catch with him, and she was a gifted dancer. Likewise, MO62, another of the “parallel” football players, was a dedicated year-round softball player, and one of the few girls observed to play basketball with boys during PE (albeit in a lower-key game of three-on-three). These participants were not observed to exhibit inhibited intentionality in their primary activities (dance, softball). So, though gender- distinct, the degree and quality of engagement in physical education classes among girls at PSH, and among study participants in particular, was not uniform. Based on these examples, it is reasonable to speculate that discontinuity between girls’ own experiences of their physicality and how they were perceived and responded to by their male peers likely contributes to the degree and quality of engagement in PE for some – even for girls who are capable of skillful and confident play.

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The above analysis also suggests something about the dynamics underlying most

(78%) participants’ less than complimentary assessment of their male peers’ behavior in

PE as “so competitive.” It may be that part of what the girls object to about boys' demonstrated "competitiveness” in traditional PE games is the subsequent positioning of themselves (girls) as incompetent and their marginalization in play (Taylor 2006;

Fagrell et al 2012). The assigned status of incompetent, marginalized player, may, in turn, inform some participants’ assessment (52%) that in high school, “gym isn’t fun.”

Moreover, individual girls’ categorization by the institution (represented by the PE faculty) as merely compliant, or even resistant to physical education is likely confounded by girls either participating in this competence hierarchy (accepting the designation as incompetent and the accompanying marginalization) or by their opting out of it. The irony is, of course, that their choice may not be readily apparent because the effects of the two options are indistinguishable: these girls play less robustly than they could (or might wish to do), or they don’t play at all.

GH60’s narrative provides another example of dissonance involving student self- experience and institutional perception as reflected in PE class assignment – namely, how categorization may also be informed by student adherence or non-adherence to other institutional norms, and how the resulting institutional perception can conflict with student self-experience. A freshman who self-identified as “athletic” and as an avid basketball player in her interviews and in her collage (Figure 4.4), GH60 was the only female to play in the annual student/faculty basketball game. Moreover, she reported enjoying PE. She eschewed the appearance concerns she recognized in her female

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peers, like their desire to avoid sweating, and claiming an energy level comparable to

that exhibited by her male peers:

GH60: Like I don’t mind sweating my hair out. But girls be like, don’t actually participate in gym. Like that’s what they tell me. But, I’m just really active so I have to participate in gym. And like, I’ll be sweating but they don’t be sweating. SMM: So now let’s talk about like the energy level that you put out in gym…compared to most girls. So you said most girls are 5, 6. Where are you? GH60: Like a 9, 10. SMM: (laughs) Ok. Now, so is your 9, 10 the same as the boys’ 9, 10? GH60: Mm-hmm!

Given such a clear assertion of her interest in competitive play, GH60’s

“compliant” PE class placement seemed strange. However, comparison of the notes from the PE class observations in which she was the focus with those of GH43 offers

interesting insight into circumstances that might have produced this apparent mismatch

between structural positioning and behavior. GH43 was also a freshman who “loved” basketball and PE, but was in an “engaged” class. During team selection for matball (a form of kickball), GH60, like all the other girls, was chosen for a team only after all the boys had been chosen (though she was among the first girls chosen). This situation recalls the “gendered competence” dynamic described in the preceding example, which would make GH43 being chosen before many of the boys in her class for field hockey, and indeed her placement in an “engaged” class plausibly explainable as a rare occurrence resulting from the high degree of athletic competence she exhibited. But when more of the details of the two participants’ situations are contrasted, a different reading becomes plausible – namely that the difference in class placement and player status between the two participants reflects ways that the two participants did or did

152 not meet tacit standards for institutional recognition as an “athletic” female student.

Though a freshman, GH43 started for the junior varsity and varsity basketball teams.

GH60 was taken off the basketball team just before the start of the season at her mother’s request. According to GH60, her mother was concerned that being a full member of the basketball team would cause here schoolwork to suffer, so she was allowed to practice with the team, but not to play.

When GH60 shared this information, it recalled a conversation between the investigator and one of the PE instructors regarding some of the boys who played in the faculty/staff basketball game. The staff member acknowledged that the boys were passionate players, but observed that they would “never play for Steppes” because they could not meet the academic requirements for sports team membership. It seems plausible that GH60’s benching affected her recognition as an “engaged” girl in PE, both in terms of class assignment and peer recognition, given that engaged girls tend to be involved in school sports and participation in school sports is premised on a certain level of academic competence.

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Figure 4.4 – Collage, GH60

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The data also suggest that GH60’s history of gendered presentation did not comport with institutional expectations of an athletic girl. Prior to high school she was

“used to like, doin’ sports and… always having my hair in a ponytail and not really caring about my nails necessarily.” This focus on performance over presentation is also evidenced her choice of the qualities “athletic” and “strong” as the things she most wanted others to know about her in constructing her collage. The sole ornamental element of her collage was a head shot of a female model captioned, “hair transformation” (Figure 3.4). And though by the end of the spring semester, when her first interview took place, she had gotten a perm and was wearing her hair down and getting her nails done regularly “cause I think like I should be more girly,” she remained ambivalent about the benefits of “girliness”:

SMM: …so what’s good about being more girly? GH60: What’s good about being more girly? SMM: Mm-hmm, ‘cause you said that you thought you should be that so there must be something good about it, right? GH60: Yeah, uh, I guess. I don’t know. SMM: (laughs). You, you don’t sound like you’re completely convinced about this whole girly thing. GH60: I don’t know. I’m confused. SMM: Do you like it? GH60: Yeah, it’s nice. But I’m ‘on have to take my nails off ‘cause basketball is about to start.

For GH60, “girliness” appears to comprise a not-unpleasant set of practices to be engaged in during the off-season, but which are less highly valued and less fully integrated into her self-experience than is her athleticism. GH43, on the other hand, reported that she began to pay more attention to her appearance in middle school, and described and portrayed in her collage (Figure 4.5) a more conscious balancing her

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athleticism and her sense of fashion and love of adornment. This demonstration of

balance between body as subject and body as object arguably concords with institutional notions of what it means to enact athleticism in an acceptable manner as a female student at PSH. GH43’s PE class placement, the player status bestowed by her

male peers, and the athletic director’s praise of her ability to “play hard and still act like

a lady,” then, are possibly due, at least in part, to her looking and acting the part in ways

that are not directly related to skill and drive in play. The issue with regard to

unembodiment for GH60, then, is that social and institutional gender norms create

pressure for an attenuation of her experience of her body as the subject of culture – an attenuation to which she has not yet fully committed.

Social dynamics, unembodiment and athletics

The notion that degree and quality of social recognition can reflect and shape manifestations of unembodiment was not only discernible in participants’ perceptions and behavior concerning PE, but also in the perceptions and behavior of those involved in athletics. Contrary to what one might expect, involvement in athletics was not limited to participants who performed engagement, or even to those performing engagement or compliance in PE. In fact, the study data indicate that because participation high

school athletics confers social benefits both in school and in the larger world, PSH’s

athletic programs drew students whose interest in and commitment to a given sport, or

to sport for sport’s sake, varied. Viewing their observed behavior and reported feelings

and experiences through the lens of unembodiment, some study participants appeared

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Figure 4.5 – Collage, GH43

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to have taken up athletics out of a desire to transcend a certain othered status or to

enact a desired member status.

For example, the majority of the study participants who were involved in

athletics pursued track and field. However, of those eight study participants, only four

attended practices regularly. Of the four who did not attend regularly, UU2 did not

attend any of the practices observed (though not all practices were observed). She explained her reasons for joining the team primarily in social/psychological terms:

UU2: I think when I was….when I was eight my parents got divorced, and so then like me and my mom would like eat and eat and eat cause she was like…I guess we were both upset, I don’t know. So, I got fat over time. And I still have it and I’m trying to get rid of it but people judge me for it… So that’s why I did track. ‘Cause like, people were always judging me when they’re, I’m like with my friends. Like you, they don’t say anything it’s just the way they, how they look at you? So that’s why I kind of started doing track. Like, I want people to see that I’m trying. Even though I do it at home normally, I’m trying, so I’m gonna do it in public now, so people can see it.

UU2’s statement indicates that she joined the track team in response to felt norms regarding both her body size and what constituted an appropriate response to undesirable body size – physical activity. But while she unambiguously assessed herself as fat, the physical appearance she desired was not that of a track athlete. Rather, the physical attribute to which she aspired was “curvy,” like the plus-size model whose image she chose for her collage (Figure 4.6). Her use of the qualifier “lately” in the assertion that she “work(ed) hard to stay in shape” is consistent with her stated interest in public performance of weight management through fitness, and her admission that traditional individual fitness pursuits (calisthenics, running) bored her. These declarations, and joining the track team, seem to reflect a desire to attain acceptable

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personhood by being seen engaging in an activity associated with healthy and attractive bodies more than they reflect a desire to participate in track. But, as was pointed out above, recognition as a “PSH athlete” also requires demonstration of academic competence. Because she had friends she felt did not judge her or make fun of her, UU2 saw academics, athletics and the maintenance of her existing social life as competing rather than complimentary priorities, and her plan to stop the negative judgments about her size by taking up track and field was short-lived:

UU2: But then I got…lazy. I was like, ‘never mind.’ And I don’t…you have to go every day and I don’t go every day to track ‘cause I’m so busy trying to keep my grades up. Like I don’t get how athletes do it: keep your grades up, go to practice, go to games, have a social life. I can’t do that. I have to…one is…I have…something has to give. So I can’t go to practice every single day.

Though she unequivocally expressed her dislike of being fat, UU2’s relatively

rapid abandonment of her “track as trying” strategy, coupled with her collage themes of

self-love and non-judgment (Figure 4.6) speak not so much a desire to achieve a body

that will not be judged negatively as to a desire to achieve a recognized and more widely

accepted personhood prior to (and perhaps in lieu of) acquiring that body. Being part of

the track team, then, was perhaps to have been a way of rendering her “self” visible

through her body, rather than having that self “hidden” by the negative perceptions and harsh judgments that characterized her experience of being fat in the context of high school. UU2’s hoped for transformation from peripheralized bodily other to admired insider through athletic affiliation can be seen as yet another manifestation of unembodiment – though in this case not due to contextual constraints or structural/relational misperceptions. UU2’s joining the track team was a response to her

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Figure 4.6 - Collage, UU2

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experiences of harsh judgment concerning her physical presentation (for example, two

boys sitting at her table in her art class discussing girls’ “ratings” assigned her a grade of

“2”). However, the nature of her strategy, “track as trying,” suggests a body/self

separation that UU2 herself cultivates not just in response to her negative experiences, but coincident with them. This disposition recalls Leder’s characterization of

unembodiment that can accompany obesity – an experience of body characterized by the conviction that:

The head and related functions, experiences, and parts of the world – such as intellect, socializing, personality in the everyday sense, and professional competency – are accepted as valuable and the “true me.” The remainder of the body is deprecated as “that thing I am encased in” or “imprisoned in.” Body activities and body places, such as physically involving sports and sports facilities, are neglected. In such cases the body is seem as a limit, as incapacity (Leder 1992: 186)…

Interestingly, the ordering of priorities that informed UU2’s decision not to pursue track also echo aspects of the valued “head” functions Leder identifies. This

observation further bolsters the argument that body agency is a relevant factor in

disposition toward sports or any other moderate or vigorous recreational activity among study participants. Moreover, self-representation – this time in the form of the desire to transcend the felt negative peer assessment that accompanied her body size – seems key to the manifestation of unembodiment in this case.

BG8 provides another example of dissonance between self-experience and self- representation, though in her case the desire was not to transcend ascribed status, but to attain desired status. She entered the district in the middle of her sophomore year.

At the time of her participation in the study as a junior, her closest relationships,

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according to her personal network grid, were predominantly with members of her

family and church. Her primary recreational activities were also church-affiliated; she

had been a cheerleader for her church’s basketball team for four years. In the study

year, she tried out and been selected for the junior varsity cheerleading squad at PSH, which she felt would contribute positively to her experience as a student: “Yeah, it’s gonna get better, since I’m a cheerleader.”

However, status as a cheerleader required performance as a cheerleader, and though the PSH cheerleaders did not perform the strenuous acrobatics that characterize cheerleading in many popular movies, the coach demanded cardiovascular and core fitness of squad members, and the cheer routines required endurance, coordination, flexibility, and the ability to jump. Judging by BG8’s description of what qualities/abilities were important to cheerleading, and what I observed of her performance in two squad practices, the reality of the level of exertion and prowess that was required may not have strongly informed her decision to try out for the squad:

SMM: What does it take to be a good cheerleader? BG8: Skills. SMM: Like what kind of skills? BG8: Um. First of all you have to actually want to cheer. You have to be preppy and full of spirit aanndd…. uhm…then, just the regular skills like, I dunno, like the jumping (SMM: mm-hmm) and then the cheer skills; having the voice. Aanndd, splits…yeah. SMM: Okay…splits, jumping.. BG8: Stuff that cheerleaders do.

BG8s vague verbal account of what was expected of her physically as a PSH cheerleader was reflected in her observed performance at two practices:

Field notes on cheerleading practice, 5/20/10: Practice had already begun when I arrived (unlike the track team, they apparently start on time). Finishing up a run

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on the track (distance unknown). Then 75 crunches (3 sets of 25) and seated inner thigh stretching. Balance of hour spent on movement combinations with and without music. BG8 just made varsity; her lack of endurance and lack of familiarity with the sequences is obvious, but she kept at it and never lost her smile. 7/7/10 - BG8 refining dance movements with a partner (who seems to be coaching her). Group recombined to review routine - BG8 seems very self- conscious - she glances frequently at those nearest while performing the routine. This constant monitoring of others seems to interfere with her focus. Fussed with her hair after each practice sequence - interesting contrast with CF28, who simply stood ready. When routine changed, BG8 conspicuously unfamiliar - she seemed to not know where to begin. I wonder how much she practices on her own.

These data suggest that BG8 is not accustomed to the rigorous, complex physical

performance that is cheerleading at PSH. Other statements from her interviews reinforce this impression, and further suggest inexperience with her own physical capacity and a preference for inaction. She initially equated any sustained exertion with what she had earlier named as the maximum effort she exerted in cheerleading tryouts,

“I’m always moving every day. Always doing something like…that every day.” However, her position on outdoor recreation was: “I don’t play outside. I sit outside and watch other people do other stuff.” She viewed this attitude as a natural function age and gender, “when you’re older…you’re more calmer…boys are more active, I think. ‘Cause they’re more, like, wild.” These statements and observations did not seem to augur well for BG8’s success in remaining on the cheerleading squad and achieving the recognition she desired. This impression was affirmed in conversation with the coach after the practice observed in July. She thought it very likely that BG8 would not be equal to the physical demands of the upcoming week-long, rigorous cheerleading camp that was part of their training, and would thus be unable to remain on the squad.

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The case of BG8, then, represents yet another iteration of unembodiment, one

chiefly informed by the blend of BG8’s inexperience with her own physical capacity and

a habitual sedentariness she viewed as “natural” for her age and gender. Also, her

inexperience and sedentariness seems consistent with what PSH expects to encounter

among its students with respect to PE, and are accommodated by the broad range of

acceptable engagement in PE class. In this way, BG8’s state of unembodiment

approximates the “thing-like passivity” Battersby (1998:39) describes as characterizing

one extreme of the female subject-position. Moreover, the reality of what cheerleading

at PSH required conflicted with that unembodiment in ways that BG8s previous

experience with cheerleading for her church apparently had not. “Wanting to cheer”

and being “peppy” and “full of spirit” were necessary but not sufficient to sustain cheerleader status at PSH. And based on her interview responses, observed behavior, and the assessment of her coach, the potential for her desire for social recognition as a cheerleader to leverage a more skilled, active corporeality as a cheerleader was uncertain.

Culture in persons or persons in culture?

The previous two cases exemplify ways that the decision to participate (or to attempt to participate) in athletics, for some participants, was marked by the co- existence of personal disinclination toward taxing athletic performance and strong desire for social acceptance or inclusion. It is tempting to label these two participants, and others exhibiting similar attitudes and behaviors with respect to athletics

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participation, as insufficiently motivated, patently unrealistic, or both. But if these two

participants’ encounters with athleticism are viewed as enactments of body agency –

enactments strongly informed by context and the desire to perform socially validated

personhood – then the dissonance between what they valued or believed about themselves and how (or whether) their self-image was accepted by others, along with

their actions, are relevant considerations. And these cases suggest that in the case of physical activity behavior, that dissonance may make status transcendence or status attainment difficult to realize, particularly if there are life contexts in which that dissonance is less obvious or absent.

UU2 felt comfortable enacting incompetent but lighthearted physicality in casual, non-competitive play with her athletic friends: “I have friends that play sports?

And they're really good at it, and I'm not, so I try to make f...like, have fun with it?

'Cause I have no skill at all, whatsoever in that sport. So...” But when faced with the prospect of performing her incompetence daily as the price of being recognized as

“trying,” her response was, “never mind.” BG8’s experience with being a cheerleader for her church’s basketball team gave her the confidence to try and duplicate the role in the school context. However, the difference in performance expectations between school and church cheerleading did not seem to produce the level of insight that precedes increased skill:

SMM: Um…are there things that you would like to be good at that you’re not good at currently? BG8: Math, um…studying…um…that’s it. Oh! Jumping higher in cheerleading. Ok. SMM: So how do you guys practice jumping?

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BG8: Stretching. SMM: So you just str… BG8: And, and…just practice your jump over and over and over again.

BG8’s identification of jumping as her sole cheerleading skill in need of improvement is inconsistent with the coach’s concern that BG8 wouldn’t make it through the rigorous cheerleading camp schedule of days long on rigorous physical activity and short on sitting and watching. This apparent lack of insight on BG8’s part, and her initial identification of “stretching” as the key to improving her jumping do not augur well for her plans for status attainment through cheerleading.

Thus, these cases, along with the examples from PE, indicate a range of unembodiment – variability in body agency among participants that is in some ways particular to a given setting and its social dynamics. Additionally, the relationship between body agency and physical activity appears reciprocal, but also somewhat unpredictable. These findings are important theoretically because they validate the notion that identity “emanates from heterogeneity via patterns of relationality”

(Battersby 1998: 58), and because the model used in the analysis provides a means of characterizing the duality of the “othered” body as the object and subject of culture.

These findings also have health policy import, for they suggest that relatively weak effects of setting-focused physical activity interventions among African American females may reflect unconsidered dissonances between participants’ body agency, the setting, and social dynamics. For example, the ethos to “be satisfied with the body God gave you” documented among some African American women (Duncan and Robinson

2004) could impede participants’ engagement in a church-based fitness program at the

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intensity level necessary to gain a training effect. Such a scenario is consistent with

UU2’s actions of joining and then dropping track. In such instances, personal concern

about weight or size and social pressure (to aspire to or disdain a particular bodily

presentation) could conflict in fundamental ways, resulting in inconsistent or sporadic efforts to change.

The exploration of body agency through the PE and athletics cases also reveals that while adolescence in high school was a shared context for participants, it was not the only cultural system in effect, nor was it determinative of body agency or physical activity behavior. Gender was clearly at issue in three of the cases (GH5, GH60, and BG8) but did not produce similarly “gendered” activity behavior among participants. Other, intersecting contexts - institutional recognition (UU2), church affiliation (BG8) and racial

appearance norms (GH60 – “I don’t mind sweating my hair out”) were also in evidence.

Consequently, while gender was the foregrounded system in GH5’s football dilemma, and she in some ways conformed to the self-representation apparently expected by her male peers during play, these dialectics did not undermine her self-experience as an athletically competent person or designation as an “engaged” PE student. The effects of sweating on her hair (arguably the shibboleth of racialized gender) had no effect on

060’s desire or willingness to play, though she was amenable to paying more attention to cultivating a “girly” appearance in the off season. UU2 decided that the risk to her academic standing posed by publicly attempting to transform her self-described fat body through track team membership was not an acceptable one. Cheerleading for her church apparently accommodated BG8’s significant unembodiment to a degree that

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being a member of the PSH squad could not, so much so her transition to school

cheerleading was not, at last observation, going very smoothly.

These examples of the multiple, intersecting contexts at work in participants’

attitudes and actions concerning physical prowess and role performance demonstrate

the benefit to theory-building of conducting identity-focused inquiry from the

perspective of the person rather than privileging categorical designation based on

behavior or appearance. A richer, more nuanced narrative interweaving context, social relations, and embodiment is the result. But is person-centeredness more revelatory as

well as being ideologically and aesthetically satisfying? Does the query for evidence of

unembodiment really offer explanatory insight that a perspective of contextual

commonality does not, or are the approaches merely two ways of arriving at the same

conclusion – that GH5 and GH60 are active and of healthy weight, and UU2 and BG8 are

less active and overweight (see Table 4.3)? The analysis suggests the respective answers

to these questions are yes, yes and no. Gender is clearly at issue in both GH5 and

GH60’s experience of PE in terms of being seen as competent players. However, the

narrative and observational data suggest that GH60’s experience may also be informed

by institutional norms related to academic performance among athletes and concerning

female appearance and deportment. The opposite seems to be true for Participant GH5,

as evidenced by her class placement, her assertion that she “like(ed) my small size (she

had the lowest BMI of all the participants), and her concerns that her shoulders looked

too “manly” and that she not grow any taller. However, she was also aware that her

slender dancer’s body was less appealing to some of her African American male peers.

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She expressed in her collage that she wanted to be seen by others as “beautiful” rather

than “skinny and weird-looking” (Figure 4.7). Her healthy BMI, the institutional

recognition she enjoyed as an engaged student, and her simultaneous self-acceptance

of her physicality and advocacy of more typical gendered appearance standards likely

would not have been revealed by singling out one context as the “prime mover” for her

physicality perceptions and habits. Moreover, none of the identified contexts seem to

be at work in the same way for GH5 and GH60, despite their similarity with respect to

physical proportionality and physical activity.

UU2 and BG8, who both pursued athletics for social ends, seem to exemplify

widely held notions about race and weight among African American females. Clinically

overweight with a BMI of 29.3, Participant UU2 described herself as fat and had

experienced social stigma from other African Americans due to her larger body size,

attitudes that might be said to be a result of acculturation to majority norms. BG8 (BMI

32.7), on the other hand, did not reference her weight during the course of the study,

an omission that could be interpreted as consistent with an observed “cultural”

preference for larger body size among African Americans. But the logic of racial framing

of body image would predict that “acculturated” UU2 would persist in her efforts at

track and “traditional” BG8 would quickly abandon cheerleading – the opposite of what

was observed. These findings suggest that contextual commonalities like racialized body

image may not be a reasonable proxy for attitudes and actions relevant to physical

capacity and prowess – that by employing the perspective of culture in persons, other important aspects of context may be overlooked. Body agency, on the other hand,

169 presumes multiple, intersecting contexts, and posits that the resultant influence of those contexts dominate, but do not dictate attitudes and actions concerning physical capacity and prowess, as these cases have shown.

Table 4.3 - Side-by-side comparison of BMI, institutional categorization, and states of unembodiment (body agency)

Participant BMI PE/Athletics Unembodiment ID Categorization6 Characterization7 GH5 17.5 engaged/engaged Higher body agency; conscious othered8 status GH60 22.4 compliant/engaged Higher body agency; nascent othered status UU2 29.3 compliant9/resistant Lower body agency; self- conscious othered status BG8 32.7 resistant/compliant Lower body agency; subconscious othered status

Capturing similarity and difference with body agency

The four cases discussed in the previous section are summarized in Table 4.3. Reading across columns, one could conclude that this side-by-side comparison of physiognomy, social perception, and psyche suggests weak predictive relationships at best, and constitutes a re-presentation of the obvious at worst: the participants with lower BMIs were in engaged or compliant PE classes, demonstrated engaged athletic performance

6 PE category reflects class assignment/athletics category reflects observed behavior 7 Body agency describes a range of unembodiment rather than an absolute state of that condition, and the relationship is inverse – greater unembodiment produces lower body agency, and vice versa. 8 All participants are racial others. Additionally, in this example, GH5 and GH60 are gendered others; UU2 is othered specifically in terms of gendered appearance standards, and BG8’s otherness stems from her lack of skill/competence as a cheerleader. 9 Participant 002 was not observed in PE; PE categorization is based on participant responses to inquiries concerning her level of play in PE class (“…certain sports I get competitive with…”) and her criteria for choosing PE classes (“Do I have some sort of like, ability in it? Will I look embarrassing if I do it?”).

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Figure 4.7 – Collage, GH5

and had higher body agency; participants with higher BMIs had less predictable PE and

athletics performance, but lower body agency. But read another way, the

unembodiment column can be said to capture the variability that is missed in the

inference that rising BMI is accompanied by rising disinterest in physical activity. It can be said to offer insight into both the similarities in body agency between GH5 and GH60,

and into the interesting flip/flop of PE/athletics categorization between UU2 and BG8.

More broadly stated, the unembodiment characterization seems to offer a means of

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discerning both similarity and difference among participants with respect to physicality

perception and physical prowess. Querying unembodiment requires suspending the

assumption that there is a linear relationship between materiality, disposition and

behavior in favor of the question, “how do these three things operate in the lives of

particular persons within a given context?” And, as Table 4.3 suggests, this process of

identifying the multiple, intersecting contexts informing an individual’s body agency,

and shedding light on the complexities of attitude and action that individuals manifest

within those contexts does not produce descriptive infinity, but rather identifiable patterns of disposition and action within the group. The potential to identify such patterns, heretofore undiscerned, has significant implications for theory, practice and policy in anthropology, education, public health and medicine.

However, analysis of an intriguing set of four case examples is not a sufficient basis for viable theory. In addition to simply needing to apply this unembodiment analysis to more cases to test its reliability, some questions about body agency and its operation in the identity model remain unaddressed, including the following: (1) Gender figured prominently in the four cases discussed above. Does this mean that body agency is fundamentally a function of gender, and other systems are necessarily subordinate, or can other cultural systems drive body agency’s expression? (2) “Social security” (self- representation) was examined in the cases with respect to status aspiration, but not with respect to common behavioral norms or status maintenance. There is evidence to suggest that such maintenance activity is important – that social selfsameness is enacted on an ongoing basis rather than permanently bestowed (Bucholtz 1999;

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Kaufman 2003). Were there any common behavioral norms held by the participants that seemed to bear on pursuit of physical fitness or expression of physical prowess? Were any behaviors attributable to status maintenance observed among the participants? (3)

UU2’s narrative, in particular, implicated longstanding family dynamics as triggers for

the emotional and social eating that contributed to her weight gain over time. What

other means of coping practiced in other aspects of life (and/or at school) were reflected in these young women’s body agency? The analysis of these four cases suggests that the answers to these queries lie in an investigation of how gender, class

and management of social connection/social distance inform and are informed by body

agency. That is, how the participants negotiated play in the context of gender, prowess

in the context of class, and the dynamic of experience of physicality ↔social selfsameness was the next step in the analysis.

This next step, combined with that of the previous four cases, forms the basis for

the argument that body agency, along with its modeled interactive elements, is

theoretically robust and is the appropriate basis for the systematic examination of the study narratives conducted in the next chapter.

Fleshing out unembodiment

Multiple constructions of gender

Because gender dynamics in the US (and in many other cultures) position male bodies as the subjects of culture and female bodies as the objects of culture, unembodiment can seem a “natural” consequence of femaleness – an amalgam of the ambiguous transcendence, inhibited intentionality, and discontinuous unity that Young

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(2005) describes in her essay, “Throwing Like a Girl.” If this were true, body agency would be primarily a function of gender, and the contribution of gender and any additional contexts could be measured or modeled hierarchically. However, the idea that gender drives body agency is problematic both philosophically and practically. It is problematic philosophically because, as Spelman (1988) argues,

…accounts of living under conditions of sexual oppression cannot be the same for [all] women…And this, I think, tells us that while in one sense women are all of the same gender, what it means to be a “woman” depends on what else is true about oneself and the world in which one lives. All women are women, but there is no being who is only a woman. For different reasons and on different occasions, being a woman may be, both in the eyes of others and in the eyes of a woman herself, the most important factor about her (p101 – 102).

Though the preceding argument is made specifically in reference to class,

Spelman makes a similar argument with regard to race (“are we in our entirety divisible

into parts? Can I point to the “woman” part, then to the “white” part? Would it be

desirable to be able to do so?” p 101), and certainly her argument can be applied to

other contexts as well. Applying this philosophical indivisibility of being broadly means

that while gender is identifiable as a dominant factor in body agency among most of the

study participants, the effects of gender do not occur as a uniform, experientially

separate phenomenon. The notion that body agency is primarily a function of gender is

problematic from a practical standpoint because is presumes a clearly bounded,

dichotomous operation of gender in human culture that is demonstrably false. Even the

expression of “traditional” gender ideology is bounded by time and circumstance. That

is, prevailing gender ideology interacts with other aspects of context and/or relational

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and intrapersonal elements in the production of both normative and non-normative

gender identities.

These non-normative identities may be informed by unacknowledged contradictions between gendered cultural rhetoric and the practices of gendered persons. For example, Ortner (1996) found that Sherpa gender ideology portrays women as “weak, self-indulgent, and unreliable,” but she also found that Sherpa women are “seen as capable domestic managers who may be left to operate the household as an economic enterprise for long periods of time” (p199). Non-normative identities may also take the form of “exceptions” created by the apparent contradictions of two gendered social roles [e.g., young rural Galacian women embody dual social roles as subsistence providers (“strong women”) and dedicated consumers of high fashion

(“pretty ones”; Roseman 2002)]. Non-normative identities may result from social exclusion produced by dual “other” status (e.g., enslaved black women working in the rice fields were obliged to “reef” their dresses up around their thighs (West 1993), thus making the social image of purity and chastity symbolized by concealing the limbs that was de rigueur for white “ladies” in the antebellum era unobtainable). Finally, the degree to which meaning is embedded in relationship can affect how and when categories such as gender are evoked [e.g., the Kubo of Papua New Guinea privilege relational identity (as the wife, mother, sister or daughter of so-and-so) over sexual dichotomy in social relations; Minnegal and Dwyer 1999]. This philosophical and practical indivisibility of context and status consistently observed among human groups means, ultimately, that assigning gender (or any other cultural system) first

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consideration in assessments of physicality perception and physical prowess

demonstration risks misattribution of disposition and action to gender when other

contexts are equally, or perhaps more, influential.

Accounting for class

The data suggest that among some of this study’s participants, skill levels typically attributed to gender (i.e., girls more often exhibit the lower skill levels associated with compliance or resistance, therefore these categories of engagement primarily reflect gender), could easily have also been a function of class. Of the four freshmen study participants in whom the attitudinal characteristics of engaged PE students were observed (MO26, GH43, UU50, and GH60), only one was recognized as an engaged student in terms of PE class placement. The engaged student (GH43) lived in a two-parent household and had one bachelor-educated and one master’s educated parent. The 5-year estimated (2006-2010) median household income for her census tract was $52,882 (US Census Bureau/American Fact Finder). Two of her older sisters, graduates of PSH, had excelled in track and field (they were pictured on the school’s athletics “wall of fame”). A starter for both the junior varsity and varsity basketball teams as a freshman, basketball was, by her own report, a year-round occupation for this participant:

GH43: Yeah, but I’m…it’s kinda year round for me (giggles). ‘Cause I do uh, my coaches have me do a lot of things. As off, you know, off season…Yeah. SMM: So do you, like, go in and work with your coach regularly during the off season, or are you mostly doing that stuff on your own? GH43: Um, kind of both, like, I do, ah…he will let me know where to go, um, and he’ll be there with other girls, and um…also on my own, I just…like in my back yard when it’s nice out. You know.

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Though the reporting of family income by participants was unreliable in both its

consistency and questionable in its accuracy, GH43’s census tract information, family

educational and athletic history, and personal skills practice habits mark her as middle

class. The description of basketball as her occupation is not merely a linguistic device; it

both reflects her devotion to the sport and the privilege she is afforded to pursue that

devotion as a middle-class adolescent. She reported no competing demands on her time

– no responsibilities involving homemaking or family member caregiving. Such circumstances are often assumed to be normative for youth in the US broadly, but they are, in reality, normative for US youth of middle class or higher status. By contrast, it is common for working class and poor girls, in particular, to have significant household maintenance and/or caregiving responsibilities (Lareau 2003).

UU50, another of the other freshmen who exhibited engaged attitudinal characteristics (and compliant class placement), presents an interesting contrast to

GH43. She, like GH43, lived in a two-parent household, and all her siblings were also female. Her parents were college graduates, she had been enrolled in Progressives

Steppes schools since first grade, and she aspired to become a surgeon. But UU50’s dissimilarities to GH43 are also significant. Her opinion of PE was “it’s not bad but it’s not good;” she desired a more challenging class environment: “I ‘ont know. They don’t really tell us like we have to play. Like if we have to play, then that’s when everyone gets up and start being active, but it’s not really…they don’t really force it, so…that’s why it’s not as active as it should be.”

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The differences in the home situations of these two participants are even more marked: the 5-year (2006-2010) median income for UU50’s census tract was $30,865.

She described her older sister, who had recently graduated from PSH as “just lazy” and

uninterested in sport. Her parents were verbally supportive of sports participation but

were themselves recreationally sedentary according to UU50. She had a summer job

and was expected to participate in some fairly extensive renovation projects taking

place at home. She identified her job and home responsibilities as consuming at least

some the time she would have liked to spend pursuing physical activity outside of

school:

SMM: So do you go out running, like, by yourself sometimes, or with your friend? UU50: Um, I was gonna start but then I have to work, so…now I can’t do it, ‘cause we were going to but I have to work. SMM: Where do you work? UU50: (Name of school)’s for the…it’s like um, the Y-O-U thing, through all of that. So, it’s just a summer job. It’s nothing really…important, but it…you know. It’s… like a company…it’s not a company, really, but it’s…it helps people get jobs and to learn how to, you know, balan- m-, m-, manage their money well, so it helps.

UU50 felt her job was a resume-builder in addition to a source of income, but she was

also cognizant of the way summer employment affected her time for pursuits like

physical activity:

UU50: I wanna be fit, active but…after… like during the summer, I just don’t know when. SMM: You’re just taking the summer off, though? UU50: No, I’m trying to get ready for this trip and….work. And I’m like fixing my house, so that’s another problem, so I don’t really have time, like I’m tryin’ tuh fix it and redo our, our basement, so…that’s work. SMM: Ok, so it sounds like you all have a busy schedule… UU50: Yes, and I didn’t expect it (sounds annoyed). The house part.

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UU50’s home situation serves as a reminder that “middle class” is quite a broad category. Though her family certainly enacts middle class values with respect to education, educational/occupational aspirations, and work ethic, the family seems to have embraced leisure-time recreation/sports participation only rhetorically.

Additionally, if the family income is accurately represented by the census tract median, this seven-member family likely has very limited discretionary income, making funds for things like sports equipment, club membership fees, and travel to sports events concomitantly limited. This combination of lesser valuation of physical activity and sport and limited resources means that the lower-level playing skills that likely informed

UU50’s placement in a “compliant” PE class could just as easily have been effects of limited exposure and opportunity as they are to have been an indication of disinterest.

Limited exposure and opportunity have thus affected UU50’s embodied experience of physical activity. This limited experience, in turn, has affected her emotional response to the rigors of athletics. Though she expressed interest in sports participation, UU50 was also intimidated by the idea of high school-level competition.

Also, the rigors of cardiovascular conditioning that come with playing a sport were both foreign and unwelcome. She denied asthma, but associated being out of breath with

“feeling unhealthy” (i.e., it is not healthy to breathe hard) and reported that being out of breath made her feel angry:

UU50: I wanted to do track, but it’s…it seemed harder here at the high school, ‘cause you got a lot of fast people; I’m not that fast… Now I’ve gotten faster over the years… SMM: Yes, I would imagine so, so, you know, it might be worth a try.

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UU50: It’s that or lacrosse. SMM: Uh-huh? UU50: Yeah, that’s a good…I like that sport. SMM: Um…but it…but you don’t like, like straight fitness activities like runnin’ the stairs… (apparently gets affirmative nonverbal)…ok… (laughs) UU50: I don’t…I have a very short breath, like I don’t know what’s wrong or…I don’t know, I just… SMM: Do you have asthma? UU50: No, I don’t have asthma. I been to the doctor; they say nothing’s wrong with me, but I need to ask why. SMM: But you have a hard time breathing when you…. UU50: Yeah! I feel, like, unhealthy when I…that’s how I feel when I sp-…breathe that way.…hmm…it’s not my weight or anything; I just don’t know what it is, it just feel…. SMM: So is it scary, when you… UU50: No, it’s just…I don’t know what it is! I know I don’t (have) asthma, so I don’t like, think…that’s off the ques-, out of the question, I’m just…I’m just short of breath I guess. SMM: Ok. So it’s uncomfortable, when you get real short of breath UU50: Mm-hmm, it’s (an) uncomfortable feeling…and I get a attitude, and I don’t like people around me when I’m like in that state of mind. SMM: So when you’re like, uncomfortable like that and can’t breathe, you don’t necessarily want people around you, you don’t want them to… UU50: …feel like I’m being mean, but I’m not, I’m just…hurting.

This exchange indicates that this participant is knowledgeable of the connection

between physical activity and health, but also suggests that knowledge may be more

didactic than practical. While she was not overweight (BMI 22.6), she was

deconditioned, and she had little experience with the process of becoming fit – with

being consistently taxed and, through that process, increasing her physical capacity. She

was coached by a runner friend through her most recent experience of increasing her

cardiovascular capacity (running twice around the track without stopping and without

feeling out of breath), but that friend had since moved away. And though she described experiencing anger as a consequence of the “hurting” that accompanies shortness of

breath, the tenor of her comments strongly suggest that fear of some unknown ill

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effects also figures in her response and affects her activity level. Her unembodiment, then, is grounded in a lack of connection between her knowledge of the benefits of physical activity and her actual practice of it. She had neither practical experience of sport nor (much) practical experience of attaining or maintaining physical fitness, and that experience deficit was likely a function of limited material and relational resources.

This lack of practice meant that her engaged attitude toward PE and her interest in selected sports was essentially an abstraction that reflected both her exposure to middle class values at home and at school, and her home situation of primarily rhetorical advocacy for regular physical activity and physical fitness. Her in-name- primarily endorsement of physical activity could also explain her view that the PE faculty should enforce play. Her fear and uncertainty, coupled with the myriad demands on her non-school time, conflicted with her knowledge about the health benefits of regular physical activity and aspiration to present as fit, capable, calm, well-nourished and happy (Figure 4.9). In the absence of the active, external encouragement/direction she obtained from her departed friend and desired from the faculty, what emerged from that conflict were only good intentions.

Policing the Grounds of Relationship

UU50’s strategy to withdraw from activity rather than to risk being judged as

“being mean” because the physical discomfort of exercise caused her to “get a attitude” points to the importance of social relations in identity dynamics. UU50’s desire to avoid being negatively characterized by others was not unique within the sample. Other participants mentioned “attitude” or “bad attitude” as an undesirable quality, and

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denied having a bad attitude or being quick to “get” one. Of those who admitted to

“attitude,” almost none regarded it as a good thing, but rather associated it with being

loud, disruptive, disrespectful, and hard to get along with, and saw it as grounds for self- monitoring and selective social engagement:

GH7: …some people have a bad attitude, and sometimes they need to calm it down at times, and like, I wouldn’t, I wou-, I don’t like that because me, I’m friendly with everybody, so why would I want them, why would I wanna, like, push ‘em away? SMM: Right. So how do people who have a bad attitude behave? GH7: Like, they’re loud. Ugh. Like, they’re loud, stuck up and like don’t care about, like when people when class is in session they’re loud in the hallways, and we don-, everybody’s focusing on them instead of on the teacher. Whereas GH7’s comments about “attitude” focused on her peers, BG8 both criticized people with “attitude” and self-identified as likely to “get an attitude” under the right

(or wrong) circumstances:

SMM: So, how would you describe yourself? I thought this was interesting. You want people to see you as yourself…then what is it that you want them to see? BG8: I’m friendly. I…well, I give respect you know, but I don’t like, like people with attitude ‘cause I don’t work good with people with attitudes ‘cause I got…a attitude problem myself. But, it doesn’t show. Because I don’t really get attitudes all the time. SMM: What do you mean by people who get attitude? I mean, I think I know what you mean. But I want you to say more about that. BG8: I dunno like, take too—s—takes stuff too serious. SMM: Alright, so like, like maybe they’d like take offense really quickly? BG8: Yeah and then make life hard when I say like little smmaalll things.

The importance these two participants attach to limiting displays of “attitude”

resonate with other school-based research that documents the stereotyping of black adolescent females as boisterous and overly assertive, and the efforts of black girls, their parents, and black educators to combat these stereotypes by promoting

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controlled, composed and “ladylike” deportment among black girls (Fordham 1993;

Fordham 2008; Morris 2007). GH7’s statement resonates both with UU50’s above and

one made in her own interview: “Like I keep to myself in school, so I… like, block out

everything, do my work, turn in every…like (assignment)…” While these statements may not at first appear to explicitly engage racialized gender, her disparagement of

“loudness”, and focus on academic achievement signal that rejection of the “resistance for survival” strategies researchers have identified (Taylor, Gilligan and Sullivan 1995;

Ward 2007) among “at risk” African American girls may be a behavioral norm among the sample. BG8’s comments suggest that the concern for proper deportment is not only a feature of the participants’ relationships with adult authority figures, but that it is also a matter for self and peer policing.

This notion of peer policing has particular implications for body agency and physical activity engagement. That is, the multiple contexts (gender, class, race) from which this policing is sanctioned and the importance of social self-sameness to adolescent identity may position expressions of desire (to attain fitness) and experiences of distress (caused by lack of familiarity with the process of becoming fit) as potentially irreconcilable issues for individuals who do not have a history of involvement in athletics.

In her 30 years of work with adolescent girls, Carol Gilligan has explored the idea that forsaking one’s own experiences, perceptions and desires for the sake of social selfsameness is a cultural rite of passage – part of the process of becoming an adult.

One of Gilligan’s participants, Judy, explains the process as giving up mind for brain:

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The mind sort of has your real thoughts and a brain sort of has the intelligence . . .what you learn in school . . . but your mind is sort of associated with your heart and your soul and your internal feeling and your real feelings…. (Gilligan 2006:56).

Though Gilligan’s work is primarily concerned with adolescent psychology rather

than adolescent physicality, her ideas map quite well to the identity model that

informed the design and analysis of this study. Being acknowledged and affirmed by

others (secure self-representation) is a key element in the dynamics of identity. But

given the dominance of context in general, and school’s strong emphasis on normative

behavior, it is easy to imagine the SE↔SR dialectic being rendered less voluble,

particularly given a self-experience that is non-normative or associated with lower

status (Figure 4.8). The latter is possibly involved in UU50’s concern that the “anger”

engendered by her shortness of breath will be perceived as “being mean.” To use Judy’s

language, UU50’s brain knows the importance of physical activity to health. That knowledge is reflected in her attitude toward PE, in her stated interest in track and lacrosse, and in the images she chose for her collage. But her mind, which, referencing

Leder, could also be described as coincident with her lieb, or lived body (1990), is eager for the experience of play and fearful of both the largely unknown process of becoming fit and of how her emotional response to that process might be perceived by others.

These fears reinforce each other and result in her choice to separate herself, and she is left with the conflicting of aspirations of who she would like to be and how she would like to be seen.

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Adolescence in high school (context)

Body Agency Young (black) woman (self- (self-experience) representation)

Figure 4.8 – Context and self-representation muffle self-experience (the shading of the elements represents their volubility)

Also, the importance of gendered self-sameness, and what appears to be the relative unimportance of physical activity to peer relationships among the study sample

(see Chapter 6), suggests that the bracketing or tempering of competitive physicality may be the price of peer group membership/status maintenance for some participants.

GH7 presents an interesting example of physicality bracketing. She described herself as muscular and athletic, and dismissed peer disparagement of her visibly muscular physique, rationalizing that she was both more fit and active than most girls, and that she was a unique specimen:

GH7: Well, they always say that I got man arms, but (laughs), that’s like it. So… SMM: So how do you, how do you usually respond to, to things like that? GH7: Pssh. I’m like, “No I don’t,” be…just…”I’m small for my size so I’m ‘on have more muscle than you all anyway. And plus I’m more athletic… than all ya’ll.”

GH7: So, like I can pick up someone that’s heavier than me. So it’s kind of weird. SMM: Right. So, would you consider that…your strength to be unnatural? GH7: Yeah.

In her own estimation, then, GH7’s muscularity, in addition to being a byproduct of being active in track and field for six months of the year since middle school

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(the study year was her junior year), was particular to her being. By casting herself as

the exception that proves the rule of gendered physicality, she was able to dismiss ”man

arms” as non-applicable to her and affirm her femininity through endorsement of the race/class norms of even-tempered friendliness and academic focus.

Tempering of physicality was also observed among those for whom the notion of policing for racialized and gendered self-sameness seemed much less salient. Like

Participant GH7, GH16 was also a “legacy Steppes baby” (a lifetime student in the

district with family members who were graduates) and a committed athlete (soccer,

track, skiing and snowboarding). However, she took a decidedly individualistic stance on

both gender norms and peer relationships. While she displayed neither “loudness” nor

“attitude,” she unapologetically claimed to display both anger and an intense

competitiveness on the soccer field that she believed to be non-gender-typical.

However, her iconoclastic behavior was simply a matter of fact – not one of concern to

her:

GH16: …I don’t wanna be rude, but I’m not girly-girly, I’m not like, a priss (giggles briefly), I’m like, I’m out there and I’m like a tomboy, and I do, I do certain things that not a lot of girls do, like I play soc…I play soccer, and I’m active, and I get a lot of bruises and like, express my bruises, I like, I…I don’t have a problem with my bruises; I like them, they’re ok, and like, it’s what I’m used to, so, every time I get them it’s just like, “oh, ok, that’s a new one…I play tougher, and like, I get angrier…I get…I get angry faster, than like normal women do and like stuff like that.

Consistent with her espoused lack of girliness, this participants’ collage (Figure

4.10) contained only two ornamental elements (there were two instrumental and two

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Figure 4.9 – Collage, UU50

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abstract elements10). Moreover, GH16 explained the ornamental elements (polished

nails and red skinny jeans) and the abstract elements (the phrases “sexy tomboy” and

“be HOT be a better you”) as having more to do with expression of her personal

predilections than adherence to style or any aspirations to “sexiness” per se:

GH16: Um, I chose the red skinny jeans because red if my favorite color, but also I like skinny jeans, and I like the style. Um, the “be hot, be a better you” it’s kinda just saying like, make yourself better, make yourself stronger and like wiser and stuff like that. Um, the tomboy thing, I am tomboy; I have an older brother, I never was all girly-girly, kinda…that kind of person. And then, the nail polish, that just… I like exotic colors.

GH16: …yeah girls nowadays; they just wear heels, I guess to like attract different guys, and they wear heels and like those skinny dre-, like tight dresses and stuff like that, and I don’t…I don’t wear that. I wear like, loose kinda clothing sometimes. I mean, I have on tight shorts today, but, I can barely fit them because I lost weight, but um, and I wear skinny jeans, but I don’t wear like the tight dresses and the tight skirts and all that; I’m just me, like in my own…self, and like, I don’t think that girls should be, should have to wear skirts and should have to wear dresses, or should have to wear heels or stuff like that, like that’s for the time that you, want to hit that. It doesn’t have to be like that.

These statements indicate that GH16 had chosen not to adhere to many of the

gendered behavioral and appearance norms that governed her peers’ preferences and practices – that she embraced action that she understood as less feminine, though not wholly masculine (she named sharply defined arm musculature as a physical attribute that would cross the line into “boyish” presentation, and that would therefore be undesirable). And though it was her debut year on the track team, as was the case with

UU2, GH16 did not experience the demands of team membership as an impediment to

10 Ornamental elements were defined as depicting appearance or adornment; instrumental elements depicted action; abstract/symbolic elements conveyed intangible qualities.

188 her existing relationships. Rather, she prioritized her athletic commitments and seemed more irritated than concerned when she received complaints about her unavailability:

GH16: And then like, people are just trying to like, talk to me and like, hang out with me and stuff like that, but I just don’t have time and then they get mad when I don’t have time and it’s like…I’m sorry that I don’t have time. Excuse me for not making my schedule fit around your schedule (giggles).

It would seem, then, that GH16’s SE↔SR dialectic is not driven by either peer policing or status maintenance concerns. However, just as her distaste for “man arms” reveals her as an incomplete gender iconoclast, so do the track practice observations, and particularly observations of the group warm-up, reveal that she is not completely immune from peer influence. Boys’ and girls’ track practice took place at the same time, though each team had its own coach. Both teams began practice with a series of warm- up exercises, which they performed as a group and without much direction from the coaches. The difference in focus and execution between the boys’ and girls’ workout was marked: although both groups exhibited friendly good humor, the boys’ energy level was higher, they worked more discernibly as a unit, and they completed the entire warm-up without pause. By contrast, the girls completed their warm-up in a rather desultory manner; there were typically a few team members out in front, a sizeable middle pack, and several stragglers; and it was common for the warm-up to stop for several minutes and then resume for reasons that were not obvious to an outside observer. GH16 occupied a spot in the middle of the warm-up pack, and in this context, she did not exhibit a focus comparable to that of the male track team members. Rather,

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she was indistinguishable from the female majority. Her performance during the event- specific portion of practice was similarly unremarkable:

Field notes, 3/30/10: Practice run – 350m. Got feedback from coach, then repeated. Noted short stride, stiff hips. No noticeable change in pace or technique in response to coach’s corrective instruction (observer seated on the far side of the field, however). Second heat was faster by a few seconds, however. Cool down walk VERY slow. Not so much a cool down as a stroll. Chatting with another team member during cool down.

However, two months later, toward the end of the season, GH16 was observed

running in the neighborhood near the school, and her stride had lengthened noticeably.

When I mentioned this siting to the track coach, he affirmed that she had indeed

improved, and had worked hard to do so (she achieved a personal record of 2.42 for the

400 meter race by the end of the season). Given the contrast between her observed

solo practice and improvement over time, and the way she was observed to adopt the

more “laid back” ethos with respect to effort in practice, it seems likely that GH16’s

gains were a result of significant independent effort. Social self-sameness, then,

arguably was important to this very individualistic participant, but the context of that

recognizable personhood for her was not gender or race, but team membership. By

modulating the intensity of her effort to match that of the group during practice, she

made herself, a newcomer, recognizable. However, this practice of status maintenance

did not preclude her self-experience as a person who enjoyed and readily expressed her

physicality. In other words, her self-experience as a competitive athlete arguably

“spoke” more loudly than her recognition of the need to conform to the team’s

behavioral policing , but because she tempered the expression of her drive while in the

group, there was no SE↔SR dissonance (see Figure 4.11).

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Figure 4.10 – Collage, GH16

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Athletic team membership (context)

Body Agency Track girl (self-experience) (self- representation)

Figure 4.11 – Self-experience↔self-representaion consonance (exhibited by GH16)

This set of case examples supports the notion that secure self-representation or

peer recognition, like context, is not formulaic in its influence – it can and does unfold in

various ways, and does not determine disposition or behavior any more than does

context. Taken together with the cases discussed earlier in the chapter, the two

examples just discussed suggest that self representation is most revelatory when looked

at in light of context and self-experience – that desire for and action to achieve peer recognition can engage with context and body agency in various non-linear ways. For example, the 42% of participants who reported enjoying PE in their elementary school years but described “competitive” behavior in high school PE as distasteful and particularly characteristic of boys supports an inference from the cases presented that physical engagement past a certain level is normatively non-female in the PE context

(another 23% stated they had never enjoyed PE and also tended to view it as more of a

“boy thing”). Thus, within-group policing of gendered class norms seemed to inform

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both efforts to attain physical competence (struggle or discomfort risked resort “getting

an attitude”), and expression of prowess (visible muscularity or intense effort risked interpretation as “not us” – as boyish) for study participants. But what of the 35% of

participants who enjoyed PE in high school, or at least claimed not to mind it so much?

What of those participants involved in athletics? While most negotiated the norm of

prowess demonstration in PE by simply not playing that hard, performance in athletics

presented more of a management challenge. There were also those for whom the

achievement of “social security” seemed to vie strongly with desire for a preferred

degree of control over how much they engaged with others. In short, most participants’

self-representation seemed to include negotiating practices of separation as a way to

resist self-compromise. The final section of this chapter will explore the findings

concerning these practices of separation and demonstrate its relationship to context

and body agency.

Separation as Resistance

As indicated above, exploring norms and policing activities in the realm of social

selfsameness revealed a related similarity among participants. Many participants

reported or displayed practices of social separation with respect to physical activity.

That is, participants elected to separate themselves in various ways in the context of

group activity, or they chose to pursue physical activity as a largely individual endeavor, or both. For example, one participant chose solo play in the context of PE class; another

allied herself with a highly resistant student in PE class, even though her general reputation as a student was one of compliance. Other participants reported carefully

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managing their PE performance – they did just enough to be seen by the faculty as participating, but not enough to attract their peers’ attention, and they interacted

minimally with others during class. Still others demonstrated ability and interest in

athletics or performance, but disdained engagement in PE or chose to hone their sports

skills outside of group practice.

Variability of participant self-experience seemed to be a key factor in how

separation practices manifested themselves among participants. Her experience of

herself as athletic and individualistic led GH16 to successfully balance team membership and personal ambition by working on her own to effect the progress she desired to make. GH7’s self-portrayal as a gender outlier with respect to her physicality was reinforced by her family and personal history as a successful track athlete and legitimized her non-normative muscularity. Moreover, she felt her policy of “friendly but not too close” enabled her both academically and athletically. Though BG8s pursuit of cheerleading was gender and peer norm consistent, and she pursued cheerleading for social connection, BG8’s lack of physical fitness and limited insight into her challenges as a cheerleader marked her as an outlier among the cheerleaders and put her at risk for quitting the squad. UU2’s experience of herself as lighthearted but unskilled in play

(“some of my friends do softball. I used to hang out with them and like, I can’t play softball? Like, I could make the team, but I’m not that good”), and her experiences of being judged negatively by her non-intimate peers led her to choose to continue solo exercise at home (which she found boring, and performed irregularly) rather than

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risking her academic standing and existing relationships in an attempt to escape size-

related social stigma.

This tendency to employ circumstantial separation in the face of dissonance

between identity elements can also be viewed as a resistance strategy. Resistance in this sense refers to practices that serve to distance one physically and/or psychologically from the dictates of cultural and relational norms – to the practice of “insisting on

knowing what one knows” (Weis and Fine 1993) and acting on that knowledge, rather than doing what is customary or expected. Strategic withdrawal seems a particularly reasonable option when dissonance between identity elements is coupled with the frequently negative meaning that is attached to the materiality of cultural otherness.

Fordham, in her 2008 explication of the widely misperceived phenomenon of “acting white” that emerged from her research with African American adolescents, observed that at Capital High, her study site: “the visibility of Black girls – bodies whose skin color is distinctly different from that of other females – is often perceived as ‘loudness’ although the quality is entirely unrelated to the level of their voices or the focus of their discourse” (p240). This concern with negative perception is echoed in the comments about “attitude” and being “loud” voiced by participants in this study. Their claimed practices of “keeping to myself” generally, “not being around people” when upset, and selecting solitude for given endeavors – all in an attempt to elide negative perception – suggest that resort to separation may be a strategy employed to resist particular impositions of racialized, gendered, classed and status designated embodiment.

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The separation practices observed among this study’s participants are also reminiscent of Taylor et al’s school-based study of adolescent female non-dominants – non-white, working class and poor girls (1995). They observed among their participants

“a fight for relationship that often became dispirited as girls experienced betrayal or neglectful behavior and felt driven into a psychological isolation they and others readily confused with independence” (p 3). While instances of personal betrayal or neglect were not systematically queried in this study, and few were shared during the interviews, the choice to separate oneself, albeit to varying degrees and in various ways, seemed not an uncommon one among study participants. However, as the above examples also suggest, the resort to separation is likely not only produced by experiences of betrayal and neglect; it functions as well to facilitate and validate expression of non-normative self-experience (e.g. visibly muscular and powerful, committed to athletic excellence, overweight and a worthwhile person; a cheerleader in spirit if not in body). “Separation as resistance” strategies also reflect body agency.

Ward’s account of one of her participants (Janesia), defiance of racialized gender norms to play ice hockey illustrates this connection:

They were on my case for at least half of the season. They thought I was crazy, that hockey is a white boys sport - not even a white girls sport! - and they thought there must be something wrong with me 'cause I like it. Like I'm lesbian or something. But then I thought about how I feel when I'm on the ice. It feels good. Real good. Yeah it's hard, and it's cold, and sometimes the whole team wants to be somewhere else. But I like hockey. And I'm good at it and it makes me feel good. And just because there aren't a lot of Black girls who do it doesn't mean no Black girls should do it. Tell me I can't do it because I'm Black and a girl. You gotta be kidding (Ward 2007:247)!

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Ward characterizes Janesia’s vivid description of playing the game she loves, her matter-of-fact recounting of her peer critics’ point of view, and her choice to value her experience over their censure as “resistance for liberation.” Resistance for liberation, according to Ward, “offers solutions that serve to empower African American females through confirmation of positive self-conceptions…it helps a girl to experience constructive, critical affirmation of the individual and the collective by encouraging her to think critically about herself and her place in the world around her (1996:95).”

Janesia’s disposition and actions also suggest a greater body agency – a relatively low degree of unembodiment, an experience of managing “otherness” that has not resulted in the primary construction of her body as an object of her “self.” Like GH16, who loves soccer, Janesia clearly values her experiences as an ice hockey player more than she wishes to avoid the censure she receives from her peers for violating racialized gender norms. And, like GH7, she is well aware of the nature of her violation and has chosen, through continuing her pursuit of physical skill and prowess, to separate herself from her peers to the extent that they are unwilling to accept her choice.

Ward also identifies in her participants a strategy she dubs, “resistance for survival (1996:95).” This she defines as, “a reaction against destructive elements in (an individual’s) social world and in the larger sociopolitical context of the United States that offers short-term solutions.” She further notes that resistance for survival, which is characterized by an assertive outspokenness (aka, “attitude”), tends not to be transferable across contexts. In fact, she argues, “the outspokenness that may be healthy and viable in some cultural settings may be psychologically and politically too

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costly in others, and in those settings may even be belligerent and self-defeating….”

(1996: 38). Though this type of behavior may seem to be the opposite of separation,

Ward’s interview with another of her participants, Anita, reveals Anita’s outspokenness

as a wall behind which she hides her true self:

By tenth grade, when she is asked to describe herself, her first words are “Fine, sexy, and beautiful,” at which she and Jill both laugh. Anita continues: “Well, it’s uh, I don’t know, no, I describe myself as a little, sweet, sensitive person, I mean I hurt really easily, you know what I mean? Like, I always have like this wall up in front of me, like, no one can bother me, you know what I mean? I mean, just walk around like (makes disdainful sound), you know, you don’t (disdainful sound), I don’t care what you say, you know what I mean. But like, I hurt really easily, and I hate people to hurt me” (1996:38).

Though the published excerpt from Anita’s interview does not provide any

insight into the extent (or not) of her body-mind separation, it does recall the

observation of Gilligan’s participant, Judy, about the process of giving up mind for brain

– in this case, of exchanging “your internal feelings and your real feelings” (2006:56) for

a set of context-specific survival tools. Such a disposition also suggests a lesser body agency. UU2 comes to mind in this regard, as she lacked insight into her body shape (her waist/hip ratio of .85 suggests she has more of an apple shape) relative to her pear-

shaped appearance aspirations (Figure 4.6), and did not seem to recognize that

participation in track and field was also unlikely to produce the soft curvaceousness (“I

don’t want to be skinny; I want to be curvy”) that was her ideal. UU2’s choice of relative

isolation – to forgo participation in athletics, focus on academics, and center her social interaction around her existing group of friends – though neither belligerent nor self-

defeating, also offered a low likelihood of achieving her desired weight loss or relieving

her feelings of social stigmatization. On the other hand, BG8’s separation manifested

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itself in her goal to be a successful high school cheerleader. Her separation revealed itself as an apparent lack of insight into the ineffectiveness her persistence and a concomitant inability to realistically assess and address her skill level. Her act of separation is directly related to her lesser body agency, to her body-self separation. She

equated the desire to perform with the ability to do so and separated herself from the substantial evidence to the contrary through her persistence.

The posited connection between body agency and separation as a form of resistance reveals the dichotomy of liberation /survival described by Taylor et al as a continuum rather than as two discrete modes of operation. It suggests a mutability between liberation and survival as resort to separation becomes more de rigueur than circumstantially negotiable. It hints that such positional rigidity/flexibility reflects and affects body agency and that status and relational resources are the ground upon which this is enacted. This certainly seems to be true in the previous case examples. GH16 and

GH7, both with greater body agency, employed isolation selectively to support their athleticism by setting aside time for solo practice (GH16) and promoting a narrative of physical exceptionalism (GH7). The terms of these participants’ separation was also fairly narrow; both were “Steppes babies” and “Steppes legacies” in addition to being active in athletics, so their institutional status was secure. They also drew on their supportive family relationships and personal histories of athletic success for validation of their athleticism. They clearly exemplify “resistance for liberation” in their effective management of negative critiques.

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Both UU2 and BG8 demonstrated lesser body agencies, and their employment of

isolation can be described as resistance for survival. However, UU2’s retreat from track to the security of her existing activities and relationships seems to resonate as much with the emotional challenges introduced in mid-childhood by her parents’ divorce (and

her subsequent transformation into her mother’s primary relationship partner) as with

her social relationships in high school. Additionally, her collage records a desire for independence, novel experience and self-love that she was struggling to realize, and

which doubtless demanded a great deal of her emotional energy. A family history of

being middle class and “of the district” made her privy to affirmative social practices;

she was a member of the band and a successful Chinese language student. Her body agency and her use of separation, then, reflected an employment of “resistance for

survival” that had been partially successful in her operating environments.

As for BG8, when the study ended it was unknown whether what appeared to be

blind perseverance, fueled by her desire to become a school “insider” and her prior

claim to the title of cheerleader through her church, would get her through the summer

training activities and the upcoming school year, or whether, as the coach expected, she

would drop out during camp. Her observed “walling off” of social aspiration from

physical reality certainly suggested resistance for survival, and signaled lesser body

agency, but the fact of her perseverance, blind though it was, presented some

possibility that the chance to be a cheerleader would effect a change in her fitness

status that she would recognize, appreciate and continue to pursue.

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The point here is not “liberation is singular; survival takes many forms.” Rather,

it is that, as a coping strategy, resistance through separation can impel the dynamics of

identity, and thus contribute to the narrative that is the product of those dynamics. This

is observable in the previous examples, though it unfolds differently for GH16, GH7, UU2

and BG8. However, recalling the example of Ward’s participant, Anita, quoted above, it seems plausible that should resort to isolation and assertions of self-sufficient

impenetrability become a primary response to challenge or conflict, such a one-

dimensional resistance could impede, rather than impel the dynamics of identity. The

subsequent enacted identity narrative could be impoverished – restricted in

emplotment (Mattingly 1994) options to unflagging affirmation, unwavering fortitude, or unstinting protest – because the ability draw on contexts and relationships beyond the immediate situation would be limited both by the resort to separation and the effects of that means of coping. This restricted emplotment may also result in an impoverished identity narrative because of the dearth of contexts and relationships through which the inevitable external and internal conflicts and contradictions are available to be managed. That is, the employment of separation as a default self-

representation rather than a strategically employed one weakens the SE↔SR dialectic

by restricting relationship. As the next examples demonstrate, a default separation as resistance strategy seems to affect the participants’ physicality-informed identity narratives through the SE↔SR dialectic in the very ways just theorized.

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Resistance, Identity and Body Agency – Two Examples

MO15 completed her second year in the PSH district during the study year. She

transferred from the large urban school district that abuts Progressive Steppes as a

sophomore. However, she had family who had attended PSH – her older brother and

father. Her brother did not graduate; she was unsure if her father had done so. A

member of the track team at her previous school, she had been encouraged to take up

the sport based on her experience of success racing her brothers and male cousins in

childhood and by an aunt who’d participated in high school track and field a generation before:

MO15: Well, I mean, I have a, I have a lot of male cousins in my family and I have like, a lot of brothers too so we would always play around and we would always race each other and I could always keep up with the boys, and uh, then my aunt one day – she ran track, uh like in the 80s for Metropolitan High (a neighboring district) and Pleasant Hill and all that stuff. And she, you know, kinda took interest in it and said I should try out. Tried out, I was top sprinter so…

As one might expect, MO15’s early experiences and with competitive play and her successful participation in track (she was on the team at PSH as well) manifested themselves in a greater body agency. Her descriptions of the experience of competition were rich and vivid, and spoke to a being- in- the- moment during racing that was clearly untouched by any considerations other than a winning effort. When asked in her first interview, “can you remember a time when you gave what you would consider to be your maximum physical effort to any activity or task?” she recounted this instance from the track season she had just completed:

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MO15: Uh, well one was our home (meet), and uh, it was the 4x100 relay, and I’m anchor leg, so, it was uh, it was against Myr-, it was a dual meet against, against Myrtle. And uh, me and the girl…the girl got the baton before me, and she was like, about three or four steps ahead of me. And you know, I got the baton and I just took off, and we were just runnin’, stride for stride, stride for stride, and then, like about 10 meters left, I kinda like, pulled away, maybe a few steps, and I didn’t know, but I was ahead of her, because I could still like see her out of my peripheral, so I, I just kept goin’, and uh, when I crossed the line, they were like…my lane was number two, hers was three and they called it in order, “two, three!” I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I won!”

MO15’s passion for racing suggests that her intensity of athletic engagement and spirit

of competition might extend to other sports, but this was not the case. Though she

named football and basketball, respectively, as her favorite sports to watch and play,

she repeatedly stated she did not like to “play competitive, because that takes the fun

out of it for me.” And though she did not elaborate on “takes the fun out of it” (and was

not asked to do so, a regrettable oversight), observation field notes for her PE participation offer some insight into what constitutes “not playing competitive.”

MO15 was almost invariably to be found on the basketball court during PE.

However, she was never seen to take part in the male students’ fast-paced, physical games (she confirmed that she did not participate in these) or to play with any other student. Rather, she engaged in what could most accurately be described as shooting practice – repeated attempts to score from various locations in a quarter-court area – for the entirety of nearly every observed period. When asked to say more about not joining in the boys’ game, given her history of play with her male family members, she explained her actions primarily in terms of energy conservation:

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MO15: …I mean I…I know I could if I wanted to, but I feel that, I need to reserve as much energy as I can, you know, for later on, because I know I have (track)practice later on. So I don’t wanna use up all my energy runnin’ up and down the court, and then, you know, uh, try to…pull something…pull some, muster some energy to go run, and I know I have a hard practice comin’ up, so…I rather, you know, just shoot around if I…I know if I get tired, I can go sit down for a few minutes and then get right back up so, I don’t have to, worry about, you know, teams or anything, just basically myself.

Given her status as an athlete, the level of physical fitness she claimed as a consequence that status (“we practice about 10 times harder, in a practice, preparing for the meet”), and interview statements made prior to the one above concerning her use of PE as an additional training session (“I’ll train in the morning during my gym period… and that morning train, it just gives you that extra push, you know, just gets your adrenaline rush and you just, you’re just so alert during the day, you know…”), her concern with energy conservation seemed a bit curious. The quandary deepened when, asked to rate her typical level of exertion at track practice (with her described exertion in the 4x100 relay as a reference “10”), she said “8,” and she rated her typical level of exertion in PE class a “4”. While an “8” level of exertion is logically consistent with a training effect, a “4” level of exertion is not. Moreover, such a relatively low level of

exertion would not be expected to compromise performance in a fit 16-year old given a

sedentary interval of several hours (track practice began at around 3pm; her PE class

was 2nd period – around 9am). Additionally, when asked about playing basketball outside of school with her male family members, she initially responded in the past

tense, “it used to be like me, my brother and my sister, my little brothers, and we would

just all play, then it’s some kids from around the corner would come and play, and my

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cousins would come over and we would all play.” In response to a follow up question

about whether she still played pick-up ball with her male family members, her response

was monosyllabic: “Yep.”

The data for this participant seemed to contain two narratives being articulated

in the context of high school athletics – a crafted narrative of overall high physical prowess and effort, and an emergent narrative of highly controlled physical engagement achieved through pursuit of largely solitary activity and rejection of any attempt by others to direct or influence her efforts. The emergent narrative gradually gained prominence. During one track practice, the assistant coach apparently gave MO15 some new instruction regarding her training routine. She refused, loudly and repeatedly, to comply with his instruction. She left the practice area to sit in the stands, where she continued to complain loudly and angrily that she had no intention of changing her training regimen, and that she would seek permission from the head coach to ignore the direction of the assistant coach when he arrived. When the head coach did not arrive within a few minutes, she left the practice area and did not return that day. She was not observed to work with the assistant coach again.

This apparent tendency to prefer self-direction manifested itself in non-school physical activities as well. When details were sought about her involvement in praise dance at her church, MO15 stated that she had “been dancing since I was younger,” but she soon revealed that she was self-taught, and that praise dance comprised her entire

dance experience. She and a friend had introduced dance into the worship service and

now served as choreographers and ran the rehearsals in addition to dancing. The adult

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who ostensibly directed the praise dancers “doesn’t choreograph anything, she just

make sure everything’s together.”

The relevant finding concerning these conflicting narratives is not which is true

and which is false, but rather how MO15 embodies both but consciously engages only

one. She appears to do this by separating herself from authority – from anyone who would impose their will on her concerning the what, when, how, and how much of her physical performance. The result is the postulated narrative impoverishment – her identity emplotment is one of unflagging affirmation of her excellent abilities and the rightness of her actions, despite the fact that she only allows them to be tested under conditions that are as much under her control as possible. This resistance to the will of others is reflected in body agency that is comparable neither to that of GH16 and GH7

(though she is a successful athlete), nor to that of UU2 and BG8 (though her knowledge of her actual physical capacity is willfully self-limited). She demonstrates moderate unembodiment – a body agency that is not so much balanced as indeterminate.

Though similar to MO15 in that the study marked only her second year as a student in the Progressive Steppes district, MO55 at first seemed to exemplify the lower physical activity levels and lesser body agency that primary resort to separation as resistance would logically seem to predict. Her reliance on separation was a strong theme in both interviews, and seemed to be for her both a way to control what others saw of her and to project to others how little she was affected by their perceptions and opinions. The “guy” she is referring to in the quote below is the image of the young

African American boy who appears to be running she chose for her collage (Figure 4.12):

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MO55: Well I know this one I think is how people see me. SMM: This, oh this guy? What’s he… MO55: Like, crazy sometime and fun. SMM: Oh, ok. Alright, so he looks like…what makes him crazy and fun? MO55: The way his face look, I would never make that face just walkin’ down the hallway…just, that’s a…I wouldn’t do that. SMM: You wouldn’t do that (055: no)? So how is he like you? MO55: Well, it’s like, when I meet somebody, I’m quiet, I don’ t really talk, but when I get to know you, like if I feel comfortable around you, I will start to talk…But usually, when I start to talk, I become, like the funny person, because I am funny, I ju-, I’m just quiet when I first meet you, I don ‘t like to…like let myself out when I first meet you, I don’t know.

Though the placement of the image in her collage and her interpretation of it indicate that she does want to be seen as crazy and fun, the follow up explanation that she would not display her crazy, fun self “just walkin’ down the hallway”, suggests that her schoolmates are generally not the “people” she generally allows to “see” her – that her crazy, fun side is one she does not readily display at school. On the other hand, the focus group in which she made the collage constituted her third encounter with the principal investigator (PI), and was the least intimate, and yet she chose to disclose her

“crazy and sometimes fun” side. One might speculate that the PI is a “low risk” object of disclosure, being (1) an institutional outsider and (2) an adult rather than a peer.

However, in the discussion of power at the end of the second interview, MO55’s rhetoric belies the notion that the views of her school peers posed any risk to her self- concept, and provides additional hints that her disclosure may be part of an emergent narrative in which her reserve is a matter of “brain” (coping skills) rather than one of

“mind” (true feelings:

SMM:…is there anything else that makes you feel powerful?

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MO55: (I don’t) let other people get to me. Like, when stuff goes around school…like, stupid stuff, and like teenager stuff…Yeah. I don’t really let that get to me, ‘cause it’s a waste of time. SMM: Ok. So you just let it…let it go. MO55: Yeah. SMM: And when you’re able to let it go and not…is it that you don’t let it get to you, or that…you don’t let anyone see….? MO55: I don’t let it get to me at all. SMM: So is there an, is there an element of having other people be aware that you’re not responding that…is important? MO55: Um…well, sometimes like if you say something to me, and you’re tryin’ to make fun of me as you say it, I’ll just laugh and be like, “thank you” and they’ll be like, “what are you talkin about, I just made…” I’m like, “no, you didn’t!” I’m like, “does not work.” Yeah, I don’t get upset that easily, unless, unless I’m, unless something is really, really wrong, but other than that, I just laugh it off because, sometimes I think people are hilarious when they try to make fun of me. So, and then when they don’t know anything, and they make something up that you know isn’t true, and it really doesn’t bother me then.

MO55’s insistence that she doesn’t care what her school peers think of her and relishes

demonstrating her disdain for their opinions certainly reinforces the idea that her

schoolmates are not the “people” to whom she shows herself. It seems, rather, that her

emotional modus operandi at school is “walling off”, and that she gains a sense of

power and control from not being known – even for confounding others. This disposition carries over to her creative endeavors as well. A visual artist, MO55 expressed a preference for abstract expressionism in her discussion of a finished ceramics piece she was taking home that day that is consistent with her stated preference for keeping others at a distance: “I mean I can draw people, I can, but I

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Figure 4.12 – Collage, MO55

don’t like to, I like to do…weird stuff, like this. Illusions. Things that don’t make any sense that you have to explain to people.” On the other hand, she acknowledged that she was not completely invulnerable, though she indicated no specific source(s) of vulnerability (“I don’t get upset that easily….unless something is really, really wrong…”).

MO55 took part in no extra-curricular sports or performance activities, and both her PE class placement and observed demeanor in PE reflected “resistant,” though she was generally not obstreperous in her resistance According to field notes, she

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consistently displayed low energy level/engagement in PE (e.g., discontinuing play of

floor hockey after approximately six minutes, choosing insufficient resistance during

weight training despite being instructed in how to select resistance and choosing to

walk the track slowly rather than play kickball). On one memorable occasion, she ended her participation a few minutes into the period and walked off the floor to sit in the bleachers, ignoring the instructor’s request that she return to the game. However, these data contrast sharply with her physical self-concept collage (Figure 3.12), which stood

out in the sample for the predominance of what appeared to instrumental elements

(though as it turned out, they functioned more abstractly/symbolically for her,

representing qualities like “confidence” and “competitive”). The inconsistencies

between her observed and visually represented, and narrated attitudes and behaviors

with respect to physical activity did not stop there. She reported participating in track

and field as a seventh-grader (the image of Tiger Woods jogging in her collage

referenced that experience). She claimed, in fact, to have played “every sport” at her

previous school. She stated she liked sports, but added the qualification “…I don’t…I mean I like sports now, I just, I like to watch ‘em more than play ‘em…” She attributed this shift from participant to observer to “me growin’ up” and having “stuff to do,” but she also made the following observation when asked if there was anything she missed about being involved in sports:

MO55: Um [pause]…not really. Because I, I think it was my decision to stop, like nobody made me. And I think it was more, I think it was a lot of, having to do with moving, and then starting over, and…and I’m not saying I was scared to be on the team, I just, I don’t…after a while, I didn’t want to. I don’t want to now.

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There appears to be an unresolved inconsistency in MO55’s identity narrative.

She simultaneously claimed her past sports participation as wholly transferrable to her current self-experience, and insisted that her participation in sports is a thing of the past. Her claims of past as present included assertions of retained, superior ability (e.g., she disdained soccer in PE class as “not competitive” and “fake” – ostensibly beneath her from as skills standpoint.). And though the quote above could be read as affirming that being in the intimidating position of newcomer did inform her decision not to pursue sports at PSH, the more important point is that she articulated that decision as final and unequivocal. Her current physical activity pursuits are PE (average effort level

4.5/10), destination walking (when it’s not too hot), occasional visits to the gym at which her family has a membership (primarily in summer), and skateboarding (weather and schedule permitting). The narrative of physical disengagement is certainly the more voluble of the two, and is consonant with her narrative of social disengagement, to which she seemed strongly committed. But if all this is so, what made claiming her previous identity as confident, competitive, physically engaged, happy, crazy and fun important enough to represent in her collage?

It is possible that her choice to evoke this previous identity was simply a byproduct of her study participation – that she was merely attempting to address the questions asked of her in building the collage as best she could, and consequently drew on her past experiences as part of that attempt. However, it is also plausible that the collage exercise elicited a co-existing narrative – one based on her past, and only enacted behind the wall of unwavering fortitude she erected to withstand what she

211 described as the “teenager stuff” going on at school. This second explanation maps more thoroughly onto her expressed body agency – from her “picking up” skateboarding on her own in the past year “cause I like the peace and quiet of the skateboard,” to her complete divorce from the caption “Lean Body” in the upper right corner of her collage (“I don’t think that was supposed to be on there, but I don’t remember. I don’t, I don’t know.”), to the revelation that she found PE in high school

“harder” than PE in elementary school because (“now…you get divided into teams and you play games…I don’t remember doing that in elementary school”). Her two narratives, like the two narratives of MO15, reveal moderate unembodiment, though

MO55’s emplotment of unembodiment is different: while MO15 seems largely unaware of her second narrative, MO55 seems to be trying to enact both across the boundary she has erected to keep them separate. And as with MO15, the product of that effort was not a balanced physicality-informed identity, but an indeterminate one.

Conclusion

Proceeding from the assertion that identity is dynamic and emergent, contextually grounded, narrative in form and function, this chapter has demonstrated how physicality, viewed as an aspect of identity, was examined among study participants using the model introduced in Chapter 1. The construct hypothesized to reflect the individual body-self in the model, body agency, describes states of body/mind separation, or unembodiment (Laing 1969) engendered by circumstances of material otherness (non-normative race, class, gender, ability or other outsider status).

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The condition of “otherness” inherent to body agency links it to context and self- representation, the other two model elements. The finding from Chapter 3 that the context of physicality-informed identity among the study participants is multi-faceted

(involving class and gender as well as race) and emerges through a shared endorsement of preserving femininity and varied perspectives on what constituted that preservation completed the working version of the model needed to conduct this analysis. Data employed in this effort included field notes, accelerometry, anthropometrics, collages, and interviews. Given the premise that identity is narratively constructed and enacted, case examples were the primary means of exploring model operation.

Objective measures [BMI, accelerometry, waist-hip ratio (WHR)] were examined for any evidence of variability that might be linked to unembodiment. None was found.

These data documented a high degree of sedentariness in the study population and rates of overweight and obesity (based on BMI) that were comparable to national data for this age and racial group. However, measures of central obesity did not concord with

BMI in terms of health risk due to excess fatness. Overall, the obesity-related health risk for the group was lower using the central obesity measures. “Risk shifting” was observed in the cases of a few participants, with one obese participant having a “low risk” WHR and one overweight participant having a “low risk” WHR. Of most concern, however, were the two participants whose BMI placed them in the category

“overweight,” but whose WHR placed them at high risk for obesity-related health issues.

Though overall, these data contributed little to the explication of unembodiment, the

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BMI/WHO discrepancy raises questions regarding participants’ perceptions of their body

shape, and their awareness of obesity-related disease risk related to shape.

Examining narratives of identity for evidence of unembodiment supported an

intersectional approach to context that revealed effects of class, institutional status, and

racial norms working through gender constructions. As the model predicted, the school

itself functioned as a context for identity enactment, and intersected with gender and

class in interesting ways. As is usually the case with institutions and the groups they

serve, the PE faculty, as institutional representatives, categorized students in terms of

their physical prowess and attitudes toward PA. This categorical sort, being based on

observable behavior for the most part, did not always appear to take into account the

circumstances that informed that behavior. These circumstances included, for students

who transferred into the district and lower income students who were established

residents, lack of knowledge or skill in particular PE activities (like floor hockey or

soccer) due to limited (or no) exposure. Consequently, some study participants who

truly enjoyed play were placed in classes in which the majority of students were

inconsistently engaged or patently uninterested. Gendered physicality norms

concerning what constituted a “female athlete” (from the perspective of the faculty)

and a “girl who can play” (from the perspective of the participants’ male peers) also contributed to experiences of unembodiment in the context of PE. Unembodiment was also revealed to be relative, rather than absolute, and to manifest itself in participants’ narratives and observed behavior that were patterned, but not identical.

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Participants’ accounts of their involvement in athletics and observation field notes provided yet another view of physicality-informed identity. Though participation in athletics and a state of body/mind separation might seem a contradiction in terms, their co-existence becomes more plausible when one considers that high school students become involved in athletics for reasons other than love of sport. This was certainly true for two of the participants discussed in this regard. They both became involved in athletics as a means of improving their social recognition. Their situations differed from most of those described in the PE examples in that their unembodiment appeared to be preexisting, rather circumstantially produced. To be sure, gendered practices particular to school (boys “rating” girls) and relative outsider status (being not

“of” Steppes and being insufficiently skilled) contributed to these participants’ othering, but their narratives supported the operation of non-school factors in the othering process as well.

Self-representation, the final element in the model, also manifested itself in various ways among the participants, and was affected by both experience of unembodiment and context. The most salient facet of context was again, gender, but class figured in as well through participants’ assertions that they were not “loud” and did not “have attitude” (characteristics often associated with poor or working class

African American females). Feeling that one may “get a attitude” was grounds for separating oneself from the situation or the person that produced such a reaction.

Building on that observation, practices of separation among participants were explored in light of their experience of unembodiment (i.e., body agency). Separation

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was viewed as a form of resistance – refusal to conform (or succumb) to norms or

expectations that violated the participants’ sense of themselves and/or an apparent felt need to protect themselves. Further exploration revealed a descriptive, non-linear relationship between body agency and practices of separation that effected (evoking

Ward 1995, 2007) a plot gradient (Mattingly 2008) of “resistance for survival” or

“resistance for liberation.” Lower body agency (higher unembodiment) effected emplotment towards the former and higher body agency (lower unembodiment) effected emplotment towards the latter. As separation becomes the default mode of self-representation, the tone of the identity narrative shifts from liberation to survival.

Examination of two additional cases for emplotment of separation revealed these participants to be expressing two contradictory narratives – one crafted and one emergent, and both incomplete. This finding is consistent with the assertion that the default to separation results in a narrative impoverishment that both reflects and informs an indeterminate body agency.

Body agency, then, was confirmed by this analysis as a viable construct for explaining/examining variability in physicality-informed identity. It appears to operate to along a gradient created by experience of physicality and degree of contextual and relational otherness. When placed in the identity model posited as an aspect of self- experience and employed in analysis of the narrative data shared by study participants, body agency revealed similarities and differences in emplotment of the identity model elements in several case examples, including likely effects of gender, class, strength of institutional affiliation, peer dynamics, and individual coping strategies. This

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demonstration of theoretical robustness suggests that the model used, and its featured

construct, body agency, are viable tools for discerning the patterns and inconsistencies

in the operation of systems, social relationships, and subjectivity within the identity narratives of a local group of others. Describing the systematic application of these tools to the narrative data for the entire study sample, and the patterns and inconsistencies discerned, is the project of the next chapter.

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Chapter 5 Discerning, Constructing, Deriving: Schematic Narrative Templates of Physicality

….I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment. Then I had to have the spyglass of Anthropology to look through at that. - Zora Neale Hurston

Introduction - Framing discernment of similarity and difference

In the previous chapter, body agency and separation- as -resistance were presented as elements of interest in the person-centered exploration of bodily presentation and prowess among cultural others. In chapter three, an argument was made for gender as a dominant context of that exploration – as the cultural system through which other contexts (e.g., race, class, status within the institution) are most often expressed. This chapter demonstrates how the use of body agency, separation/social security and gender as elements of interest in the identity model framed analysis across participant narratives (see Figure 5.1). Analysis revealed four participant subgroups within which the narratives were functionally similar with respect to the identity model elements. These subgroups were descriptively titled: Go Hard or

Go Home; Control is Fun; The Unwittingly Unfit and Big Girls Don’t Sweat.

A two-step analytic process produced these groupings. The first step involved creation of a meta-matrix (Miles and Huberman 1994) of narrative excerpts that reflected operation of the model elements in each participant’s account of herself (See

Table 5.1). Each participant’s excerpts were then summarized into one or two statements per element (See Table 5.2), forming an interpretive matrix (Miles and

Huberman 1994). Use of the meta-matrix facilitated data compilation across the sample,

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allowed focus on specific elements of the narrative, and mitigated against the

“flattening” of context in the interpretive matrix to some degree (Miles and Huberman

1994:178).

In the second step, the summary statements were compiled into sets of “plot points,” or key narrative building blocks around which participants constructed an account of herself (Mattingly 2008: 19) in response to the investigator’s inquiries.

Thematically similar sets of plot points were grouped. The result of this grouping was four relatively distinct schematic narrative templates (SNTs) of physicality-informed identity – the subgroups mentioned above. Schematic narrative templates are conceptual tools used to discern “the imprint of institutional practices and ideology” on individuals and social relationships (Mattingly 2008:19). As expressions of ethos (the disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, culture, or movement1), SNTs are not necessarily reflexively available to those enacting

them. They are, rather, analytic distillations produced through a process of looking

across selected narrative excerpts for common themes. This analytic approach was

chosen because identity, and certainly physicality, is largely enacted non-reflexively,

making a more literal, deductive approach to the data unlikely to achieve the desired

study aim of discerning patterns of similarity and difference in physicality-informed

identity.

These analytic processes are represented with case examples. Excerpts from previously-presented cases are used to describe data selection for the meta-matrix and

1 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ethos. Accessed September 27, 2012.

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the interpretation of that data using the model. One new participant case exemplar is

used for each of the four templates. Four of the forty-two participants’ narrative plot

points reflected more than one template; one case representing this group will be presented as well. Case examples are used rather than aggregate data because the commonalities sought through this analytic process and represented by the templates are commonalities of narrative (and identity) elements, not common narratives. Thus, to accurately demonstrate model operation in the analysis and application across the sample, contextualized accounts are necessary.

Traditionally gendered appearance and deportment (context)

Body agency Social security/separation (self-experience)) (self-representation)

Figure 5.1 – Identity model with gender as dominant context

Emplotting Physicality

To emphasize the premise of this study as a local investigation and analysis of body, the findings detailed in this chapter are represented visually – as points within the local cultural “field,” of female adolescence in high school – as well as verbally. The four schematic narrative templates of physicality are presented as quadrants in a Cartesian plane (Figure 5.2). Separation-as-resistance/social security is the abscissa (x-axis). The

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gradient of separation ranges from selective inclusion of others at the leftmost aspect of the x-axis to selective separation from others at the rightmost aspect of the x-axis. Body

agency is the ordinate (y-axis). The gradient for this axis is from body as object (the

lowermost point) to body as subject (the uppermost point), with the midranges

representing not so much balance as ambivalence.

Figure 5.2 – Quadrants of physicality

Individual participant location within the local cultural field is depicted via a

scatterplot (Figure 5.3). Each oval and its attached hatch-marked directional arrow

represents a participant. The hatched arrow indicates degree and direction of positional

mobility within the quadrant selected through analysis of the participant narrative. For

example, MO55, discussed in the previous chapter, described a self-representation at

school that is characterized by separation – she consciously limits interaction with most of her school peers. Her strategy of highly selective inclusion of others precluded her

participation in school-based extra-curricular activities: “I think it was a lot of, having to

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do with moving, and then starting over, and…and I’m not saying I was scared to be on

the team, I just, I don’t…after a while, I didn’t want to. I don’t want to now.” Her body

agency, on the other hand, was not quite so unequivocal. Though her self-description as

“athletic,” primarily drew on her past, rather than her present school experiences, she

also reported sporadically attempting to teach herself to skateboard – an endeavor that

suggests a position along the axis in the body as subject range. The hatch mark through the arrow approximates the manly line, and its placement suggests the extent and direction of the participant’s mobility within the quadrant. MO55s interviews and collage do not convey a strong concern with fashion, glamour or “girliness” in the traditional sense, though she is concerned with cleanliness, good grooming, and avoidance of an overtly sexual presentation. These facts, combined with her assertions of athleticism and pursuit of skateboarding resulted in her hatch mark being placed just slightly distal to the arrow midpoint.

The intention of the scatterplot, then, is to visually capture not only what the participants’ narratives reveal about how the model elements interact with respect to physicality, but also to capture the theoretical perspective that identity may be stable in some regards, but is not fixed – that it is both discernible and dynamic.

The process of using the model elements to frame analysis of the narrative and using the derived narrative templates to depict the operation of identity in local cultural context is valuable in at least two respects. First, as was argued in the previous chapter, this process provides a means of systematically discerning similarities and differences in body conceptualization and physical activity engagement within a local group. In this

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Figure 5.3 – Physicality scatterplot

way the process reflects practice theory, which posits that human action is a product of a particular social and cultural milieu (structures), and that human action (agency) “at the same time always makes and potentially unmakes” the structure within which it operates (Ortner 1996:2). The discernment of similarity and difference, in turn, illuminates the complex set of dynamics connecting culture, relationship and embodiment to health behavior, and offers an intriguing alternative to current health behavior explanations that largely do not take these dynamics into account. Secondly,

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and specifically with regard to the population represented by the study participants, this

analysis departs from the customary framing of African American females who are

overweight and sedentary as necessarily subscribing to documented racial norms concerning body size. It presents an alternative to the common characterization of

African American females who are a healthy weight and more active as acculturated to majority race norms or rare victors in the struggle of agency versus culture. It offers, instead, an exploration of the ways that members of this group may “read their collectivities through their experience as individuals” and “use collective forms to assert their identities” (Cohen 1994:178). This dual, but not contradictory process renders them recognizable to each other, but not identical to each other in any one “master” aspect.

If race is not a “master status” (Fordham 2008) that frames African American females’ perceptions and actions concerning their physicality, what, culturally, does that frame consist of? Initial coding of the narrative data pointed to body agency (states of relative unembodiment produced by “othered” status), and separation as resistance (a relational strategy involving tempering or limiting emotional vulnerability to others) as broadly present and variable in manifestation within the sample. These constructs were subsequently “plugged in” to the tripartite identity model. The case studies presented in previous chapters suggest that race is not the sole, or even the primary determinant of participant disposition and action in with respect to physicality. Rather, race infuses disposition and action through intersection with gender, class and/or school-based status. Gender emerged as highly salient to perception and performance of physicality

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among study participants – though not as a “master status,” for historical notions of class and gender were implicated as well. GH43 and GH60 were arguably equally passionate about basketball, but GH43’s performance of “female athlete” more closely approximated the trope of “middle class black lady” than did the performance of GH60, whose ambivalence toward “girliness” recalls social/historical conceptions of “the manly woman.” Moreover, the concern with displaying “attitude” expressed by some of the participants reflects racialized class and racialized gender.

Participants’ perceptions and expressions of their physicality also varied in terms of how participants managed dissonance between self-representation and self- experience – and whether and how they used separation from others as a way to resist sacrificing their intuitive, embodied selves to culturally conditioned, norm-adherent personhood (Gilligan 2006; Ward 2007). MO15 and MO55 were discussed in chapter 4 as examples of separation-as-resistance at work. Their positioning on the scatterplot reflects the differences in their narratives (Figure 5.2). For both, however, their acts of separation involved resisting social expectations around the way they related to others.

MO15 performed “selective separation” in the context of her athleticism; i.e., she preferred solo athletic endeavors and solo play, resisted all but the mildest coaching, and connected with others primarily around non-physical activity-related endeavors. On the other hand, MO55’s performance of “selective inclusion” involved the decision to discontinue her participation in athletics upon changing schools and to eschew social engagement at school for the most part. For MO55, selective inclusion was preferable to the emotional vulnerability she would have risked in the attempt to forge relationships

225 in an environment that, in her view, was replete with gossip, rumor mongering and other forms of “teenager stuff.”

These, then, are the constructs that frame the cross-sample analysis – body agency, separation as resistance, and context (with particular attention to engagement with gender norms and location of the “manly line”). Each set of participant narratives

(two interviews and a collage) was examined for content reflecting these elements. The identified content (usually direct quotes, but sometimes codes or memos) was then copied and pasted into a meta-matrix (Miles and Huberman 1994; see example, Table

5.1). Once compiled, the data in each column, for each participant was read through for themes. These themes were recorded as one or more summary “I” statements and entered into a second, interpretive matrix with similar column headings (Table 5.2).

The rationale for the creation of the “I” statements is based upon Wertsch’s

(2008) notion of collective memory being narratively organized. This analysis extends that notion to the operation of identity – and in this study, to physicality. Because identity involves recognizable self-representation, it stands to reason that the conceptual and verbal resources used to construct a narrative account of oneself are in concurrent use by others and have a history of use by others, though the specifics of those narratives may vary (Wertsch 2008). The “I” statements, therefore, are intended to capture physicality-relevant narrative structures shared between participants. Four such shared structures, or schematic narrative templates, were identified within the completed interpretive matrix by thematically grouping similar “I” statements and key words.

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The templates were descriptively titled: Go Hard or Go Home (6 participants);

Control is Fun (11 participants); The Unwittingly Unfit (10 participants); and Big Girls

Don’t Sweat (11 participants). There were four participants whose summary statements reflected more than one quadrant; these participants were dubbed “Multiple

Occupiers.” These participants’ scatterplot markers occupy the “borderlands” between adjacent template quadrants. The body of the marker lies in one quadrant, while the arrow crosses the axis dividing the two adjacent quadrants. The positioning of the

Multiple Occupiers’ markers on either side of the border zone was their common characteristic; their “I” statements were not thematically similar and as such did not comprise a fifth category of physicality-informed identity.

The next section presents a case example of each template, and illustrates the analytic progression from meta-matrix to templates. One multiple occupier case is also presented and discussed in order to give a complete sense of the process of populating this local field of physicality-informed identity. The use of category representatives rather than a summary of a quadrant’s constituent narratives is appropriate because it captures the thematic similarity of the quadrant while avoiding the amount of contextual “flattening” that would have been necessitated by any attempt to present a non-existent summary or “average” template for each quadrant. These cases are rather being used as examples of “an underlying pattern that is instantiated by each” (Wertsch

2008) individual narrative within a quadrant.

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Populating the field of physicality and identity – five case examples

Each of the five cases that follow presents three sets of excerpts taken from the

meta-matrix – one set for each model element (body agency, gender and physicality and social security/ separation). The excerpts, though lengthy at times, are important because they allow the reader to “hear” the voices of the participants. The verbatim comments are often profound, and the participants’ phraseology often directly confirms the interpretation. Each set of excerpts is followed by an analysis that culminates in a summary plot point. Cases end with a recap of the three plot points, further analysis of their interrelationship, and an explanation of the descriptive title given to each quadrant and to those participants whose narratives place them on the border between quadrants.

Case 1 – Go Hard or Go Home – GH25

GH25’s narrative placed her within the upper left quadrant of the matrix. A sophomore, she had been a student in the district since kindergarten, and she had an older brother who was also a graduate of the district. She expressed enthusiasm for active play in general; she mentioned biking on her own and working out with friends who were on the track and swim teams in both interviews. She expressed “love” for her chosen activities of marching band and softball as well as confidence in her abilities in both. However, her love for activity was not unbounded and unconditional. She was very conscious of the potential for injury that she perceived came from exceeding her

“limits.” Those limits consisted of intensity of activity past an intuitive level of comfort, or activity for which recognition or reward was not immediately forthcoming.

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ID # (Un)embodiment Context elements Relational Elements manifestations CF28 “But I feel like if you’re Insider status – “you can…know skillful at something you Steppes baby yourself and know that, should embrace it. Like I Insider status – like, you have good know like if I was really cheerleader things about yourself. good at like…I don’t SMM: Like what But if you can recognize know, like, if I was really should (females) know that in other people I good at playing how to do? think that’s like a really basketball…I would 028: Like, it kinda important element of definitely play basketball. goes, like, I know I’m getting to know other Like I don’t understand kinda like, people and, kind of like people who…like MH. contradicting myself, along with getting to She was really good at but it kinda comes know yourself if that basketball, like really, back to the traditional makes sense kinda really, really good. And thoughts, like they sorta.” “I like having the then she just stopped. should know how to power of knowing I can Like I don’t, I don’t see like clean and stuff always take care of like…I don’t know.” like that, but maybe someone. Like always, SMM: So what’s Job 1 for that’s because like, like…no matter, like you? 028: Um…well, ok, you know my mom emotional or physical. I I’m gonna say, like just kinda raised us on know I can always take like with ranking. I’ll go, that, like…like, I don’t care of somebody. And school comes first….then, know, when girls get um…I like having the family life second. married, like you’ll power of knowing I kn-, Cheerleading after that, never see like, I mean I can help someone. I and then, along with unless the guy’s like a know that kinda like cheerleading goes total neat freak, but goes back to like what I physical fitness and all. I’ve never met a guy just said, but…helping “I can do diamond push - that’s a neat freak. people is really ups. A lot of them…I’m SMM: So are there important to me.” really good at push-ups…I things that, that, 028: I feel that like, won a bet. I did 20 of males should be able every person should, them….Yeah, I was to do? 028: They like be, be…I know it’s real…yeah, I don’t know should be able to…lift like hard for people tuh what was wrong with me strong stuff when a be theirselves in certain, that day. I was really girl can’t do it…it’s like, situations, but I feel strong that day… Um, but kinda like a like, like I’m not many people know contradiction again comfortable with who I that about me. ‘Cause, that everything, am, so like, I mean like, other than that I’m pretty anything a male can I’m not gonna like, hide girly. do a girl can do. So it, my opinion or like, af- SMM: Alright. Um, so it goes hand in hand …be afraid tuh, do what what do you like about but then again, it I feel is right, ‘cause I

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working out when you doesn’t, ‘cause some mean like I feel like have time? What’s things a that’s like an aspect of enjoyable about it? 028: girl…can’t…do. being myself? And I, I Um, I love the results that “…I like playing when don’t feel like I should it gives. Um, when…ok, like, you know, like like hide that for any this is gonna sound kinda I’m not in school, but person, like I’m just gross, but like, running like, I don’t know, girls gonna, I’m gonna be me stairs during the are…it kinda goes no matter what. summer…I love being along with the back to “…we were kinda sweaty afterwards. Like society thing, girls are known as the mean girls ‘cause it’s kinda like, “oh always pressured to sorta say but, you know yeah. I’ve worked hard. be pretty and, you we felt like it wasn’t Like, “leave me alone.” know, don’t be…like really being mean it was Like, “I put some work in getting dirty and stuff sorta…you know, telling and nobody else can say like that. It kinda like the truth. And you know anything different.” goes along with that. like growing up and “it’s (being a particular Like, and it’s kinda maturing like you kinda, size) not necessarily to fit like, I hate being dirty. notice like, some of the in with my friends, but I So like that stuff’s, things like were not like, I like the, you know, that’s like another needed to be said. But I looking skinnier rather reason like why like I mean like…I kinda…like than the looking thick don’t really do it kinda goes along with aspect…but I mean like, to anything in gym, being me, like I’ve me there’s a difference, ‘cause it goes along learned like over time like you know, from the with the sweaty that like…you can, you way like, my clothes fit. thing.” can still be very Like I wear a 5 in jeans, so opinionated, but you like, me at 117, jeans are don’t have to be, like a little bit tighter than for rude about it. Like it’s me being 105. So I mean kinda like having an like, you know, it kinda attitude adjustment like like, satisfies myself, if just, you know just that makes sense. growing up in general and maturing and like kinda growing into yourself, so to say.

Table 5.1 - Meta-matrix example

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GH25 on body agency …enjoys physicality, aspires to improve performance SMM: What do you like about physical activity? GH25: You get to move around, and then just jump and go crazy…it’s, it’s recess! And then, sometimes I’ll ride my bike down, up and down the streets. I love going down the street, just go, wind in my face and then I’ll do like, like a, I’ll try to do a turn and it’s not coming out right today, but… SMM: What about riding uphill? Is that fun, too? GH25: No, I walk up the hill. And it, but, I live in the middle of the street, so I’m like, “Awh! I gotta go up the hill! Like that’s just not a good idea!” So I just walk up the hill.

“Uh…I don’t…I wanna get stronger and muscles, and um, especially my arm muscles; I have no arm muscles whatsoever.”

“…once, ‘cause once a guy pushed my buttons, and then…yeah, ended up him face down in dirt.” ….will try anything once, but some things she won’t try twice “…my friend..sh, she, she had just like…she had broke a record or something for track or whatever, and then somehow I end up working out with her, and she’s like, “let’s run around the track.” I’m like, “ok.” And so we were running, around, she’s like “GH25, pick up the pace,” I’m like, “Ok.” Next thing we’re like full (bull) running, I’m like, “oh, my god, I think I’m having a heart attack,” which I wasn’t. I was, I just needed water. I was like, “I’m not doing that again.” Oh, that was the worst!”

GH25’s love of play, her started interest in developing her upper extremity

musculature, and her willingness to respond physically when angered by a male peer

(she reserved physical resolution of conflict for males, stating that in a dispute with a female, “we would talk it out civilized”) place her along the upper half of the body agency axis. GH25 also spoke of the physical demands of playing trumpet in the school’s marching band, and how much she enjoyed it (“Band? It’s just, fun all the time (sighs).

But it’s also a lot of physical work.”) Even her preference for avoiding heavily taxing activities (or to avoid repeating them, as in the case with her friend the track athlete), is largely based on experience. She knows racing her friend the track athlete won’t kill her;

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still, she would rather not repeat the experience. Her statements, taken together, seem

to convey the following: “I embrace my physicality; intense, skilled performance is fun

for me. A variety of experiences informs both my aspirations and my boundaries with

respect to physical pursuits.”

GH25 on gender and physicality Enjoys body as object and body as subject SMM: So what’s, what’s “social beauty?” GH25: Uh, social…with my friends, and then…like (if I’m with a group of) my friends, ‘cause…when we were in Italy guys were just checkin’ us out like… “hey!” It was just really funny! I was like, “Um, ciao,” and they were like, “Ciao, bella.” It was like, oh my goodness!

“Um, we played dodgeball; I was acting like one of the guys, ‘cause I was like, ‘Ok, I’m gonna, I’m ‘bout to hit this person like really hard’ and I’ll just throw it, and I’ll hit the person, but girls are like, ‘I don’t wanna play! I don’t wanna do it!’ [makes brief disparaging noise, then pauses]. Like, (unclear), it’s just annoying sometimes, I have to hear ‘em. ‘Can we just walk the track?’ ‘Then, go walk the track, then. There you go. Just don’t waste my time.’”

Female bodies are vulnerable bodies SMM: Ok. So does it seem like your female friends are more injury prone than your male friends? 025: Yep. Yep. SMM: And so how do you explain that difference? GH25: Explain the difference in how…. SMM: In how injury-prone your female friends are as opposed to your male friends? GH25: I don’t know, ‘cause like somehow, like, they, they, they just don’t know what their limit is, like that lemon, that they, they go over somehow.

Though GH25’s body agency placed her in the body as subject portion of the body agency gradient, her comments above, along with her collage (Figure 5.4) indicated that she was also becoming more aware of her body as an object of (male) others’ gaze. In addition to her memorable encounters with Italian males during the band’s spring break trip, she also found it noteworthy when a more “girly” presentation

232 on her part elicited compliments from her school peers: “…uh, uh, apparently I looked like a girl apparently, I was like…yeah, I’m like, ‘I am a girl.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, but you look (unclear) more beautiful;’ I’m like, ‘Oh. Thank you.’” Interestingly, her gendered consciousness seems to be strong with respect to vulnerability to injury as well as with respect to appearance, and the former seems to be the basis for the upper limits she sets on both her physical pursuits and the level of engagement she feels is acceptable for her female friends. On the other hand, her joy and competence in play is reflected is her somewhat derisive account of her female peers’ performance in PE and in her general assessment of her softball teammates batting skills relative to her own: “‘cause most girls are weak, on the team – don’t tell anyone I said that, but they’re weak…they will just hit the ball; it won’t go anywhere. I’m like, in the grass, or in the air…usually.”

GH25’s plot point with respect to gender and physicality seems to be: “My prowess separates me from many females I know, but I am aware of and acknowledge the general differences in strength, power and appearance between the sexes.”

GH25 on physicality, social security and separation Physically active and outgoing “All Star”? Um, this spor-, this and this goes to sports, because, I got interested in softball when I saw my friend Alexa play, I was like, this isn’t bad! Getting hit by the ball might not hurt, but, that was like, fun, and I told my dad when I got home, and that’s how this whole thing started…”

“…if it’s like, if it’s like a social gathering, I’ll show how I am outside of school…within school I’m like really serious, I’m kind of like, like in the corner kind of person, (but when I’m with my) friends, I’ll, I’ll just go crazy. I’m like, ‘nah, nah, nah!’”

Actively separates sport from relationship some people that just ask me about my sports I’m like, “it’s, it’s ok. It’s hard. I don’t want to talk about it, but…can we talk about something else, like, “how’s

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your day?! How are you?!”… it’s basically boring talkin’ about sports all the time. Especially with my dad.

(in response to the query of whether her friends would think females in general have less stamina than males) Yeah. They would. But..n-uhh, let’s see. Some of ‘em yes, some of ‘em no, ‘cause some, like some…if, if they’re like, if they’re not into anything, they would, they would just like, “Huuh. I’ll just sit here.” ….I’m like, “Ok. We can just sit here”…Some of ‘em are like, let’s, let’s go do something! I’m like, “Ok. Let’s go do it.”

GH25’s use of separation with regard to her physicality seems to fall to the left side of the cultural field, in the “selective inclusion” hemi-section, but with a strategic employment of connection and separation. Relationship was clearly important to her; she felt that she was her true self in the company of her closest friends. She discovered softball through a friendship, and physical activity was important in 75% (25/33) of the relationships she named during the social network exercise. But relationship and sport were not inextricably intertwined for her. A “serious”, “in the corner kind of person” at school, she also did not relish sharing her sports experiences with her entire social circle, as her third statement above indicates. She seemed particularly resistant to her parents’ efforts to engage her by “talking sports” and reported responding to their inquiries with minimal information (…my mom…she just asks me questions and I don’t answer her

‘cause I’m like, “Mom, I did this I did that I did this”). It seems to be the case, then, that she did not so much wish to hide or deny her sports participation as she wanted to select the relationships in which it was a central feature., She did not wish to allow all those with whom she interacted (and who were not her companions in sport?) to make her physical prowess a central feature of their relationship. Her social

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Figure 5.4 –Collage, GH25

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security/separation plot point was: “My physical/sports prowess is part of who I am, but

I choose the relationships in which that aspect of me is foregrounded.”

Looking at GH25’s three plot point statements together with those of similar disposition and behavior a narrative template begins to emerge:

• “I embrace my physicality; intense, skilled performance is fun for me. Experience informs both my aspirations and my boundaries with respect to physical pursuits.” • “My prowess separates me from many females I know, and I recognize the general differences in strength, power and appearance between the sexes.” • “My physical/sports prowess is part of who I am, but I choose the relationships in which that aspect of myself is foregrounded.”

This template is characterized by a perception of physicality that unapologetically asserts its non-traditional nature, but does not appear to be informed by a non- traditional ideology - it in some ways challenges extant gender norms, but does not seek to problematize the notion of gendered difference in general. Physical pursuits are important in a significant number of relationships, but shared physical pursuits do not necessarily predict closeness of relationship, and there may be a conscious choice to pursue or cultivate relationships in which physicality plays a relatively minor role. Similar plot points are discernible in the narratives of five other study participants. Though their views of themselves as relative gender exceptions and their high valuation of and strategic approach to relationship are key aspects of this template, these participants’ most noticeable common characteristic was their passion for and commitment to their respective physical pursuits. Their template was accordingly dubbed, “Go Hard or Go

Home.”

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Case 2 – Control is Fun

CF28 was selected for the next case example. A “Steppes baby,” a “Steppes legacy”, and a member of the varsity cheerleading squad, CF28 described herself as

middle class. Academic success was a priority for her; she reported spending at least six hours a night on homework in addition to her involvement with the cheer squad and at least one other student organization. Pointing to her book bag during an interview, she identified its contents as “my biggest source of stress.” Though she recognized that PE as a source of stress relief for boys, she reported starting to dislike PE in fifth grade – an attitude that only strengthened with time. She did not appreciate being compelled to participate in PE as a high school student, objecting notably to the negative effects of PE on her appearance: “Like, I feel like it messes up your hair, it gets you sweaty…”

However, her dislike of PE did not extend to physical activity in general.

CF28 on body agency Balancing discipline and indulgence “…last summer, like I started working out at this place called New Life Personal Fitness, right? So, like when I went there, I weighed like 130lbs. And then I lost the 30lbs, and I was weigh…I my weight flunctuated between like 105, 110. Like it, it just flunctuated, depending on what I ate. So, I mean like, I don’t know why, but like, I’m a, I’m a late night trail mix person. I just…I just don’t know what it is about trail mix, like…it’s just so addictive. Like I just have to have it. Like, I literally have trail mix almost every other day. And it’s so bad for you, but it’s just so good. Like…I mean but the thing is like, I don’t eat cake, I don’t eat…I don’t, I don’t eat chips, like…nothing of that nature, like…I don’t eat any red meat, so like…”

Feeling fit, feeling and looking good SMM: So what do you like about working out when you have time? What’s enjoyable about it?

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CF28: Um, I love the results that it gives. Um, when…ok, this is gonna sound kinda gross, but like, running stairs during the summer…I love being sweaty afterwards. Like ‘cause it’s kinda like, “oh yeah. I’ve worked hard.” Like, “leave me alone.” Like, “I put some work in and nobody else can say anything different.”

“…it’s (referring to being a particular size) not necessarily to fit in with my friends, but I like, I like the, you know, looking skinnier rather than the looking thick aspect…but I mean like, to me there’s a difference, like you know, from the way like, my clothes fit. Like I wear a 5 in jeans, so like, me at 117, jeans are a little bit tighter than for me being 105. So I mean like, you know, it kinda like, satisfies myself, if that makes sense.”

These statements reflect a strong sense of body as subject, albeit tempered somewhat by a traditionally gendered sense of aesthetics (i.e., sweating is gross). CF28 was aware of how diet and exercise affected her weight, and her diet and exercise regimen demonstrated both that awareness and a sense of agency with respect to maintaining her desired body size and shape. With her admission that she enjoyed being sweaty after a hard workout, she clearly conveyed the sense of satisfaction and pleasure that can follow strenuous exertion. And even though she expressed preference for

“looking skinnier” rather than “the looking thick aspect,“ she gave equal weight in the statement to the feeling of her jeans at a lighter versus a heavier weight, which also supports an assessment of body agency in the realm of body as subject. Summarized, her excerpted sentiments and experiences convey: “My health/fitness practices and aesthetic preferences support a lean, attractive, confident physical presentation.”

CF28 on gender and physicality Gender normative private performance important SMM: Like what should they (females) know how to do? CF28: …I know I’m kinda like, contradicting myself, but it kinda comes back to the traditional thoughts, like they should know how to like clean and stuff like that, but maybe that’s because like, you know, my mom kinda raised us on that, like…like, I don’t know, when girls get married, like you’ll never see like, I mean

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unless the guy’s like a total neat freak, but I’ve never met a guy that’s a neat freak.

SMM: So are there things that, that, males should be able to do? CF28: They should be able to…lift strong stuff when a girl can’t do it…it’s kinda like a contradiction again that everything, anything a male can do a girl can do. So it, it goes hand in hand but then again, it doesn’t, ‘cause some things a girl…can’t…do.

Gender normative public presentation important “…I like playing when like, you know, like I’m not in school, but like, I don’t know, girls are…it kinda goes along with the back to society thing, girls are always pressured to be pretty and, you know, don’t be…like getting dirty and stuff like that. It kinda like goes along with that. Like, and it’s kinda like, I hate being dirty. So like that stuff’s, that’s like another reason like why like I don’t really do anything in gym, ‘cause it goes along with the sweaty thing.”

CF28 is well aware of the contradiction between the strong gender

egalitarianism she expressed in other parts of her interviews and her somewhat

traditional views concerning gender roles – that a “dirty” presentation of one’s home or

oneself is undesirable and unfeminine, and that males should be available and able to

take on the physical tasks females cannot readily accomplish on their own. However, “I hate being dirty” does not contradict the “I love being sweaty” statement in the section above, because hating being dirty is an issue of public presentation, while loving being

sweaty is an experience of private practice. The display of prettiness at school and

orderliness at home is consistent with the idea of “true” femininity – the Black Lady trope discussed in Chapter 3 that encompasses historical race/class norms. Private practice of fitness does not interfere with the public presentation of prettiness – indeed; it can be seen as a means of embodying the moderation and control that characterizes

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the Black Lady. CF28’s middle class status and school status as a “Steppes baby” and a

cheerleader provide emplotment options that accommodate fitness and femininity.

Cheerleading can of course be quite physically demanding, but its demands occur in a

context of performance that foregrounds attractiveness, enthusiasm, and aesthetic appeal rather than strength, coordination, and endurance. This dynamic public/private balancing act can be summarized thusly: “I consistently present and conduct myself as a

Lady, and do not, as a rule, publicly violate the boundaries of Ladylike presentation and conduct as I see them.”

CF28 on physicality, social security and separation Physical prowess should be selectively witnessed “I can do diamond push -ups. A lot of them…I’m really good at push-ups…I won a bet. I did 20 of them….Yeah, I was real…yeah, I don’t know what was wrong with me that day. I was really strong that day… Um, but not many people know that about me. ‘Cause, other than that I’m pretty girly [emphasis added].

Known for unabashed self-expression and willingness to care for others “I feel that like, every person should, like be, be…I know it’s like hard for people to be theirselves in certain, like, situations, but I feel like, like I’m comfortable with who I am, so like, I mean like, I’m not gonna like, hide my opinion or like, af- …be afraid to, do what I feel is right, ‘cause I mean like I feel like that’s like an aspect of being myself? And I, I don’t feel like I should like hide that for any person, like I’m just gonna, I’m gonna be me no matter what.”

“I like having the power of knowing I can always take care of someone. Like always, like…no matter, like emotional or physical. I know I can always take care of somebody. And um…I like having the power of knowing I kn-, I can help someone. I know that kinda like goes back to like what I just said, but…helping people is really important to me.”

Relationship (being engaged with others and extending herself for/to others) has

a high value for this participant. The value she places on nurturing and caring for others

is also consistent with the trope of the Black Lady. With respect to her physicality,

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separation is employed selectively, and primarily in service to her performance of

appropriate femininity. However, judging by her collage (“there is a line between me

and society” – Figure 5.5) and interview statements, separation for this participant is not so much a matter of “walling herself off” from the world (a la Gilligan) as a matter of audience selection reminiscent of Goffman’s (1959) performance analogy.

Goffman describes the self as an exercise in staging, a process in which human

“actors” are continuously engaged in presentation of fitting personae. And while there is no reason to doubt CF28’s assertions about the importance of being true to herself in all situations, she does not seem to equate “I’m going to be me no matter what” with indiscriminate openness regardless of the audience. CF28’s push-up prowess was demonstrated in the context of a bet, a situation requiring witnesses for verification.

However, she has not sought to make her prowess common knowledge: “not many people know that about me.” Placing the account of her self-characterized “masculine” performance of diamond push-ups before a limited audience alongside the statement,

“I’m gonna be me no matter what,” imbues the latter with nuance, and reveals the statement as part of a strategy for managing relationships in order to maintain connection rather than an assertion of unequivocal individualism and a broad endorsement of separation. That is, the “me” CF28 presents is authentic, and reflects her sense of what is appropriate for her audience and setting. The summary assertion is: “I value being myself in any company, though the self I present is informed by the company I am keeping.”

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Placing CF28’s plot points together reveals a narrative of traditionally feminine physicality – not so much equilibrium between body as subject and body as object as a successful, ongoing negotiation of territory between the two:

• “My health/fitness practices and aesthetic preferences support a lean, attractive, confident, physical presentation.” • “I consistently present and conduct myself as a Lady, and do not, as a rule, publicly violate the boundaries of Ladylike presentation and conduct as I see them.” • “I value being myself in company, although which self I present is influenced by the company I am keeping.”

When the summary statements from CF28s narrative excerpt sets are combined and examined for a central theme, what emerges is a strong sense that the way she wishes to portray herself to others is norm driven, but not norm bound. That is, CF28 places a high value on relationship, but cultivates relationship in a manner that is reflexive and discriminating. Nine other participant narratives similarly contained some positive experience of their physicality, a strong association of physical fitness with appearance, social recognition (and frequently health) benefits, and a preference for performance over competition that reflected an advocacy of class-informed, traditionally gendered

physicality. Because participants who were plotted into this template quadrant strongly

preferred self-selected activity after school to imposed activity (PE) in school, and their physicality seemed inextricable from social presentation, this schematic narrative template was given the name, “Control is Fun.”

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Figure 5.5 - Collage, CF28

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Case 3 – The Unwittingly Unfit

UU32 is the case example for the third schematic narrative template. She, like the previous two participant cases, had been a student in the Progressive Steppes district since kindergarten, and had siblings who were graduates of the high school. She was a member of the band, like GH25, and like CF28, she saw nothing of benefit in the high school’s PE requirement, and invested only the effort necessary to secure the “A” she desired for purposes of maintaining her GPA: “‘cause pretty much like, like all you have to do to get an A in gym is like—is to dress and like participate, but like you don’t even have to—you can like, act like you’re participating pretty much. Like it’s really not a big deal so I try to—(giggles)—so I don’t really put that much effort into it.” But unlike both GH25, and CF28, UU32 preferred being sedentary to being active, shied away from both competition and discomfort in the activities she did choose, and viewed physical activity primarily as a necessary evil – a means of changing the body she disliked.

UU32 on body agency Exercise is ok except for the moving around part “Like, I don’t like—I don’t hate exercise …like um, but like, it takes, li…wh,what am I tryin’ to say… um … like I’d much rather just lay around than exercise, that’s how it is for me like, but um, like I don’t hate it though.”

“And like I actually signed up for touch football for this um, for like our last (PE) unit, but uh, like we switched back to weight training today because like…um, like I saw the freshman class doing touch football and like they were actually like…they were like for real playing, and I didn’t wanna do that. Like I wanted to change (activities) but I didn’t actually like wanna…play like for real. So um, so like I’d rather… just work out.

“Um (giggles) like um … I—like—(chuckles) I just don’t like, um … I like I don’t like it when like my heart rate goes up. Like, I know that’s a good thing, but like, it…hurts.”

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If exercise would change my body… SMM: Are there um—are there physical attributes that you have but don’t like? UU32: Yeah…like…my upper—like most of my body.

“Like I, I like what it (exercise) does for me. That’s what I like about it…Yeah, and I like the…like I like the results that would show.”

The apparent disconnect between desire and execution – between self and body

– conveyed by the above statements occur throughout this participant’s interviews and collage (Figure 5.6). UU32 expressed a desire for a physical presentation represented by

Beyoncé (tall, curvaceous, glamorous, and fit), an emphasis on attractive grooming that is non-size dependent (conveyed by Gaboray Sidube) and an arguably weaker commitment to what she herself recognized as the level of physical activity necessary to achieve a body that is a healthy weight, shapely, and able to fit into fashionable clothing. Taxing her cardiovascular system is necessary for the weight loss she desired, but by her own admission, she avoided this level of exertion: “I know it’s a good thing, but like, it…hurts.” Her conditional verbiage when talking about what she liked about exercise “I like the results that would show” and when talking about how frequently she exercises “I try, like to work out as like, as much as I can,” indicates that not only have her exercise efforts not yet produced the desired results, but also suggests that for her,

the mere fact of very engagement in exercise in an attempt to lose weight may be a

proxy for the effectiveness of those efforts.

In this latter sense, UU32’s attitudes and actions echo UU2’s “track as trying”

strategy, discussed in chapter 4. Both participants’ narratives suggest inexperience with

their personal capacity for physical exertion and a willingness to let the fact of their

245 fitness attempts stand for the process of actually becoming fit. And like UU2, UU32 seems to aspire to a positive self-regard – even more so than she aspires to her ideal body size and shape: “I wanna feel—like I try to make myself like, feel…I try to like feel good about myself like…um, like admire my flaws and like what I—and like what I have that’s good.” However, unlike, UU2, this participant’s strategy for encouraging others’ positive regard rests primarily on grooming. She does not appear interested in publicly performing attempted weight loss through physical activity – a position consistent with her self-assessment as non-competitive: ‘Cause I’m really—‘cause I’m really relaxed and like people like, are like, are like really competitive and I’m not like that at all. And I— especially in…at gym class. So (chuckles)… I just try to stay away from that.” This participant’s plot point with respect to body agency and physical activity is: “Though I am unhappy with my body size and/or shape, I value comfort and enjoyment (physical, emotional or social) highly, and prioritize those things in my physical pursuits.”

UU32 on gender and physicality In search of a femininity that fits “I learned in my English class that like um, like women who were paler and like had cur, curvier, they were like … um they were like the more beautiful women, because… yeah ‘cause it… yeah. Ok. ‘Cause that showed that they had money, so they wouldn’t…‘cause like the darker skinned and like thin people they would be at, like outside working.

“Um…well I mean, I think that men, just because of like, their makeup, um, like s- , that just makes them stronger. Um, I don’t think women are weak because, um, like…we may not like, have like the testosterone levels, but we carry children, and um, like stuff like…and um, I heard that um, we can like, we have like more endurance I think, than men? So um…I think that, ah, makes us stronger too.”

Physical prowess is unnecessary for females; female power is domestic “IIIII….um…let me see…like I feel like they should if they want to, like they should, um, push to their maximum if they want to, but it’s not really needed to do. It’s not really like, needed. SMM: Ok. So tell me about it not being needed.

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032: Like they shouldn’t have to. They should just, like, work on just like trying to be, like healthier, like trying to be fit.

Um….(laughs)…um…let me see….I don’t know (laughs)….um….I think….women like kind of have more power like in the home…um, because I think they’re just like better at like doing like household stuff, so I think they have more power like in the home, but like…in the larger scale I think, like…men are more powerful like I don’t want it to be that way but like that’s just how it is.

This participant’s assertion in the previous section that she “would much rather just lay around than exercise” resonates with what she recalled from English class about beauty standards in previous centuries favoring, fuller-figured, pale-skinned women, and with her views on gender, physicality and power. She seems to enjoy the idea that her full bodied and light-skinned self once represented the beauty ideal rather than transgressed it. Childbearing is the demonstration of female strength that sprang to mind for her as a counter to the statement that “females are naturally weak”, though her stated immediate life plans centered around college and learning to care for herself rather than bearing and rearing children. This implies that her physical strength was not regularly taxed in her daily life, and that she did not expect that to change in the near future. Her assertion of females’ superior endurance

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Figure 5.6 - Collage, UU32

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calls to mind the statements of BG18 in the last chapter, who saw physical endurance as

a matter of will more so than of cultivated physical capacity. What they both appear to be describing is a strength that receives and endures rather than one that acts and changes. And also like BG18, UU32 eschews ardent pursuit of physical prowess for females and males, though she deems it merely unnecessary rather than potentially harmful, as BG18 does. But her conclusion that men are more powerful “in the larger scale” – that is, outside the home, suggests that the pursuit of prowess for males is unnecessary because they already have it and unnecessary for females because it is not required for “household stuff,” at which females are “just like better.” Her gender and physicality plot point is: “I am not a complete stranger to my physicality, but I am guided in its employment by my sense of what constitutes a controlled, capable and recognizably feminine presentation.”

UU32 on physicality, social security and separation Um…let me see…hmm…(next very softly)…see. Like…um, I try to do what I think is good for me. Like I try not to, like, get in to peer pressure and stuff, because like a lot…’cause like a lot of the stuff some people do is just really stupid and …like that’s not something I need to do. So… …mm-hmm. Um, like a lot of decisions people make, I just think, is like really stupid. And like…yeah, it’s just like, not something, like I need to do.

“And, but like, I would probably say now um, my sister, my oldest sister influences me because… SMM: the one at Duke? UU32: Yeah. Because like, um (pause), uh (chuckles) um… because like she’s just like really healthy and stuff, and um… and like, oh my gosh (short laugh), like she’s really good with like, um, eating healthy and stuff, and like exercising so… and like I wanna—yeah—and like I wanna…be like that.

SMM: Ok, now, you also work out on your own, yes? Do you like that more, less or the same as PE?

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032: Um… I…probably more because…except like for weight training like it’s pretty much the same as me working out. Because like I have more freedom to do what I wanna do.

UU32’s comments above indicate that separation, rather than relationship,

characterizes her physicality attitudes and practices. She seemed generally wary of

engaging with others around physical pursuits. The exceptions to this are one of her sisters, who she described as more of a role model than a companion (“oh my gosh

(short laugh), like she’s really good with like, um, eating healthy and stuff and like exercising so… and like I wanna—yeah—and like I wanna…be like that”), and her friends in dance class. These are also the only relationships for which she identified physical activity as important in her network grid. Her statements in the interviews also create the impression that she prefers to select what she does to “be healthy” without direct input from adult authority – parent or teacher. She reported that her weight and diet and exercise habits were matters of concern to her parents, and that they frequently chided her for her dietary choices in particular. She recounted one incident in which her father told her she couldn’t have soda with her dinner – she could only have water (this stricture was ostensibly issued out of concern for her weight). In response, she refused to eat with the rest of the family in the dining room and instead ate by herself in the kitchen.

The personal fitness classes offered by the PSH PE department are meant to encourage students to encourage regular exercise habits, but UU32 objected to the fact that the PE staff “takes it (PE participation) seriously”: “I wish we could just do, like what we wanted. Like, just like walk around the track…” The exception to her desire to be left

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to pursue her own devices is dance. She accepted physical correction from her dance

teacher, “and like, um, they’ll like perfect, like your body …like of how—like the position

and stuff,” because she enjoyed dance, and for her, enjoyment, rather than skill, is the

necessary prerequisite to pursuit of an activity. But because her choice of physical pursuits, the intensity of her engagement in those pursuits, and her willingness to join with others in those pursuits seems to be predicated on comfort and enjoyment, she has limited knowledge of her own physical capacity. Consequently, the likelihood that

she will achieve the level of fitness she says she desires is also low. Stated as a plot point, her position is: “My commitment to self-love, pleasure and comfort guide both the physical activity pursuits I chose and my decisions about whether my activities will include others, including who those others will be.”

Compilation of this participant’s plot points reveals a strong focus on physical and relational comfort. This focus on comfort seems to support avoiding levels of exertion and interaction that do or could demand more of her than she wishes to give. This avoidance is informed by a feeling that as a female, rigorous cultivation of physical prowess is certainly an option, but is not an attractive or necessary one. Moreover, such cultivation, in UU32’s estimation, threatens the curvaceous body shape (full bust and hips, smaller waist) to which she aspires (I’m not like trying to be like a bodybuilder or whatever …I just wanna do like, what keeps me healthy”). Interestingly, this emphasis on comfort and traditional femininity co-exists with a sense of body dissatisfaction (“I dunno, I have a weird body”) that has spurred her efforts to lose weight and with

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parental comments about her weight, diet and exercise that she experienced as

“hurtful”:

• “Though I am unhappy with my body size and/or shape, I value comfort and enjoyment (physical, emotional or social) highly, and prioritize those things in my physical pursuits.” • “I am not a stranger to my physicality, but I am guided in its employment by a sense of femininity that favors curvaceousness and eschews visible muscularity and/or demonstrable muscle power.” • “My commitment to self-love, pleasure and comfort guide both the physical activity pursuits I choose and my decisions about whether my activities will include others, and who those others will be.”

These plot points combine to produce a template distinguished by conflicting

desires – between the desire for self-acceptance and desire to adherence to norms of

attractiveness, between desire for the security of that which is comfortable and for the

potential rewards of transformation. These conflicting desires foster and are fostered by

the experience of rigorous exertion as painful and frightening – an experience that is reinforced by practices of separation with respect to physical activity. These practices insure there are few or no persons available to encourage her to leave her comfort zone. Similar plot points were found among nine other participants. These narratives’ expressed preference for comfort and fear/avoidance of fitness-level exertion coupled with the assertions of body dissatisfaction and emphasis on trying to lose weight or become fit, and led to this template being named, “The Unwittingly Unfit.”

Case 4 – Big Girls Don’t Sweat

The name for this narrative template was provided by one of the study participants during data collection – albeit one who did not complete any interviews and

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who therefore could not be included in this part of the analysis. In an early observation

of one of the PE classes focused on personal fitness, this participant was overheard to

say, “Big girls don’t….” in reference to several activities. Since she was short and slender,

the term “big girls” seemed to suggest that her sense of status or developmental

attainment (i.e., no longer a “little girl”) was the basis for her negligible participation in

class activities, not her size. Like that participant, BG54, the case example for this

category, was slender. And while she was grade-conscious and thus not defiantly non-

participative in PE, she admitted to a growing disaffection for it beginning in middle

school: “But then at seventh when it was all girls I just kind of got like lazy and lazier.” A

freshman during the study period, she experienced bouts of unspecified “stomach pain”

that mapped closely to her disinclination to participate in PE:

BG54: N…yeah, and other times when my stomach has hurt. (brief laugh from BG54) SMM: Why did you (say) it like that? Did your stomach (054: because…no; laughs) really hurt? BG54: No. SMM: (Laughs) So sometimes you have these ailments that just appear spontaneously (BG54: yes) and cause you not to feel well enough to… BG54: …get dressed. SMM: (Laughing) Ok, and then they miraculously resolve after PE? BG54: mm-hmm

Somewhat surprisingly, BG54’s admission that her stomach pains were

mythological exists alongside the opinion that a PE requirement in high school was a good thing, because it imposed a level of physical activity on her that she would otherwise not have voluntarily undertaken. She saw physical activity as a necessary evil, something she needed to engage in to “keep up my metabolism” – something she saw

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as important to maintaining the “skinny, lean, healthy” body she possessed, and to

avoiding the “big stomach” she found undesirable. However, as her bouts of “PE

tummy” also indicate, her investment in physical activity was more a matter of rhetoric

than of practice.

BG54 on body agency Play as a thing of the past BG54: (small laugh) Because, well, you…start to…you get older and you get more responsibilities and now you have to start thinking ahead of like college and stuff and you have to start choosing your friends wisely. And boy drama and stuff like that (small laugh). SMM:…so what did you, what was important back then? BG54: Just…like…waking up and thinking, “What toys am I going to play with today?” SMM: And now you have to think about, you know… BG54: What am I going to study for the final?

Play should be unconscious and uncultivated “Because sometimes I’ll, like, not want to do it and then sometimes I’ll like, just find myself like wanting to just like go everywhere like running and stuff like that. And then I’ll be like, ‘Wait a minute! What?!’”

BG54: I think enjoying something is…more fun. SMM: Ok. So you kind of value enjoying something more. 054: mm-hmm SMM: Why? 054: Because, you could be good at running…but…I feel like…if…I was to try out for the team and make it …and, like win races and stuff, I still wouldn’t be happy, like, on the inside…and I feel like, that would like, ruin me.

Deliberate exertion alien and unpalatable SMM: Is there anything you dislike about physical activity? BG54: No. Not on like the physical activity side. Mostly on my side. SMM: Ok. What’s on your side? BG54: That like, I sweat a lot (SMM: uh-huh) so I don’t really like doing stuff that makes me like work up a sweat. SMM: Ok, what’s wrong with sweating? BG54: (Laughs a little) I think, I think it’s like…disgusting.

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This participant exhibited a form of unembodiment that seems at once similar to

and different from other cases presented. Like UU32, she shied away from intense exertion, and like CF28 she was averse to sweating (though CF28’s is circumstantial –

related to presentation, and BG54’s seems visceral – she found sweating unappealing on

its face). Her unembodiment contrasted most strikingly with that of GH25 in that while

the latter’s experience of her physicality had a quality of innateness, BG54’s had a

foreignness - a fundamental separateness that seems connected to stage of life - to a process of developmental ending or loss that is understood as natural. Play is a part of

BG54’s lost innocence; the days of waking and anticipating her next imaginative

adventure have been replaced by preoccupation with successful academic performance

and desirable presentation.

Consequently, enjoyment of her physicality must sneak up on BG54 unawares;

she cannot consciously choose the joy of abandoned play – it must emerge involuntarily, as part of the “mind” of childhood that is being lost to the “brain” of socialization,

(recalling the terminology employed by Carol Gilligan’s participant, Judy (Gilligan

2006:56). But unlike Judy, who arguably mourned the loss of her child mind, BG54 seemed to believe bringing the “mind” of abandoned play into the “brain” of cultivated prowess risked an undesirable transformation into someone “consumed” by cultivation of physical prowess. Thus, physicality for BG54 was not so much a matter of embracing, pursuing or desiring as accepting. She accepted both her disinclination to be physically active as part of her nature, and her avoidance of competitive athletics as an act of wisdom. At the same time, she accepted the school’s PE requirement, without which

255 she was certain that she would be even less active. Her developmentally-based separation of body and self, her desire for an attractive body, and her passive/passive- aggressive acceptance of the PE requirement combine to form the plot point: “Though I desire and attractive appearance and recognize the benefits of physical activity to my health, embrace and/or cultivation of my physical prowess is something that both belongs to a past life stage and risks the ‘real’ me in ways I find unacceptable.”

BG54 on gender and physicality Play is masculine? SMM: Now, I was watching your gym class as part of my study. And it seemed like…as the semester went on, you guys kind of got into playing a little bit. (BG54: giggles) And like, like I remember watching a couple of kickball games (BG54: mm-hmm) where you all really kind of got into it and competed with each other and you seemed to be having fun. Umm, did you notice…that? (BG54: laughs) That your energy level kind of, kind of crept up, or is that my imagination? BG54: No, I…I think like…that’s true what you were saying but I don’t think I really noticed that. “I just remember, in the beginning (laughter in voice) of the year I was…like …nervous to be, like, playing with the boys since we didn’t play with the boys in seventh and eighth. So I don’t know.”

Emotional distance is masculine BG54: I feel…I think to a certain extent men are stronger than women but… SMM: Stronger than women in what way? BG54: Physically. Um…but…I…also…disagree because I think that women are stronger emotionally.

SMM:…so do you have any skills or abilities that, um, you or people you know would consider male? BG54: Um…well, I don’t know if you would consider it male, but I’m kinda, like, cold. SMM: Cold? What do you mean, like… BG54: Like…..with my personality? SMM: Say a little bit more about what you mean (by), “cold with your personality.” BG54: Well, when I think of women I think of like, warm and loving, and, sweet, but when I think of men I think of like….like strong, and like…harsh, I don’t know.

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SMM: Ok. So, um, maybe…uh…maybe less…maybe you’re less warm and fuzzy than most girls you know? (both laugh) BG54: Yes.

BG54’s gender and physicality plot point connects to her experience of

physicality plot point in its treatment of body as secondary to mind and in the relative unembodiment indicated by that hierarchy. That is, for BG54, the most salient gender distinctions are distinctions of thought and emotion, and the gendered body is but a representation of those distinctions. Examples of this included her nervousness in co-ed

PE classes (“some of the boys…if you …like mess up or something they’ll get angry”) and her account of the general differences in how boys and girls play in PE (“boys are much more competitive… they get like really excited and like pumped up.” She described girls

as “more laid back.”).

These were her responses to questions regarding differences in action between boys and girls. They suggest she recognized and located differences in gendered physicality primarily in thought and emotion, rather than in the body. She characterized males as more readily exhibiting mental strength, which she described as “dominance”

and firmness in decision-making. By contrast, females, in her view, are “warm,” other- focused, and feelings-oriented. She valued the willingness to engage emotionally that she saw as the particular (though not exclusive) province of females, but described her own personality as “cold” – more on the “masculine” side. And though she endorsed gender equality with respect to cultivation of physical prowess, she stated that she did not personally desire to attain her maximum physical potential, but “would like one day to be close to (that) maximum…. I think if I did start to desire my body, or want one…like

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I wanted to get to a certain place…I would get caught up in it, and…like…it…I think it

would like consume me.”

These statements initially appear to be a study in contradiction and narrative

incoherence, but they attain a sense of coherence when viewed as informing and being informed by BG54’s relative unembodiment. A closer connection between mind and self

than between body and self is implied by her concern with being “consumed” by

physical pursuits, and by her inability to describe gender differences in action, as

opposed to emotion, within PE class. Finally, it seems that for BG54, “feminine” qualities of mind do not readily lend themselves to competitiveness or commitment to high-level physical performance. Her comments suggest that for females who possess “masculine” qualities of mind (as she believed herself to do) it is important to control or contain expression of those qualities in order to prevent being “consumed” or “ruined.” It is plausible, then, that her disinclination toward sustained or intense physical exertion is connected, at least in part, to a felt need to manage the existing risk of masculinization posed by her “cold” personality as well as to her sense that intense physical activity is foreign to her “true” self. BG54’s gender and physicality plot point is: “Because gender and power are more matters of mind than body for me, ardent pursuit of physical prowess violates both my personal and gendered sense of self.”

BG54 on physicality and social security/separation Separation from censure SMM: Um, you said you would describe yourself as skinny, lean, healthy (collage, Figure 6.7). I’m interested in what healthy looks like to you? BG54: Mm…well ‘cause, some people think that I’m like not healthy? SMM: Really? (054: mm-hmm) Who thinks that?

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BG54: Well, some of my friends…you know like I sit with at lunch. They, they like to joke and say that I’m like bulimic and stuff. SMM: That’s probably not very funny. BG54: No.

“Classic” peer pressure? SMM: Ok, so you like it when there are just girls if the girls want to play. But if they don’t really want to play, then… BG54: It’s not really fun.

BG54: …well, one time I didn’t get dressed (for PE class) because my friends didn’t and it was kind of like, the angel was like …. “tsk, tsk, tsk!” (laughs) SMM: And the little devil was like, “You don’t wanna do this! Your…none of your friends are doing it!” (SMM laughs) BG54: I know!

Desire to be seen as “me” SMM: You said, “I want others to know that I’m smart and there is someone underneath my skin.” (Figure 6.7; small utterance from BG54) So is the someone under the skin different from the outward appearance? BG54: Yes. SMM: So can…tell me some more about that. BG54: ‘Cause, mostly, you know, at school people think…that I’m shy and conservative. And…I don’t, like I don’t, I’m not like that and I don’t want people to think I’m like that.

The emplotment of physicality and separation for BG54 is a study in contrasts, as

were her other plot points. The contrast in physicality and separation takes the form of

a seeming desire to be both distinct in the eyes of her friends and joined with them. In the quotes above, she alternately struggled with what she felt were her friends’ inaccurate perceptions of her body and her “self” and sought to identify with her friends’ by joining in their activity – or inactivity, in the case of PE. The notion of fitting in while standing out is well known in education scholarship (Gray 2012). However, the world view that fosters many adolescents’ desire to seek these seemingly contradictory ends is frequently not self-evident, and their subsequent behavior tends to be described

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with terminology like “succumbing to peer pressure” that is familiar, but less than enlightening in some situations.

For example, BG54 stated “well, one time I didn’t get dressed (for PE) because my friends didn’t,” but she is not amused by her friends’ teasing about being bulimic, and she does not accept their assessment that her thin build is inherently unhealthy. But her apparently opposed choices – to join with her friends in the one instance and to resist the influence of their opinions in others – echo her physicality and gender plot

points thematically, and also in terms of their apparent juxtaposition. Her choice to

follow her friends in not dressing was consistent with her attitude of general disinclination toward being physically active. Her feeling that PE was “not really fun” when the other girls didn’t want to play cohered with her account of “finding herself” being physically active rather than pursuing or initiating physical activity. Her resistance to her friends’ assessment of her size and eating behavior was notably mental (she does

not remove herself from their company, but kept her own counsel about what

constituted a healthy size). Moreover, she wanted to be recognized as her sarcastic, funny, “random and just out there” true self and not as the “shy and conservative” girl she felt most of her schoolmates saw, but she admittedly did nothing to demonstrate her true self to others. Her choice not to address her feelings about her friends’ comments directly seems consistent with her self-assessment of having a more

“masculine” personality that retreats from emotional challenge behind rationality and

silence. The combination of joining in like-minded action while practicing selective

mental separation is captured by the plot point: “For me, social connection is a pre-

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requisite for physical activity engagement, so I employ separation not to guard my

physicality, but to guard my thought and emotion – my ‘true’ self.”

Taken together, these plot points convey an engagement with identity that features strong dichotomization with respect to each element in the identity model:

• “Though I desire and attractive appearance and recognize the benefits of physical activity to my health, embrace and/or cultivation of my physical prowess is something that both belongs to a past life stage and risks the ‘real’ me in ways I find unacceptable.” • “Because gender and power are more matters of mind than body for me, ardent pursuit of physical prowess goes conflicts with both my personal and gendered sense of self.” • “For me, social connection is a pre-requisite for physical activity engagement, so I employ separation not to guard my physicality, but to guard my thought and emotion – my ‘true’ self.”

With respect to body agency, BG54 exhibits strong mind as subject/body as object dichotomy. By her own admission, BG54’s experience of herself as physically engaged subject is a developmental stage through which she has largely passed.

Physically and socially, she has moved on. She declined to represent her current self physically using print media materials – she cut out neither words or images for her collage, but rather wrote her responses to the collage questions in pencil (Figure 6.7).

Thus, she presented a current self that was both highly personal and ephemeral, of the

mind even in its aspiration “…to look perfect or seem like I have ‘the body’” (italics

added). The mind as subject/body as object dichotomization also shows in her

experience of engaged play as non-volitional. With respect to gender, a mind/body

dichotomy was also discernible, but maintaining a traditionally feminine physical

presentation (e.g., minimal visible muscularity) seemed to permit possession of a

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“masculine” strength of will, clarity of purpose, and penchant for rationality. It appears,

then, that for BG54, an unambiguously gendered body can both permit gendered trespasses of mind and protect against being “consumed” or “ruined” by a surfeit of masculinizing practices.

Figure 5.7 – Collage, BG54

Though BG54 feels that her “cold” personality is not consistent with the feminine

ideal, she does not express any desire to change this about herself, let alone any worry

that her unfeminine personality risks self-injury. Beauboeuf-Lafontant (2009)

documents this favoring of “masculine” qualities of mind among some of her African

American women study participants. Their view was that the mental toughness

associated with masculinity promotes survival and resiliency. Finally, like CF28, BG54’s

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physical activity practices seem to be strongly informed by her social relationships.

However, unlike CF28, BG54 does not select companionship or solitude based on her

activity. She, rather, reported no solo physical activities, and tended to accede to the

wishes of her companions with respect to her activity level. In fact, BG54’s employment

of separation occurs in part as a consequence of her friends’ disparagement of her body.

It can be said of BG54 and of the ten other participants with similar templates, that they

don’t sweat (physically) and they don’t sweat other’s opinions, either – hence the

template name.

Shared borders and borderland inhabitants

Though it would be easy to interpret the above case presentations and derived templates as comprising discrete categories, this is not so. The scatterplot (Figure 5.3) of participants’ positions in the field of physicality-informed identity visually represents the contiguous nature of the templates. It depicts the commonalities and distinctions the analysis revealed in the participant narratives. For example, CFs and GHs both tend to be located closer to the zero value along the separation (x) axis in their respective quadrants. This is consistent with their relative social security and expressed concern with social recognition and commitment to feminine presentation (i.e., being stylish,

“put together,” and height/weight proportionate). But while CFs relatively greater body agency supports pursuit of physical activity as a way of maintaining a desirable appearance, BGs relative unembodiment supports self-acceptance/comfort with their

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size, disinclination toward physical exertion, and a greater focus on grooming and attire

than size and shape.

UUs, like BGs, manifest relative unembodiment and limited experience of their

physical capacity, but UUs’ experiences of body dissatisfaction and negative judgment

by others lead them to pursue body transformation outside of the high-stakes social

environment of school. GHs also elect, at times, to separate themselves physically

and/or rhetorically in terms of their physical activity pursuits, but they do so as a way of

strategically managing the competing priorities of commitment to their physical

pursuits, their self-representation as “girls who play,” and the relationships in which physical activity is not a central feature. So while the template quadrants are narratively distinct, they are not isolates, and are recognizable to each other in some regards. But these examples address the participant markers that occupy only one quadrant. What of the participant markers that lie in two quadrants?

Accounts of indeterminate position - spanning two quadrants

As visually, logically, and theoretically appealing as this narratively produced system of field, axes, and quadrants is, it is important to note that there were also discrepant cases, and to examine the data for what may have contributed to the discrepancy. Of course, given the limits attendant to selecting gender (and heterosexuality) as the prominent facet of context, it was not surprising to find that some participants’ plot points did not fit well with any one of the templates described above. These participants’ body agency, gendered physicality, and social security/separation plot points were characterized by ambiguity, did not coalesce into

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clear templates, and did not map into a single quadrant. Their plot points, rather, pull from adjacent quadrants, and reflect what Ortner (1996) has described as occupation of cultural borderlands – life contexts in which difference, power, and struggle are more apparent than they are under conditions of relative experiential and social selfsameness.

The four participants for whom this was true were dubbed “multiple occupiers,” and did not manifest similar templates. For example, three of the four multiple occupiers were relative newcomers to the district, and the fourth, MO62, had been in the district for most of her school career but chose to operate as an outsider, declaring,

“‘cause…if you ask around nobody…knows…who I am” and “I don’t like anybody here.

‘Cause I just think everybody’s mean, unless they prove to me otherwise.” The span of their positions along the separation axis was also rather broad – with three (MO26,

MO55, and MO62) employing varying degrees of selective inclusion, and one (MO15) employing selective isolation. Their separation practices, in turn, limited cultivation of their physicality in some ways. All four shared positive body-as-subject experiences and asserted that cultivation of their prowess was something they enjoyed, but only two were involved in school athletics (MO15, MO62). One of those two (MO62) avoided conditioning workouts (“…I really don’t like…exercise. Like, I just wanna go out and play.”)

Finally, though each of the multiple occupiers expressed concerns with weight/body shape and grooming and appearance concerns that not entirely inconsistent with traditional female gender norms, analysis suggested that the location

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their respective “manly lines” may be informed by experiences and circumstances not

fully addressed in this study’s design or theoretical framework. Overall, these

participants’ narratives were rich and complex, but also filled with contradictions and glimpses of circumstances that fell outside the scope of this investigation. Consequently, the element-related narrative segments extracted from their interviews did not support clear articulation of plot points. The case example that follows will demonstrate this analytic quandary.

Case 5 – A Multiple Occupier

Unlike the previous four case examples, MO26 was a transfer student. The study year was MO26’s second year in the Progressive Steppes school district. She had transferred in from the adjacent large, under-resourced, urban, failing school district in middle school, and had no family who had attended school in Progressive Steppes or graduated from PSH. Pleasant but very quiet and withdrawn, MO26 was not observed to interact regularly with anyone during PE class, though she dressed and participated when present. She was one of the participants whose PE class placement did not reflect her stated/observed enthusiasm for PE, but was consistent with her skill level at the games played:

Field notes: 1) Volleyball – attentive, participates; 2) basketball – tried to get in game boys were playing while waiting for class to start but was excluded; participates in all activities, runs to retrieve ball. Ended class playing “knockout” 3) volleyball – MO26 very engaged throughout, even when game changed to badminton (at which point all boys left game). When game stopped because birdie hit to balcony, 026 stood to the side while classmates chatted. 4) absent 5)

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fitness games – walk curve, jog straight 6) dodge ball - MO26 first to arrive in class, played entire period with enthusiasm, if not great skill.

Six observations are not a great many for a class occurring daily over the course

of a semester, so it is not possible to say whether MO26’s observed “alone in a crowd”

experience was typical. However, her experience of gender exclusion when attempting

to join boys in play echoes that of GH5 recounted in Chapter 3. Judging from her

placement in a compliant/resistant PE class and her stated and observed attitude

toward physical activity, MO26’s situation seems to be one in which the assumption

that in high school level, skill at play reflects knowledge and interest in equal parts is untrue. In her case, skill at play seems to be the product of a particular context of exposure (i.e., being a student in poor, under-resourced school district through the first year of middle school). MO26 enjoyed physical activity, regarded herself as athletic, and relished competition and variety in play. Unlike the majority of her female PE classmates, she found the default activity of walking or running around the track during the final spring session “boring.”

MO26 on body agency (discussing collage, Figure 5.8) SMM: Ok, so what does the Olympics say about you? MO26: That I'm athletic and I just like to do fun things (voice becoming fainter). SMM: These too? (referring to other images in the collage) MO26: Yeah. SMM: So all of these three images of the woman in the yellow top reflect your athleticism? MO26: Yeah, the endurance and stuff, yeah.

On liking physical activity Um...I just like...'cause you have so much fun doing different things, and..sometimes it can be kind of funny, sometime it can be like, 'oh, man that

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really hurt - do I try that again?' Um, I just like it. It's just funny. And, and sometimes you just relax from it...I like it.

“Well, me and this girl have a, we have a bet on who can get the most abs...she wanted a 10-pack, and I said I wanted an 8, 'cause I have a six. And so we're working on by December to see who can get (laughs) in shape before then.

Struggling to present herself as acceptable SMM: Ok. So how...what do you do to get across to people what it is that you....what's important for them to know about you? MO26: I try my hardest to....look at people in the eye because...I find it hard to look at people in the eye because I feel self-con...uh....(very softly)...I can't say the word... SMM: Self-conscious? MO26: Yeah, self-conscious about my eyes going cross-eyed and so...I get kind of scared looking at people.

SMM: Um...(pause) Are there physical attributes you have but don't like in yourself? MO26: I learned to come to the conclusion with myself that I have to learn to love myself, so (last inaudible)…

Though she identifies as athletic and espouses an enjoyment of physical activity that is reminiscent of the participants who fall in the upper two quadrants, the latter of the above two quotes and other statements made during her interviews made MO26’s position on the body as subject/body as object continuum a bit less straightforward. The central figure in her collage, upon whose legs MO26 affixed the words “Feel beautiful,”

(Figure 5.8) suggests she was conscious of the gaze of others and wanted to visually project as well as enact her conviction that she is “one of a kind”: “And being different means you can be beautiful and different and just have fun live life.” But this ethos of play, fun (the word “fun” also partially covers the central figure’s right side) and celebration of difference exist alongside a deep-seated insecurity that is the legacy of ten years of separation from her mother, a recovering drug addict, life during that

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separation with her aunt, who “looked down onto me and said bad things about me,”

and a history of esotropia, in treatment of which she had undergone three surgeries:

MO26: I try my hardest to....look at people in the eye because...I find it hard to look at people in the eye because I feel self-con...uh....(very softly)...I can't say the word... SMM: Self-conscious? MO26: Yeah, self-conscious about my eyes going cross-eyed and so...I get kind of scared looking at people.

Thus, the joy MO26 found in her body, in experiencing and cultivating her physical prowess was complicated by an ongoing struggle to love and express confidence in her embodied self that is strongly reminiscent of the UUs. Her clear body as subject positionality exists alongside discomfort with scrutiny (because of the potential for censure) and desire for affirming, honest self-representation. This signals unresolved SE↔SR dissonance, and locates MO26 within the body agency borderlands, without a clearly articulable plot point.

MO26 on gender and physicality SMM: Ok. And then, what about the girls being naturally weak, then? MO26: I guess because...I think some of 'em think they that they're supposed to be like that because that's how the world, you know, sees it, that males are...eh, macho I guess, I don't know. Um...yeah.

SMM:..do you have any, like, skills or abilities, or, um, that you or people you know would consider to be male or masculine? MO26: Yes. SMM: What? MO26:...ok, we had to do this thing in weight class where we had to...you know, the bars where you have to lift up? SMM: The pull-up? yeah, yeah, yeah. MO26: Ok, I was doing 'em, and they, and they was like, "you're a male!" (giggles) My whole class was calling me manly…

Responding to the question about differences in power by gender

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MO26: Ok, let's say it was a race. And the guy...the girl started off slow, and the guy just went on fast, and the guy began to, you know, slip back, and she saw the opportunity that she can still rin the wa...rin the way (noises acknowledging feeling tongue tied)...win the race. (SMM, affirming articulation and following the story: “yes.”) And she won because she waited until this person got tired, and went on, instead of going on like the dude, and just going fast, so yeah.

Responding to whether network members would agree with her about cultivating prowess SMM: You think? You seem to hesitate. Is there somebody in there who would say, you know, 'girls shouldn't work that hard, or...' 026: Yes. TP (next unintelligible) SMM: TP might say..what? 026: She like, "we ain't gotta do this! I don't wanna do this. This is too hard. I'm 'on have a seat."(laughs in finishing her impersonation of her friend)…Yeah, she would say girls shouldn't do that. She was, like, she was like...uh-luh...(making sound to indicate feeling tongue-tied)...when we had to run around the thing and stuff, she was like, “we shouldn't have to do this. We're girls.” SMM: So what did you say to her? 026: I said, “everybody has to do it, not just girls, b..b..you see boys our here running too, so, move your behind.”

The tenor of unresolved dissonance in the SE↔SR dialectic documented in the previous section was also detectable in MO26’s observations about gender. She resisted generalizing about strength as a function of gender, asserting instead that:

“…some girls like to challenge boys, because boys think they are better than girls, you know, generally, and...some girls just don't do nothing. And some boys just don't do nothing either (laughing).” However, her position was not wholly ideological; it reflected her personal experiences and preferences as well an awareness of peer norms for female behavior. The former is evidenced by her above statements concerning

“masculine” characteristics and power. Unlike, CF28’s account of her diamond push-ups,

MO26 did not view her ability to perform pull-ups as privileged information, and dismissed her classmates’ accusations of “manliness”: “I was like, I was like, you're just

270 mad because you can't do it.” Her tale of race strategy overcoming raw power suggests that while she is aware of males’ generally greater strength and speed relative to females, this knowledge is not, for her, a deterrent to competition. She is aware, too, that her views and preferences on physicality don’t match those of some of the people with whom she interacts. The overall impression with respect to gender, then, is that of a broader “feminine zone” with a distal boundary that is, if not wholly indeterminate, at least blurry.

MO26 on physicality and social security/separation Building fundamental security as an adolescent SMM:…so now, it sounds like you feel more confident that your mom is going to be there for you. MO26: um-hmm. SMM: And...and that you've had to foster that confidence in yourself. And so that's the growth that you're talking about. Ok, so what...what does that look like in terms of the way you act? That confidence? MO26: Me talking about everything, me talking about little things as, my eyes crossing, my mom being on drugs, just little things that people just.."oh, it's easy to talk about!"...just stuff like that. SMM: Ok. So you feel like...it sounds like you've become more open? MO26: um-hmm. SMM: And maybe, less afraid? MO26: Yes

Including others is risky MO26: Ummm...I don't know about being on the team...'cause I want my own shine! I don't want to be sharing with nobody else on the team... SMM: (laughing) You want your own what? MO26: My own shine. You know, like Venus Serena...they got their own court side. I want that. SMM: Well, now, you could play singles or you could play doubles - doubles is when, you know, you have to share the court, you know, you play forward, or back court. MO26: 'Cause they - look. 'Cause if they miss the ball, you gone get upset. But if, but if you know you missed the ball then you know you can…that's something you gotta work on. So. Yeah. SMM: Well. Ok. (MO26 laughs). So you're not sure that you wanna play with other people (026: Right) 'Cause you're not in control of their performance. MO26: Right

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Solitary exertion is freeing SMM: And riding your bike, once you get it, do you like riding your bike more, less or the same as gym? MO26: More. SMM: So what do you like about riding your bike? MO26: I guess 'cuz...you just feel free. And you just keep going, no matter what, like..it's no rules...you ain't gotta stay there in one spot...you just go, wherever, and you come back when you feel like coming back.

As was the case with her body agency, MO26’s social security/separation plot point

reflects not just the coping strategy of a relative newcomer to the Progressive Steppes

school district, but the relational insecurity that stems from her family situation and her

struggles to both acknowledge it and exercise agency within it. The joy she finds in

cultivation and expression of her physical prowess seems to impart a confidence in her

abilities consistent with that exhibited by the six participants in the GH quadrant: “Oh,

man, the Wii! I’m a champion (at tennis) on the Wii! …Yes!” But this positive self-

experience occurred within a circumscribed context: “...at home, nobody can beat me.”

And though she bemoaned the poor competition offered by members of her family, she

expressed disinterest in joining the tennis team, citing concerns that she would tend to

“get upset” with a partner who missed the ball. Her comments suggest that she

perceives another risk besides that of a partner’s potential mistakes - the risk to her positive self-perception that comes with playing tennis outside her familiar, home electronic milieu. Her comments about risking her “shine” suggest that her experience of herself as a champion holds an importance that is in some ways separate from the very real joy she gets from playing Wii tennis. Her comments about riding her bicycle,

her other regular physical activity, reinforced the impression that she practiced selective

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Figure 5.8 – Collage MO26

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inclusion of others in the expression of her physicality – indeed, that she preferred her own company, riding for hours at a time, relishing the freedom to “just go, wherever.”

Other statements suggest this preference is informed by her memories of critical and restrictive monitoring of her behavior when she lived with her aunt. She contrasted the sense of being carefree with the situation of her early and middle childhood, “when I was with my Auntie I was more strict, you know...like everything...so I just like being a kid… (voice softens and she trails off).” In her preference for solo physical activity MO26 is like the UUs - separation insures the satisfaction she seeks in physical activity by precluding the vagaries of others’ performance and their critique of hers. And as was the case with the other model elements for this participant, this portion of her narrative does not yield a succinct plot point.

Making Meaning of Templates and Multiple Occupiers

The aim of this chapter has been to employ the proposed model and the theoretical insights of the preceding two chapters in a systematic identification of similarity and difference in fitness and prowess attitudes and practices among the study participants. The intent in so doing was not to overturn, but rather to theoretically and functionally enrich current understanding regarding the interaction of embodiment, identity and health among African American female adolescents. The principal products of this analysis, the four schematic narrative templates, accomplish that intent. The participants are distributed relatively evenly across the templates, and in a manner that is consistent with some of what is known about physical activity attitudes and practices in this population. The majority of overweight and obese participants’ (73.6%, or 14 of

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19) expressed UU or BG templates. Participant narratives in these two template

categories are notable for their expressed aversion to intense physical activity and/or fear of fitness-level exertion (BG11, BG36, UU14, UU19, UU32, UU40, and UU50). This finding is consistent with the rates of overweight and obesity and sedentariness among

African American adolescent females (Kimm 2004).

However, the utility of deriving the templates is not simply that they put a human face on epidemiological data. They contribute to theory in identity, embodiment, and health behavior in at least three ways. First, they offer a robust alternative to the category-as-explanation approach to health behavior because their production involves discerning the intersection of multiple cultural systems and the similarities and differences produced by those intersections. Secondly, in this study, they articulate a range of physicality experience that argues well for the establishment of body agency as valid and powerful construct. Finally, they suggest that the role of relationship in physical activity engagement may have a significant non-instrumental, or emotional, component.

The templates represent distinct and informative groupings that proportionality assessments and standardized behavioral measures do not capture. Though the majority of GHs and CFs were of healthy weight and expressed weight concern, school- based PE was overwhelmingly not the venue of choice for fitness pursuits among CFs.

Moreover, though 80% (8) of CFs participated in competitive athletics or performance during the study period, four of the eight attended practice sporadically, ended their participation before the season was over, or demonstrated low intensity effort in

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observed practices. GHs, on the other hand, were uniformly committed athletes, and

those observed put forth discernible effort in PE, playing at a lower level of intensity

than most of the boys in class, but at a higher level than most of their other female

classmates. Though disproportionately overweight and obese, 38% (8/21) of the UUs and BGs expressed weight concern in their interviews, voicing either a general desire to lose weight or a wish to slim down - or not gain weight - in particular areas (e.g.,

waist). However, UUs tended to desire to change/improve their bodies, and to advocate

physical activity as a means of doing so (whether or not they engaged in it consistently

or at levels of intensity sufficient to accomplish their aims). BGs, on the other hand, were more likely to endorse their current bodily presentation (e.g., “I love my curves,”), whether they desired to lose weight or not.

The ability to discern and articulate narrative templates within and across

contexts also has practical/policy applications. The templates may serve as tools for health promotion/disease prevention efforts focused on physical activity – especially as these young women leave high school and begin their adult lives, but also in high school.

Identifying and grouping participants by template (or mixing complimentary templates and separating conflicting templates) may have bearing on the effectiveness of these efforts. The plot points of each template suggest how these efforts might be focused:

Go Hard or Go Home: GHs were intrinsically motivated to pursue physical activity, and their physical abilities were recognized and endorsed at home, at school, or in both arenas. But, in the case of GH60 (discussed in the previous chapter), there was some risk

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that her passion for basketball might not be sustained throughout her high school

career, given that her mother’s saw her team membership as a threat to her academic success. Moreover, being unable to play in games the previous year arguably affected

GH60’s recognition as a “Steppes athlete” within the school as well. This is evidenced by her PE class placement and her observed interactions in PE. GH’s, then, seem to be most successful when opportunity and support (coaching, problem-solving, encouragement) accompany their personal enthusiasm. In terms of intervention design, the challenge for this group would likely lie in providing an appropriate level of structure and challenge, competent leadership, and designing a schedule that fits their availability, since these are young women who tend to have many demands on their time. GHs may be hampered in later life by old injuries or the sense of not being able to match previous performance, but on the other hand may be responsive to solo or group opportunities to compete or pursue a current personal best.

Control is Fun: Because the aesthetics of proportionate presentation are linked to social recognition for CFs, the logistics of physical activity participation are as important as the opportunity to participate for them. This aesthetic, and their predominantly middle to upper-middle class status, means that school-based PE will not be the venue for fitness- level physical activity in engagement in this group as high school students. The variety of recreational options available in Progressive Steppes and the surrounding area, from private fitness facilities to public and private fields, pools, tennis courts, and ice skating facilities were very important to this group. 100% (10/10) of the CFs indicated that they regularly engaged in physical activity outside of school or were involved in athletic or

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performance extra-curriculars. Negative assessments of PE were almost universal. As adults, these women would seem likely to engage in popular personal fitness activities and to expect appropriate amounts of social recognition for their efforts to maintain a

desirable weight and shape.

The Unwittingly Unfit: To encourage them to leave their comfort zones of solitude and

self-direction, the UU’s templates suggest that they will need structured activity that

allows them to experience fitness-level exertion in the presence of a knowledgeable

teacher and supportive others who can assuage their fear of harm and build

skill/competence steadily. High schoolers like UU50 might benefit from being

encouraged to join an athletic team by counselors, teachers, and/or parents, not only

for the fitness, skill and lifetime habit benefits, but for the positive effects on

confidence, perseverance and problem solving that have been found to accompany

participation in sports, particularly by females ( National Women’s Law Center, 2011). As

adults, UUs may respond to classes and activities advertised through their personal or

professional networks because of their concerns with physical and emotional comfort.

Big Girls Don’t Sweat: As high school students, BGs in PE class seemed to respond best

to activities that didn’t conflict with their lower body agency and stronger traditional

gendered appearance and behavior norms. Of course, this meant that fitness-level

exertion rarely occurred, and given the mean BMI in this group (26.9), this was a

problem. Like CFs, though, BG’s tend to value social connection, and thus activities that

involve social interaction or are led by strongly charismatic individuals, so walking clubs,

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work or church-based fitness classes, and dancing may be best for adults and

adolescents.

Multiple Occupiers: Because “Multiple Occupiers” denotes a state of indeterminacy, a

summary similar to that presented for the previous four cases is implausible. However,

it is worth noting that in terms of location in the identity field (Figure 6.3), MO26 is

situated in the borderlands between Go Hard or Go Home and The Unwitttingly Unfit.

She lacks the physical skill set and social negotiation abilities that mark the six GHs, though she shares their visceral enjoyment of physical engagement. Like the UUs, MO26 prefers to pursue physical activity alone or with select others, and she prefers emotional comfort in activity, but emotional comfort and physical challenge are both important to her. In terms of context, she is certainly conscious of gender, but gender does not appear to be foregrounded with respect to her physicality. As a counter to the ongoing challenges to stability, security, support and joy presented by her family circumstances, she seems to have adopted a first principle of enacting and presenting a self that is courageous, confident, fun-seeking and self-loving, rather than internalizing and adhering to traditional gender norms. Using this example, it may be that MOs are more appropriate for individual as opposed to group-level intervention. For MO26, an adult mentor might provide the relational safety she seems to need and be able to persuade her to invest her considerable courage in building her play and relationship skills simultaneously by joining a school team.

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Overall Lessons

Though the narrative templates usefully characterize most of the sample, it is

the discernment of Multiple Occupiers illustrates both the limitations and the strengths of this study’s analytic approach. Two limitations are readily apparent. The first is that use of the model to frame the analysis presumes that the elements chosen will produce be most important, and the dialectics between those elements will yield discernible plot points. This was not true for the Multiple Occupiers. For MO26, it seemed that her family circumstances and dynamics presented such challenges to her sense of emotional wellbeing that her foremost identity challenge was to craft a self-experience that was affirming and fulfilling. Physical activity was a means of accessing and expressing joy and confidence. The school setting seemed to have little bearing on this struggle for MO26; that is, she did not appear to be motivated to make herself a part of the school community (Like BG8), nor did she cultivate “outsider” status (Like MO62). Thus, there was almost no school component in the context ↔SE dialectic of M026’s narrative, and gender (discussed below) was also faint. Moreover, the data revealed little about her social security at school, except that the importance of physical activity in her life was evidenced neither in her PE class assignment nor in her observed interactions with classmates. For this participant, only the SE↔SR dialectic was discernible. This suggests that the elements identified in this investigation did not sufficiently capture this participant’s experience. If that is so, her borderlands placement reflects a design limitation, not a successful emplotment of identity. That could be the case for all the multiple occupiers.

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The second limitation is similar to the first. Group level analysis required one facet of context be selected when building the meta-matrix. Gender (and specifically, traditionally feminine appearance and deportment) was strongly indicated as the facet of choice. This worked well for most of the participants, but appears to have been less than ideal for the Multiple Occupiers. In addition to her troubled family life, MO26 was the only participant who discussed her sexual orientation (albeit briefly) – by identifying one of the (five) female close friends in her personal network as “my girlfriend” with whom she was engaged in a “long-distance relationship.” The heteronormativity implicit in the other 41 participants’ treatment of gender did not support the more inclusive perspective necessary to accurately engage MO26’s gender identity as a part of this study. Though not in any way a comment on the sexuality of the other three MOs, the example of MO26 nonetheless illustrates the model’s limits in terms of engaging contextual complexity in group-level analysis.

The strength of this analytic approach, which is also highlighted by the Multiple

Occupiers, is the potential for the model to be applied across contexts. Progressive

Steppes School District is something of a unique case in terms of its affluence and its 50 plus-year history of voluntary racial integration and the class/socioeconomic diversity within its African American population. It is doubtful that this study, conducted in a district with a different history and level of resources, would produce an identical division of the local body-based identity field into templates, or a similar distribution of participants with respect to those templates. However, because the MOs can be discerned, and the analysis suggests how the model might be tweaked to produce a

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more informative analysis of the MOs, it appears that study design and analytic model can be applied in various contexts as a reliable assessment of the similarity and variability in local body-based identity.

Ultimately, what this analysis offers to the study of the body, identity and health is (1) support for the perspective that physical activity is a local phenomenon; and, (2) a

means of incorporating ethnography into the task of specifying the local conditions

under which members of the community experience and enact their physicality. This analysis support the study premise that physicality-informed identity is the product of

complex dialectics involving multiple, intersecting contexts, embodied experience, and

social relations. In addition to describing this set of complex relationships, it has offered

a method by which similarities and differences in the patterns of these complex

relationships might be discerned and understood that is potentially applicable in many local contexts, with the theoretical and functional aim being to approach health and enact health promotion as local a phenomenon. Yet, for all this analysis does in the way of localizing health behavior, its person-centered-ness by necessity extracts the

individual from the network of ties in which all humans are embedded, instead

portraying relationship and its behavioral effects as sequential and direct. A fuller

exploration of peer networks and physical activity behavior is the topic of the next

chapter.

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Chapter 6 Friends over Fitness: Physicality and Personal Networks

“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” – Eric Hoffer

Introduction

The previous two chapters demonstrated analysis of the narrative data using the

elements of the identity model. The bottom right element, self-representation, was

examined primarily through participant accounts of and responses to the attitudes and

actions of others in their world provided in the interviews. These data proved

theoretically rich, giving rise to the notion that, in addition to being part of the model

dynamics, this element captured a process of negotiation between secure self- representation, or “social security,” and practices of social separation.

The idea of social interaction as critical to identity is well-established in social science theory. It can be identified in Weber’s seminal notion of verstehen, the attainment of understanding through identification with the “other”; in Durkheim’s insistence on the primacy of the collective (Lindholm 2001); and in Chinese philosophy in the concept of jen, the placement of the individual in a web of interpersonal relationships (Hsu 1985). And this notion of social embeddedness, or collectivism, is often contrasted in social science with that of discerning and expressing a self that is separate from others – individualism. Though individualism is often identified as a peculiar to “Western” cultures, and collectivism to “non-Western cultures,” studies of identity in anthropology have revealed that this distinction is more philosophical than functional – that is, identity is certainly socially enacted and affirmed in “individualistic”

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Western contexts (Holland and Kipnis 1994; Bucholz 1999; Kaufman 2003), and there is

certainly recognition of individual actors and motivations in non-Western cultures.

Geertz (1983), for example, whose work with the Javanese is often evoked as one of the theoretical and empirical foundations upon which the notion of a particular Western self is based, also documented the existence of a sense of self among the Javanese.

Other anthropologists have drawn similar conclusions with other populations (Spiro

1993; Ewing 1998; Mines 1988).

Just as anthropological investigation has shown that individualistic cultures have sociocentric features and vice versa, the social security/separation finding in this study suggests that self-representation can be conceptualized as being comprised of acts for the purpose of social inclusion and acts for the purpose of social separation. One may further speculate that the relative contribution of these two acts to self-representation varies, and is affected by at least two things - the character of the individual’s relational networks and the influence on the network exerted by the other model dynamics (i.e., context, self-experience – see Figure 6.1). After making an argument for this perspective on self-representation based on two narrative examples, concepts from human development theory, and brief review of what the study of social networks has contributed to our understanding of human health behavior, this chapter will report the findings of the personal network assessment conducted with the study participants.

Next, the findings concerning to the number and character of the relationships in which physical activity was important for the sample, Finally, this chapter will consider what personal network analysis does and does not contribute to the model with respect to

284 the notion of security/separation gradient, and what the notion of a security/separation gradient offers to the study of personal networks.

Female adolescence in high school (context)

Body Agency Social security/separation (self-experience)) (self-representation)

Figure 6.1 – Elements salient to physicality revealed by analysis

Culture, Relationship and Behavior

SMM: So what, what made you take the year off track? MO15: Well, uh, it was my first year at (PSH), and I started the conditioning, but then I stopped, because it’s like, everybody was already in their own little clique, sort of, and I just didn’t feel like I fit in, because I didn’t know anybody, so I mean, takin a year off…it w-, it was the best thing for me to do socially in the school because I met more people, uh, but, you know, physically and athletically it wasn’t the best I…it wasn’t the best choice, but…I mean, I can’t take it back now.

SMM: So is it a process of really kind of choosing who you’re gonna hang with, or is it more like a natural thing that you kind fall in with people or what is it? CF58: It’s a choice I think, because…like when you—when I came, it was like…I li-, I liked certain people like, “Oh, these people are nice, these people are nice,” then like other people be like, “Oh my gosh; don’t hang with out with her, she’s a loser” or, you know, like, “Don’t be seen with him; he’s weird!” So it’s like—it’s like, you’ll never have the right friends. You just have to like, I… I don't know. I guess it’s sorta like they want you to choose … the correct people to hang out with but you have to know yourself better than that. You have to know like who you like better. Like, I can hang out with the basketball players if I want, but they’re mean, they’re not nice people, you know? Some of them are nice, but

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they start rumors about people, they make fun of people for no reason, and why would I wanna be around that?

The participants whose interview excerpts are printed above are both juniors

who transferred into the Progressive Steppes district in high school. MO15 transferred as sophomore from a neighboring district for reasons she did not disclose; the study year was her second year at PSH. CF58, for whom the study year was her first year at

PSH, transferred as a junior from a local private girls’ school due to a change in family fortunes after her parents’ divorce. In addition to being relative newcomers to the school, both met with challenges in their attempts to take part in school athletics in their first year at PSH, and both their networks were primarily comprised of relationships with persons not attending PSH.

Though she was a track athlete at her previous school, MO15 decided against

trying out for the track team as a sophomore because she was uncomfortable as a dual

outsider – a person new to the school and to the track team. Her school-based physical

activity network had expanded significantly by her junior year; there were school-based

relationships in every category of her network grid. Moreover, while she acknowledged

her choice to sit out her first year was not the best “physically and athletically,” she did

feel it was a good choice for her in other ways. This makes sense in light of the value

she seems to place on being in control of her operating circumstances and her relational

tendency toward selective separation (discussed in Chapter 4). Being at a new school and knowing no one is an isolating experience; it is also one in which one cannot selectively separate. By taking a year to build friendships before joining the track team,

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MO15 could enact her insider-outsider identity as a member of the track team with

veracity.

Along with the pressure she felt from some members of the boys’ basketball

team to make the “right” friends as an attractive girl, CF58s “D” in geometry during the

fall semester limited her ability to continue playing lacrosse as she had at her previous

school. She was allowed practice with the lacrosse team, but ineligible to play in games.

Unable to resign herself to missing the aspect of being a player that she found most

rewarding, she dropped lacrosse and signed up for extra math tutoring during what had been practice time. Her prioritization of academics is above reproach, and can even be considered an admirable demonstration of the appreciation for delayed gratification that participation in athletics fosters. She reasoned that devoting her energy to mastering geometry in the present would increase the likelihood that she could fully participate in lacrosse the following year) At the same time, CF58s decision to not practice with the team since she couldn’t play may have complicated her struggles to find a peer group at her new school. Her network survey supports this notion: while only one of the twelve people she names as “close friends” or “friends” was a fellow PSH student, six of those twelve were people with whom she had played lacrosse at her former school.

Personal networks, then, are not simply a function of the proportion of people relatively similar to oneself encountered in a given setting, but also reflect “the multitude of subject positions” (Sökefeld 2001: 535) held by the person whose network is being examined. Moreover, they reflect not only the individual’s choices for

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presentation of herself to the world, but also common developmental circumstances experienced by group or subgroup members. This is particularly true for adolescence, as cultivating significant non-familial relationships is integral to adolescent identity formation. In early childhood, girls have been observed to prefer dyadic or triadic interaction to larger group interaction, whereas boys are observed to engage readily in both kinds of social relationships (Maccoby 1998). In adolescence, however, the preference among both sexes tends to be for dyadic or triadic interaction. This move to smaller groups is conducive to the greater emotional intimacy and focus on talk that characterizes adolescent peer relationships (Encyclopedia of Human Relationships

2009). The engagement in gossip that is a byproduct of this focus on emotional intimacy and talk contributes to another characteristic of adolescent relationships – ties are regularly forged and broken. This is particularly notable in school-based friendships, which tend to be less longstanding than non-school friendships. Montemayor and

Komen’s (1985) participants knew their school friends for an average of 37.4 months, and their non-school friends for an average of 55.7 months. In the present study, the average length of relationship was 45.2 months; the median was 39 months. The vast majority of relationships identified in the present study were school-based, but almost all participants included some family and out-of-school relationships in their networks.

The leftward shift of the curve in Figure 6.2 is the result of the school friend dominance that characterized most participants’ networks - the majority being comprised of relationships between two and slightly less than four years duration. Thus, the developmental realities of evolving composition, enterprise and length of relationships

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throughout adolescence add complexity to the question of how peer relationships

inform self-representation with respect to physical activity engagement.

Figure 6.2 – Duration of alter relationship

With adolescent peer relationships becoming more intimate (focus on talk) but

more emotionally risky (engagement in gossip) and school based relationships tending

to be more numerous, but of shorter duration than other peer relationships, concepts

like “peer pressure,” and “social support” become less straightforward in their meaning

and application than they might seem to be upon first consideration. For example, 38%

of this study’s participants identified a negative change in their attitude toward physical

activity beginning at around the age of middle school (between two and four years prior

to the study), but none indicated the influence of friends played a role in that change.

Moreover, physical activity was important in only 32% of participants’ relationships on average (see Personal Network Grid, Appendix D), and the correlation between number of relationships in which physical activity was important and accelerometer output, though significant, was weak (r =.280, p<.05). These findings, though thin, are consistent with those of de la Hay et al (2010), whose more rigorous cross-sectional investigation

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of the mutual influence between adolescent friendships and physical activity concluded

that similar attitudes (what participants said they like or disliked) informed friendships among adolescents more so than similar behaviors (actual participation in a sport or performance activity). That is to say, homophily – association due to perceived or professed sameness – better explained the associations found between friendships and physical activity than did behavioral influence (adopting or mimicking the behavior of peers). Cohen’s (1977), seminal longitudinal study of adolescent social network cohesion also identified homophily as the more salient factor in network membership, rather than behavioral influence. Other investigations of the effect of peer networks and peer norms on physical activity have shown that frequency of activity with friends predicted physical activity among younger (12-14 year old) girls (Voorhees et al 2005); and that perceived peer norms had no direct influence on intentions to be active among

13-17 year old girls (Wood Baker et al 2003). However, neither of these studies makes distinguishes between homophily and behavioral influence when discussing their findings. Taken together, these studies suggest that individual disposition toward physical activity influences ones choice of friends, but that the causal relationship in the reverse direction is questionable at best.

Homophily speaks to issues of network composition, but the literature suggests that network structure may also have bearing on an individual’s behavior. That is to say, the strength of ties between network members is a potential source of behavioral influence. Granovetter (1973) posited that strength of ties is determined by four relationship characteristics: duration, emotional intensity, intimacy (mutual confiding),

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and reciprocal services. Applying these characteristics to an examination of CF58’s interview, introduced above, it seems that though she mentions them twice during the interview, her ties to the male members of the basketball team with whom she is acquainted are relatively weak. At the time of the interview, she has only known them for one school year, and she did not include them in her listed personal network in any category of closeness. CF58 is very frank about the dearth of emotional intimacy in these relationships as well:

058: …So it’s like, it’s like, they’re nice or whatever and I hang out with them when I want to but like…I wouldn’t want—you know? Like they’re who everyone would wanna hang out with, but…

SMM: Right, ‘cause they’re the cool…

058:…Yeah, and they’re ok. Like I party with them sometimes, but that’s not—if something’s wrong with me I’m not gonna call and be like, “Guys, mmm” You know? They’re not friends they’re party p…they’re like people that you hang out with, to have fun.

It appears, then, that CF58 received some benefit from this association in terms of entertainment and social recognition, but little else. By contrast, her closer peer relationships (12 of 16), and the relationships in which physical activity was important (7 of 16) were almost entirely with her former schoolmates or with people she knew through those relationships. Only four of her 16 alters1 (persons named on her network

grid) were students at PSH; they were in the “people I know” category and physical

activity was not an important part of those relationships.

1 In the language of personal networks, “ego” is the person whose networked is being examined. The persons named by “ego” are known as “alters.”

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Though stronger ties and relationships in which physical activity was important

were coincident for CF58, this was not true for all participants, nor was it true for the overall sample. For example, physical activity was important in only eight of the twenty relationships identified by UU19, and none of those eight were named as close friends.

However, relationship duration did not vary much by category of closeness for UU19, and all the relationships in which physical activity was important were with her volleyball teammates – essentially a clique. Cliques are clusters of connectedness within a network. Members of a clique know each other but have weak or non-existent ties to anyone else in ego’s network. UU19’s network structure, then, might be described as a mix of strong and weak ties, with the weaker ties being more common and the stronger ties less common within the network. The strong ties were not between those to whom she felt closest, but between those with whom she shared physical activity. UU19’s close friendships were with those with few connections to others in her network. This distinction between relationships of greatest emotional closeness and relationships featuring physical activity is intriguing. Though the study year was UU19’s first year on the volleyball team, one might expect to see at least one team mate in the closest relationship category, especially since volleyball players comprised 40% of her identified network. However, the distinction is consistent with UU19’s physicality quadrant.

Obese, UU19 aspired to a flat stomach (Figure 6.3), but being cardiovascularly taxed

(running, calisthenics) was an uncomfortable experience she preferred to avoid.

Moreover, she expressed a feeling of separateness from her school peers that stemmed from their misperception of her as “mean”: “a lot of people say that I look mean when I

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look…when I walk down the hallway. And I be in a good mood, and everybody like, ‘you

look so mean!’ And I’m like, I’m not … mad or anything like that.” When asked what she

did to challenge this perception, she said, “Nothing.” Given these circumstances of body

dissatisfaction, relative unembodiment, and felt misperception, the separation of emotional closeness from physical activity engagement in relationship makes sense for

UU19 ’s personal network.

For the overall sample, there was no association between category of closeness and number of relationships in which physical activity was important (Chi-square = 5.23, p=.07). Tests of association by physicality quadrant were not run, but the variability in network structure represented by the examples of CF58 and UU19 suggest that an investigation of personal network structure as a predictor of physicality-informed identity might be informative. Specifically, an examination of number of cliques and strength of ties as predictors of importance of PA to relationships in a larger, representative sample sorted by template quadrant could greatly inform derivation of self-representation plot points by helping to identify the number subject positions (i.e., the number of groupings to which she must present a self) a given ego occupies in her personal network. Such an investigation could prove fruitful in light of contradictory evidence concerning the effects of peer networks on health behavior. Some studies have found peer relationships to be significantly associated with health behaviors, including physical activity (Voorhees 2005; Trogon, Nonnemaker and Pais 2008), while others have found no minimal to no peer network effects (Cohen-Cole and Fletcher

2008). Still others have found that network effects on behavior differ by gender (de la

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Haye et al 2010). Because the identity model includes relationship, using it to initially sort a sample could produce a finer grained grouping of persons

Figure 6.3 – Collage, UU19 for other types of analysis, including network analysis. An identity-based sample sort

could help in distinguishing effects of homophily from effects of behavioral influence on

physical activity, and may also help to further distinguish which persons, and which

behaviors are influenced by which relationship groupings.

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Network Analysis

In order to make the case for the larger proposition of how the identity model

and network analysis might inform each other, a review of the methods and findings of

the personal network data analysis for this study is necessary. The personal network data were collected as part of the second set of interviews, which took place in the spring and summer of 2010. Each participant was asked to list, using their initials only, people considered, “close friends,” “friends,” and “people I know” in a printed table

(Figure 6.6). Sex, age, duration of relationship, circumstances of relationship, race/ethnicity, and importance of physical activity to the relationship were also queried.

Finally, participants were asked to indicate whether the persons identified (hereafter, alters) knew each other. Participants were not asked to restrict their listings in terms of setting, and there was no lower limit placed on the list. The upper limit was the number of available rows (57) in the two-page document. While not specifying network size limited the analysis in important ways, the overall project commitment to documenting variability was deemed more important.

The information from the participants’ grids was input into the personal network software program Egonet for analysis of network characteristics. The output for each individual analysis network was compiled into a spreadsheet for analysis across the sample. This spreadsheet was also loaded into SPSS to execute the desired tests for association (Chi-square, ANOVA, correlation).

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The average number of alters listed was 25.9 (range 6-52; sd 13.9). Female alters

outnumbered male alters overall and on average. No participant’s network was majority

male; the mean for female alters was 17.3 (range 5-40; sd 9.3), and the mean for male

alters was 8.6 (range 1-25; sd 6.9). The overwhelming majority of alters listed were

school peers (avg. 62.2%2); however, participants did include family members, church

members, peers from former schools attended and non-school peers in their alter lists.

One participant included school faculty members and the investigator in her alter list. In

terms of ethnicity, the majority of alters were Black/African American (avg. 71.5%),

though almost all participants listed some non-Black alters. Four participants’ alter lists

were comprised of African Americans only; one participant had only one African-

American alter.

Physical activity and relationship

Relationships in which physical activity was important were not predominant in any category of closeness (Table 6.1), and there were no significant differences in proportion of relationships in which physical activity was important by category of closeness (Chi-square = 5.23; p > .05). Similarly,

Table 6.1 – Proportion of relationship in which physical activity was important by closeness category

Mean Percentage Range Close Friends 36.2(2.76) 0-12 Friends 28.2 (3.02) 0-11 People I Know 29.4 (2.74) (0-13)

2 This is likely an underestimate, as another category of relationship, “organized physical activity” included school-based activities.

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proportion of relationships in which physical activity was important did not vary by

gender (Chi-square = 1.03, p > .05). However, proportion of relationships in which

physical activity was important was significantly and positively correlated to number of

alters (r = .627, p < .01), with participants with more alters naming more relationships in

which physical activity was important. The positive correlation remained when number

of alters was sorted by gender, though the correlation was stronger with number of

female alters than with number of male alters (r = .633, p < .01 versus r = .412, p = .007).

Importance of physical activity to relationship and template categories

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test for any relationship between the derived template categories [Go Hard or Go Home (GH); Control is Fun (CF); The

Unwittingly Unfit (UU); Big Girls Don’t Sweat (BG)], the Multiple Occupier Group (MOs), and the number of relationships in which physical activity was important. Tests for homogeneity of variance revealed that not only are the within-category variances heterogeneous, but there is little discernible pattern to them. GHs have the largest number of relationships in which PA is important and BGs have the smallest, but as

Figure 6.6 shows, the within group variances are more similar between GH/UU and

CF/BG. The within-group variances are equal (p = .321); However, the between-group differences are not statistically significant (p = .08), indicating no association between the template categories and the number of relationships in which physical activity was important. ANOVA was also used to test for any association between template category and average minutes of moderate/vigorous physical activity (accelerometry). None was found.

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Figure 6.4 – Variance in importance of PA to relationship by template category

Importance of physical activity to relationships and network connectedness

The information from the participants’ grids was input into the personal network

software program Egonet for analysis of network characteristics. The output for each

individual analysis network was compiled into a spreadsheet for analysis across the

sample. Because social network analysis is being used in this study to answer questions

about mechanisms of influence and strength of ties, the variables of n_components

(need definition) and n_cliques (clusters of connectedness within a network) were used

in a correlation analysis. There was no correlation between n-cliques and the mean

number of relationships in which physical activity was important across the sample (R2 =

.199; p=.207). n_components and mean number of relationships in which physical activity was important were weakly correlated across the sample (R2 = .321; p < .05).

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Limitations and Discussion

Its embedding in a larger study employing multiple measures contributed to design and content parameters in the network data collection that significantly affected the analysis and potential conclusions. Those choices include the sample size, the non- standard network size, the cross-sectional nature of the data, and the lack of data collected from alters (alter data would have made it possible to assess degree of reciprocity between egos and named alters). Given those limitations, it would seem that on its face, this analysis merely confirms the relatively low levels of physical activity documented among study participants through accelerometry, and appears to support

Cohen’s (1977) conclusion that homophily, rather than behavioral influence, drives network composition among adolescents. Physical activity was important in just a little over 30% of the relationships in the sample on average. There was no association between closeness of relationship and importance of physical activity to the relationship. The correlations between the number of cliques and the importance of physical activity to relationship were absent; the correlation was weak in the case of components.

However, when one looks more closely at the findings, some interesting things emerge, and point to the possibility of further fruitful study in the area of personal networks and physicality-informed identity. First, although ANOVA resulted in no association between template quadrants and number of relationships in which physical activity was important, the similarity in the variances between GH/UU and CF/BG is interesting, especially given the adjacent placement of these quadrants in the

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theoretical field. It invites speculation about possible hierarchies in the emplotment of

physicality (body agency/social security or vice versa).

Moreover, there were trends in the data not further explored here due to

sample size limitations, but which suggest that a larger, more rigorously designed

network study in this population could be enlightening. Participants in this study who

were involved in sports or performance activities had relationships in which PA was important in two or all three closeness categories; participants who were not involved in formal sports or performance activities had such relationships in one or no categories of closeness. Again, Cohen’s (1977) general conclusion concerning homophily is supported, but these trends also nod towards de la Haye et al’s (2010) finding of variability in network effects among adolescents by gender and behavior. That is, networks may be more likely to support (or foster) some kinds of behavior, among some groups of people, more than others. If PA is one of the behaviors upon which peer networks have limited effects among African American adolescent females, the question becomes, do other relationships have bearing PA within this group? And if so, what are they?

Conclusion

Overall, the data generated to evaluate the contribution of personal networks to physicality informed identity in this sample are limited, and the clear conclusions to be drawn from the cross-sample analysis are likewise limited. There is some resonance between the template quadrants and the importance of physical activity to relationship, but it is weak, and more likely due to the within-group variance among the quadrants than any hidden patterns of association between the participants’ narrative accounts

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and the relationships they identified. It is therefore not possible to validate the posited

model element of social security/separation with a description of personal network

composition patterns and the PA levels that are associated with those patterns. It simply

affirms, in the most general way, that the majority of the participants in this study were

fairly sedentary, and sedentariness was predominant in their social relationships as well.

On the other hand, it can be argued that even this limited network data

contributes meaningfully to identifying directions for further study in this area. In

addition to repeating this investigation with a larger sample and a longitudinal design,

future research directions include controlling for network composition (both specifying

size and separating family, peers, and non-peers), and querying for differences between networks (peers, family and non-peers versus inclusive) in terms of their influence on particular health behaviors. Including the effects of strength of ties on PA in such an analysis with a larger sample could, as mentioned previously, contribute to a more complete picture of physicality-informed identity by helping to identify the subject positions within an ego’s personal network that engage her physicality.

It may be that when all is said and done, the opening quote by Lewinton (2001) is correct, and what will emerge from all this scrutiny and measurement is identification of another “weakly determined causal pathway” (p277). But surely this identification also serves the larger endeavor he identifies - one consistent with the tradition of anthropological endeavor: “to stand off and describe the system in all its complexity.”

And though describing “the system” in total is an endless endeavor, discerning those weak causal pathways and connecting them to local narratives, biologies, systems and

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relationships is the charge of a discipline. Enriching the theory that informs this charge by exploring African American female embodiment and identity is the work of a lifetime. Let the work begin.

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Chapter 7 Conclusion Claiming Physicality and Humanity

I maintain that I have been a Negro three times—a Negro baby, a Negro girl and a Negro woman. Still, if you have received no clear cut impression of what the Negro in America is like, then you are in the same place with me. There is no The Negro here. Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!

- Zora Neale Hurston

Summary and Implications

Toni Morrison, in an address at Washington University in St. Louis in the mid-

1980s, told her audience that she began to write because she couldn’t find the stories she wanted to read – stories that reflected the realities of her life and the lives of the people closest to her. 1 This study was born out of a similar sense of dissatisfaction. That dissatisfaction is with African American females’ bodily perceptions and practices being explained almost exclusively in terms of race, and with those perceptions and practices being characterized as nearly ubiquitous. This characterization occurs in both folk and professional contexts, and is dissatisfying because its significant philosophical/political and practical shortcomings have not, as yet, provoked widespread recognition of the ways that the characterization does not capture the realities of African American females’ lives.

From a philosophical/political perspective, the implication that “The African

American female” exists as a singular (or at least very circumscribed) embodiment is simply incompatible with what is known about human groups. Moreover, a growing

1 Author’s personal recollection

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body of work in the humanities and social sciences over the past two decades portrays

African American females’ lives as varied and complex, and presents matters of body among them as shaped by family dynamics, gender, class and local history (hooks 1981;

Harris 1995; Giddings 1996; Hill Colllins 1998a, 1998b; Ferree 1999; Bennett and

Dickerson 2001; Solomon and Byrd 2005). The existence of this body of work suggests that the body conceptualizations and practices attributed to African American females as a function of their racial affiliation, while not untrue, are incomplete – that there is no

“The African American Female.” But because the conventional wisdom of near unanimity and near ubiquity provides a convenient group-level summary, the idea of racialized gender as identity has come to constitute a kind of social shorthand – a symbol that has come to be taken for the thing itself. That is, with respect to weight and health, “African American female” has come to be synonymous with a “culture” that produces positive body image, low desire to change weight and shape, and disinclination toward leisure-time physical activity.

This presumed inculcation is being challenged, as the studies above and this one indicate, and must continue to be challenged. Commonality cannot be more important to what ultimately sustains a group than variability, because variability means adaptability. Imitation – learned ways of being – cannot supplant innovation as a driver of identity. Our knowledge of ourselves and others cannot rest on what has been recognized and agreed upon, but must encompass search for variation and evidence of change, even as the world around us changes. This study has contributed to theory- building in embodiment and identity, not by articulating a theory of embodiment and

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identity among African American females so much as building theory in embodiment

and identity through this study conducted with African American adolescent females.

From a practical perspective, the “logical” conclusions the follow from these

presumptions of unanimity and ubiquity in matters of body have serious implications for

the wellbeing of this group. African American females do suffer disproportionately from

weight-related health conditions, and regular physical activity is an important part of maintaining a healthy weight and managing those conditions. However, if high rates of body satisfaction predict low rates of leisure-time physical activity among females, and

if size/weight concern does not particularly affect African American females’ sense of

body satisfaction, health promotion/disease prevention efforts aimed at this group are

unlikely to produce substantial effects.

Such a scenario does not bode well for African American females’ weight-related

health, but not only because of the apparently limited options for effective intervention.

The assumptions that underlie this scenario also bear examining. That examination, part

of the task of this study, reveals that things may not be quite as straightforward as they

seem. The pervasive notion that inactivity practices are associated with phenotype

arguably imbues inactivity among African American females with the same sense of

innateness and permanence that inheres to race in the United States. This study

challenged that undercurrent of determinism by examining the variability that is discounted by the presumption that race is the most salient cultural system in all matters of body among African American females. It examined matters of bodily

presentation and prowess as aspects of identity in a holistic sense – not as a predictable

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expression of racial aesthetics or as a racial outlier produced through “alternative”

exposure. It proposed a new construct, body agency, as the appropriate perspective

from which to explore physicality-informed identity. As a construct designed to engage

embodiment, body agency can certainly include experiences of racialization, but does

not pre-assign primary importance to any cultural system. The investigation produced

compelling evidence that race does indeed intersect with gender and class in matters of

physicality-informed identity, and is not always the foregrounded system.

The second presumption challenged by this study and others is that stated

appreciation for one’s appearance and satisfaction with one’s size are synonymous, and

that the relationship between physical presentation and physical prowess is likewise

concordant. A growing body of research is calling the former assumption into question

(Harris 1995; Smith 1999; Aruguete et al 2004; Azzarito and Solomon 2005) and the

findings of the present study cast doubt upon the latter. Specifically with regard to

presentation and prowess, the findings of this study are that beliefs about what constitutes acceptable cultivation and demonstration of prowess varied significantly within the sample, and that preserving gender and class integrity, informed but not driven by a singular sense of racial identity, was very import for most participants. The

findings regarding multiple occupier status demonstrated the importance of context as

a multiple-level phenomenon, as family dynamics and sexuality appeared to play a

greater role in body agency and physical activity engagement in the presented

participant case.

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This study’s findings challenge the presumption of racial unanimity in matters of

by producing evidence of patterned variability within a local context. They have provided compelling evidence for re-opening the discussion about what is “known”

concerning size, presentation and prowess among African American females by showing

how experience (or inexperience) of physicality and fitness informed what participants believed about their bodies and what they do with them. They have raised questions about how the structure and meaning of relationships within a social network might affect behavior. Further, specific contributions are summarized below:

Methods

This study’s mixed methods design reflects its aim to document the similarities

and variability in physicality-informed identity in a group of adolescent African American

females by engaging their embodied experience. As such, there was a need for data

collection methods that engaged as many of the senses as possible and that elicited

information about perceptions and practices that were not necessarily reflexively

available to participants, but that nonetheless likely influenced how they expressed

their physicality.

Not all the data were equally informative. This was not a surprise, and in many

ways reflects the investigator’s uneven knowledge and comfort with the range of

methods used. However, a broader investigator knowledge base is not the only relevant consideration. The dearth of variability in the accelerometer data compared to the richness of the narrative data is a reminder that, as intriguing an explanatory device as

the narrative templates might be, they require further validation. Conducting

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accelerometry over longer intervals (more days of wear) would likely capture more variability, increasing the possibility for correlation between objectively-measured

physical activity and the template categories. Likewise, the personal network analysis

arguably raised more questions than it answered regarding the relationship between

the identity model element of social security/separation and the structure and content

of the participants’ relationship networks.

On the other hand, the collages were unexpectedly rich and informative in their

contribution to the analysis of individual participant narratives and the insight they provided into the range of physicality conceptions within the sample. They also

contributed strongly to data presentation. Collage construction seems likely to prove

even more beneficial to identity studies as its implementation and analysis are refined.

If nothing else, then, this study has made an interesting contribution to the

ethnographic methods toolbox.

Gender Salience

The finding that gender is highly salient to the study participants’ physicality-

informed identity is certainly important, as is the demonstration that gender does not supplant race or obscure class in the participants’ emplotments. The variety of ways that race and class were demonstrated to manifest themselves through gender among these participants affirms the analytic value of intersectional approaches to exploratory research. It also presents new measurement challenges – namely, can intersectionality be accurately and reliably detected within and between local groups? Designing such an instrument offers an exciting opportunity in social science assessment.

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The “manly line” shows great conceptual and measurement potential as well.

The participants’ engagement with the identified tropes is not balanced. They appear to have transformed the Black Lady trope in the course of embracing it; however, they do not seem to have transformed the Manly Woman trope with their resistance to it in a similar way. That is, resistance to the Manly Woman among most the participants took the form of clear rejection or exceptionalist stances (GH7, GH16) rather than reinterpretation of femininity to include muscularity. It is unclear presently what this difference means, but its identification opens yet another avenue for further exploration.

Observations and interviews suggested that efforts to promote regular physical activity in schools will likely not ever reach all students; specifically, the downsides of PE participation may prove insurmountable for some girls. To maximize the number of girls they do reach, schools may wish to consider offering same-gender physical education classes whose content reflects collaboration between students and faculty. For example, a group of rising eighth grade girls could work with a member of the high school PE staff in the spring to design a PE class that would pique the interest of their peers.

Additionally, high school educators could work with businesses and civic organizations in their local communities to identify alternatives to in-school physical activity and promote those alternatives to students. Study findings regarding how the axiom of

“resist manliness” is enacted (by avoiding cultivation of prowess considered to cross the

“manly line”) suggest that design of non-school physical activity interventions should include explorations of the local construction of femininity. Local history of female

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participation in athletics being common (or uncommon) could easily affect these

constructions, as could local history of female non-involvement in athletics.

Body Agency and Identity Templates

The findings that resulted from examining physicality from the perspective of

embodiment are compelling in their in their own right. Using the identity model to

interpret the narrative data and plot the participants’ location in the field of local cultural context makes for a rich, thick analytic product. However, this rich product does not directly answer the question. “So what?” What do these findings offer to theory in the social sciences, to practice in anthropology and public health, and to health policy?

One answer is that these findings respond to the critique leveled in Chapter 1 with a theoretical framework that can be used to examine the multiple circumstances that lead to low levels of leisure-time physical activity in this population. It offers a viable alternative to assuming that common ends are reached through common paths, or that “master status” (Fordham 2008) constitutes a common path. This framework captures within-group diversity; assignment of identity by phenotype or behavior alone does not. At the same time, the framework captures similarity that is informed by local and personal history, experience, status and individual affect. In doing so, it presents a more complete account of disposition and behavior concerning physical activity among the study sample than is offered by examining phenotype or behavior alone, or even sequentially. If the process that produced these findings in the current sample can be

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successfully applied to other groups and contexts, it will constitute a significant

contribution to identity theory.

Because identity is already a primary explanatory framework in matters of

human behavior, the applicability of these findings to health promotion/disease

prevention practice and policy seems a bit more straightforward. Health is locally

experienced and enacted. Having a way to assess identity that draws on local cultural

context rather than societal level categorization creates an opportunity for policy,

intervention and assessment to take place on the same scale. In this way, the

circumstances addressed by policy and intervention would seem to have the best

chance of matching the circumstances of the problem.

This emphasis on working locally should not be mistaken for a “states’ rights”

approach to a national challenge like physical activity and obesity. Translation and

dissemination of successful efforts among localities is not precluded by this shift to local

assessment, policy development and intervention.

Rather, such a shift makes it more likely that translation and dissemination efforts will

be predicated on a thorough understanding of where and with whom such efforts are

being attempted. For example, duplication of this study in the large, urban school district with which Progressive Steppes School District shares a .1 mile border is almost certain to yield different narrative templates and different distributions of the study

sample within the local field, despite the racial commonality between the Progressive

Steppes sample and the majority of the students in the adjoining district. The

foregrounded cultural systems (aspects of context) would likely be different between

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the two districts because of the differences in history, resources and priorities. And yet, the focus on persons and embodiment could support rich discussion between these two districts about the differences and similarities in how African American girls in these two

districts engage and enact their physicality-informed identity.

Structure and meaning within personal networks

As has been mentioned previously, the attempt to explore the identity model

element of separation/social security through the makeup and structure of personal

networks produced little in the way of insight, and raised questions that could not be

answered with the data collected. The questions raised, however, are quite intriguing ones. Among the most intriguing is the notion that there might be an association between types of network ties (strong vs. weak), closeness of relationships in which physical activity is important, and template category.

Limitations

No investigation is without limitations. Aspects of this study’s sampling, methods

and time frame limit the conclusion that can be drawn, but also indicate how future

studies might be better designed.

Sampling. The sample was adequate for the task of theory building; however, it was not

a representative sample, which limited analysis of the accelerometer and personal

network data. The sample size also raises some questions about whether the study

participants reflect the entire “field” of physicality-informed identity at PSH. One

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participant confided to the investigator that during the recruitment period she

overheard many of her fellow students reject the idea participating in the study in no uncertain terms. It is impossible to know at this point whether study participants and study non-participants were different in any significant ways.

Mixed Methods.The use of mixed methods was one of the study’s strengths; collecting

multiple types of data supported triangulation in some instances (narrative data

analysis) and raised intriguing questions in others (personal network analysis). The use

of mixed methods also made the data collection process quite complex. Observation,

accelerometry and personal network data collection were particularly affected by this

complexity.

Observations of organized physical activity took place only at the school,

although several of the participants (particularly those with a Control is Fun template)

took part in organized physical activity outside of school (e.g., ice skating, club soccer).

Data on those activities comparable to that collected in PE and school sports would have

helped specify the availability of organized physical activity in the larger community.

The number of accelerometers available to be distributed (10) and the logistics

of timely distribution and return of the devices meant that seasonally distinct bouts of

activity monitoring did not take place. As a result, the planned analysis for seasonal

variability in activity did not take place. The lack of variability in the accelerometer

readings for the sample (almost all engaged in less than 30 minutes of moderate-to-

vigorous physical activity on average on the monitored days) may reflect a low level of

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physical activity in the sample overall. However, the results may also have been affected

by the limited monitoring days (3 per bout) or participants’ being involved in activities that accelerometry could not detect on monitored days.

As has been mentioned, assessments of reciprocity (whether persons whom a participant identified as a friend also named the participant as a friend) were not part of the personal network data gathered. Moreover, the question, “do (named alter x) and

(named alter y) know each other” was insufficiently specific. Some participants initially

glossed the query by answering “everybody knows everybody; we all go to school together,” or words to that effect. When pressed, these participants looked more systematically at their lists, but it is likely that not all valid connections were identified.

Time frame. The original plan for the study was to begin recruitment near the start of

the 2009 fall semester and be well into Phase II by December 2009. As it happened,

recruitment did not begin until mid to late November. Data collection was extended

through the summer, but there was no opportunity to observe fall sports or interact

with participants in the fall. The shifted window of data collection certainly affected the

plan for seasonal accelerometer data collection; it also constitutes a missed opportunity

to observe study participants in a wider variety of physical activity pursuits, both at

school and outside of school.

Next Steps

Even without optimal sample and time frame, and even with the challenges

posed by the variety of data collected, there are several next steps to pursue from this

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research. The first is to validate the conceptual utility of the “manly line” in a larger,

representative sample. If it can be shown to accurately identify the variable location of the boundary of gender conformity/gender transgression within a group, it will be a powerful tool in the task identifying one of the intersecting contexts of physicality-

informed identity.

Of course, the first step in validating the manly line is duplicating the study (or at

least the parts that informed identification of the manly line) in other school settings.

As stated previously, it is not expected that implementing the study in another site will

produce identical numbers of identity templates or identical template categories,

especially if the student demographics and school culture are different from that of PSH.

In addition to validating the manly line, study duplication will hopefully confirm of the value of this person-centered approach in formulating data-driven, local theories of variability in physical activity engagement that can guide service delivery and policy in education and health promotion.

Finally, the idea of developing policy and delivering service based on locally generated, locally applicable theory raises the question of how efficient, timely assessment of diversity in body agency and physical activity engagement might be accomplished. Unfortunately, that is a question that has no clear answer at this time.

However, network analysis may offer one avenue of assessment, if the posited relationship between network structure and the model based process can be shown to exist.

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Final Thoughts

The findings of this project are relevant to policy and practice in education,

public health, and medicine. They offer interesting new possibilities for school curricula

in terms of assessment of diversity in general and in terms of applying that assessment

to physical education. They hold promise for public health in their potential beneficial

effects on the design and implementation of targeted, population- level health

education and intervention programs. There are perhaps even greater applications to medicine because of its focus on individuals. The holistic assessment of physicality- informed identity used in this study could be a powerful tool in family-focused,

comprehensive adolescent obesity programs because of its address of how the dialectic

between body agency and social security/separation (SE↔SR) is affected by context.

Perhaps the most powerful contribution this research makes, however, is to the

anthropology of the United States, and specifically to issues of identity among African

American females, in address of Morton’s twenty-plus year old assertion: “if the

literature of fact has transmitted a set of prefabricated, slave-rooted images of Afro-

American women, it has thereby brought particularly powerful trappings of authority to

these images.” The images, or tropes, this work has engaged, The Manly Woman and

the Black Lady, do appear to be alive and well in both the US popular consciousness and

in the conceptions of physicality and racialized gender expressed by the study participants. However, the study findings suggest that rather than duplicating these prefabricated images, the study participants are transforming them. They appear to have found ways to address them not as prefabrications, but as personalized

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emplotments. This seems to happen through a process of ongoing negotiation between their experiences, the network of relations in which they are embedded, and those facets of context that best supported those negotiations. This study’s endeavor to document the forms these negotiations take, and to explore their range of expression transforms those prefabricated images again – this time as part of a scientific, rather than a personal endeavor – and propagates a more accurate and satisfying view of

African American females as “levelly human” (Combahee River Collective Statement

1977), as creatively agentive rather than complicit in their captivity to longstanding images and norms. This study, then, exemplifies the work of anthropology – to explore the human condition in all its diversity –by documenting the transformation of those pre-encoded stories and prefabricated images for the record.

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Appendix A_Participant sort by template

Go Hard or Go Home The Unwittingly Unfit 209005 209002 209007 209006 209016 209014 209025 209017 209043 209019 209060 209020 209032 209040 209050 209061

Control is Fun Big Girls Don’t Sweat 209001 209003 209004 209008 209024 209011 209028 209018 209031 209022 209033 209029 209034 209035 209039 209036 209045 209037 209053 209047 209058 209054

Multiple Occupiers 209015 209026 209055 209062

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Appendix B_Example_First interview guide

Intro - thanks for coming; talk for about an hour and a half; recording – is this ok? Will talk about your collage, you experiences with PE/PA, and your Southern family connections. At the end I will take your height and weight and some body fat measurements. Remind can refuse anything or stop at any time.

Ice breaker – How long have you been going to school in Shaker Heights? Do you have any older family members who attended/graduated from Shaker?

I. Interpretation of Physical Self-concept collage a. Please tell me the story of your collage - talk about the words and images you chose. i. Do you recall what was it like to put the collage together? Was it easy? Difficult? Enjoyable? Boring? What made it so? ii. Which of the four questions did you address with your collage? iii. The statements you included in your collage stand out to me. Is being “addicted to bad boys” a good thing or a bad thing? What does “find your beauty peace” mean to you? Have you made peace with your beauty, or is this something you seek to do? What, if any, obstacles have you encountered in your search for your beauty peace? iv. What made you choose to cut off the head of the woman wearing the pink dress with the sash? v. Would you say that your collage represents more the way you are now or more what you aspire to? Is it more about how you see yourself or how you want others to see you? vi. What do you do to convey what you think is important for people to know about you/project what it is you want people to see? vii. Now that you’ve had an opportunity to revisit the collage, can you identify other physical attributes/qualities that you don’t currently have but want for yourself? Are there other images you would use to describe yourself? b. Are there physical attributes that you have but don’t like? c. Are there physical attributes that you see in others that you don’t want for yourself? (remind/show the picture of Ciera) d. Are the things you think are most important about you represented in this collage? If not, what is missing? II. Do you enjoy physical activity? What do you like (or dislike) about it?

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i. Biggest exercise influence – you named your boss. ii. How has your ______influenced you/what behaviors of yours do you attribute to his/her influence? iii. Are there others you would name as influences? iv. Is there anyone in your life whose example you would not/have chosen not to follow? III. Experience of PE a. How do you feel about the PE requirement at Shaker? Will you fulfill all the requirements at school, or will you pursue the independent study option? What are the good things about the PE requirement? What are the downsides? Do any of those downsides cause you to sit out (not dress) sometimes? b. What kinds of things do you think about when choosing which PE units you will take? c. In your opinion, is there a difference between the way most boys engage in PE and the way most girls you know do? Is there a difference between the way you play in PE and the way most girls you know play? What things make the difference between the way boys play and the way girls play? d. Has the way you play in PE changed as you have gotten older? What has contributed to that change? e. Do you participate in any organized physical activity outside of PE? Please describe the activity. How long have you been doing it? What do you like about it? How does [name of activity] compare to PE (do you enjoy it more, less or the same as PE; do you exert yourself more, less or the same as in PE? f. Can you remember a time when you gave what you consider your maximum physical effort at any activity or task? i. What were the circumstances? ii. How long ago was it? iii. How often do you exert yourself to this degree? iv. If this max exertion was a 10, what rating would you give to PE class? v. To your other physical activities? IV. Family Connection to the American South a. Review survey questions i. South-living family – establish generation – what states? How are you like your Southern family?

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ii. How are you different from them? iii. Are there things you admire about your Southern family? iv. Does your (insert name/title of family member) talk to you about how you should behave? v. Is what your family member says different from what your parents say? In what way? vi. Southern-born family – establish generation – what states? How are you like them? How are you different from them vii. What about the ways you think and act do you attribute to your Southern family members? V. Anthropometrics a. Waist-hip ratio b. Height c. Weight d. Triceps skinfold e. Subscapular skinfold

Notes: ______

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______

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Appendix C_Second interview guide

Intro - thanks for coming; talk for about 75 minutes; recording – is this ok? Will talk about your friends and acquaintances (the nature of your connection with them and whether they know each other), your responses to the initial survey questions about how important race is to you with respect to choosing your friends, and some questions about gender, energy and power and whether there are types of things women are supposed to be good at and other types of things men are supposed to be good at. Remind can refuse anything or stop at any time.

I. Social Networks a. Please put down the initials of your close friends on this section of the form (this can include relatives). These are people you interact with at least three times a week during the school year. For each person, indicate i. Sex ii. Age iii. How you know them iv. How long you have known them. v. How many are African American? vi. What is the race or ethnicity of those who are not African American? b. Please put down the initials of those you consider friends, but not close friends. These are people you interact with at least once a week during the school year. For each person, indicate: i. Sex ii. Age iii. How you know them iv. How long you have known them v. How many are African American? vi. What is the race or ethnicity of those who are not African American? c. Are there any people that you associate with on a regular basis, but consider neither “friends” nor “close friends”? List these. For each person, indicate: i. Sex ii. Age iii. How you know them iv. How long you have known them v. How many are African American? vi. What is the race or ethnicity of those who are not African American? d. How many of these people know each other (connect the nodes)? e. Is physical activity an important aspect of your relationship with any of these people?

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f. Follow up on survey questions regarding race and peer networks. II. Gender and Physicality - Please say whether you agree or disagree with the following statements, and why. a. Males are naturally strong (physically); females are naturally weak (physically). i. Do you think the adults in your life would agree with the opinions you have expressed about the natural strength and weakness of women and men? What about your friends? Your close friends? The people you know? b. It is ok for males to push for their highest levels of strength, speed, and physical skill and endurance. Females may seek to be fit, but should not try to achieve their maximum potential in strength, speed, physical skill, or physical endurance. Also probe as to whether achieving maximum is something they desire – why or why not? i. Do you think the adults in your life would agree with the opinions you have expressed about men and women working to achieve their maximum physical potential? What about your friends? Your close friends? The people you know? c. Women have more limited reserves of energy than men; therefore, women must be careful to conserve their energy so that they have enough available for all the things they must do. (Probe as to whether energy conservation strategy is one participant employs, and under what circumstances.) i. Do you think the adults in your life would agree with the opinions you have expressed about the energy reserves of men and women? What about your friends? Your close friends? The people you know? III. Personal and gendered prowess a. Are there physical tasks you are good at? That you enjoy? Are enjoyment and skill equally important to you, or is one more important than the other? What makes one more or less important? Are there other things you desire to be good at, but aren’t currently? b. What competencies do you think females should have/What should females be good at? Are these exclusive to women or can men have them? c. Are there competencies you think men should have? Are they exclusive to men or can women have them? Do you have any competencies that you or other people you know consider “male”? d. Do females have power? Do they have power in the same way as males (If not, probe for perception of difference)? How do females show their power? What makes you feel powerful?

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Appendix D_Personal Network Grid

Participant # ______

Initials Age Sex How Know? How Race/Ethnicity PA important Comments Long? to relationship? Close Friends

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Initials Age Sex How Know? How Race/Ethnicity PA important Comments Long? to relationship?

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Notes: ______

______

______327 Appendix E_Participant anthropometrics ranked by BMI percentile

ID# Waist Hip Ratio BMI Percentile GH5 63.17 83.1 0.760168 17.5 10th GH7 59.83 84.1 0.711415 18.6 17th CF39 65.17 88.33 0.737801 19.3 31st CF1 67.76 88.16 0.768603 19.23 33rd BG37 70.2 93.63 0.74976 19.8 33rd CF53 67.76 94.7 0.715523 19.1 33rd CF33 66.43 86.83 0.765058 20.1 42nd BG54 66.83 94.43 0.70772 19.3 43rd BG43 65.5 89.33 0.733236 19.7 44th UU61 71.37 98.3 0.726043 21.3 52nd BG29 72.7 95.57 0.760699 21.1 55th CF45 67.43 94.5 0.713545 21.3 56th MO26 66.5 95.17 0.69875 21.1 58th CF4 69.5 93.5 0.743316 21.7 60th CF34 75.17 104.5 0.71933 22.7 66th GH25 73.5 99.93 0.735515 21.4 67th MO15 79.17 102.53 0.772164 22.3 69th BG35 71 95.17 0.746033 22.2 71st UU50 69.5 94.87 0.732581 22.6 71st GH16 71.67 98.83 0.725185 22.7 74th GH60 68.83 99.1 0.694551 22.4 74th UU20 72.33 99.23 0.728913 22.6 75th CF31 79.5 106.33 0.747672 23.8 83rd BG3 79.93 106.13 0.753133 25.5 87th CF58 74.5 107.53 0.69283 25.5 87th CF24 85.17 108.37 0.785919 25.5 88th CF28 69.83 96.5 0.723627 26.2 89th UU40 82.4 105.17 0.783493 25.6 89th BG22 77.13 113.4 0.680159 26.8 91st BG6 82.67 106.7 0.774789 26.5 92nd UU14 74.5 111.83 0.66619 27.4 92nd UU17 80.87 110.37 0.732717 28.1 92nd MO62 97.7 101 0.967327 28.6 93rd UU2 95.16 112.33 0.847147 29.3 94th BG18 82.17 108.5 0.757327 28 94th MO55 80.16 111.77 0.717187 29.4 96th BG8 90.67 112.8 0.803812 32.7 97th UU32 108.53 119.93 0.904945 34.4 97th BG36 98.67 119.43 0.826174 32.8 97th

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ID# Waist Hip Ratio BMI Percentile BG11 88.33 128.84 0.685579 32.5 98th UU19 113.33 123.87 0.914911 38.5 98th BG47 104 120.5 0.863071 35.3 98th

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Appendix F_ Collage Image Count

ID# Images Images Words/Captions Total Ornamental Instrumental Abstract/symbolic Total of of Elements Elements Elements elements Element Beings Objects Types MO26 9 3 4 16 3 5 8 16

UU2 5 2 8 15 3 2 10 15

GH16 4 0 2 6 4 2 2 8*

CF1 7 0 3 10 8 1* 1 10

BG3 4 0 4 8 2 0 6 8

CF4 3 0 5 8 2 2 4 8

GH5 5 0 3 8 5 0 3 8

BG6 4 7 2 13 8 1 4 13

GH7 3 2 8 13 3 4 6 13

BG8 1 6 7 14 5 1 7

BG11 5 2 1 8 3 3 2 8

UU14 0 0 13 13 1 0 12 13

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ID# Images Images Words/Captions Total Ornamental Instrumental Abstract/symbolic Total of of Elements Elements Elements elements Element Beings Objects Types MO15 2 1 4 7 1 2 4 7

GH16 2 5 2 9 5 2 2 9

UU17 9 5 8 23 5 8 9 22

BG18 0 4 6 10 6 0 4

UU19 7 1 11 19 11 0 8 19

UU20 5 1 12 18 11 1 6 18

BG22 3 2 16 21 9 2 10 21

CF24 3 1 6 10 4 2 4 10

GH25 1 1 9 11 1 1 9 11

CG28 6 0 23 29 7 2 20 29

CF31 2 4 8 14 12 0 2

UU32 7 0 5 12 12 0 0 12

CF34 3 0 1 4 2 1 1 4

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ID# Images Images Words/Captions Total Ornamental Instrumental Abstract/symbolic Total of of Elements Elements Elements elements Element Beings Objects Types BG35 6 16 10 32 21 1 10 32

BG36 4 0 3 7 6 3 9

BG37 9 6 0* 15 15

CF39 5 1 8 14 6 2 5 13

UU40 0 0 13 13 2 0 12 14

GH43 3 2 9 14 8 4 2 (17) 14(29)

CF45 3 2 8 13 4 3 6 13

BG47 6 5 3 14 6 1 7 14

UU50 3 4 8 15 3 6 6 15

CF53 10 5 25 40 13 6 21 40

MO55 7 1 5 13 1 7 4 12

CF58 7 3 4 14 9 1 5 14

GH60 5 0 3 8 1 6 1 8

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ID# Images Images Words/Captions Total Ornamental Instrumental Abstract/symbolic Total of of Elements Elements Elements elements Element Beings Objects Types UU61 3 4 10 15 3 8 6 15

MO62 3 0 1 4 2 1 1 4

SUM 233 90 228

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Appendix G_Years in District

ID# Steppes Steppes Steppes > 5 Steppes First year One other More than Baby "Legacy" years 2-5 years at Steppes district one other district CF1 1 1 UU2 1 1 BG3 1 1 CF4 1 1 GH5 1 1 BG6 1 1 GH7 1 1 BG8 1 1 BG11 1 1 UU14 1 1 1 MO15 1 1 1 GH16 1 1 UU17 1 1 BG18 1 1 UU19 1 1 1 UU20 1 1 BG22 1 1 CF24 1 1 GH25 1 1 MO26 1 1 CF28 1 1

BG29 1 1 1 CF31 1 1 334

ID# Steppes Steppes Steppes > 5 Steppes First year One other More than Baby "Legacy" years 2-5 years at Steppes district one other district UU32 1 1 CF34 1 1 1 BG35 1 1 1 BG36 1 BG37 1 1 CF39 1 1 UU40 1 1 GH43 1 1 CF45 1 1 BG47 1 1 UU50 1 1 CF53 1 1 BG54 1 MO55 1 1 1 CF58 1 1 GH60 1 1 UU61 1 1 MO62 1 1 1 Totals 16 27 8 13 3 14 6

335 Appendix H_Family Income by Census Tract

Participant Census Median Family Mean Family ID Tract Income Estimate Income Estimate CF1 * UU2 1835.02 $121,000 $135,564 UU14 1835.02 $121,000 $135,564 CF33 1835.02 $121,000 $135,564 BG36 1835.02 $121,000 $135,564 UU61 1835.02 $121,000 $135,564 MO62 1835.02 $121,000 $135,564 BG35 1834.01 $118,690 $134,713 UU20 1836.05 $86,500 $92,966 UU32 1836.05 $86,500 $92,966 MO15 1831 $86,809 $133,793 GH43 1831 $86,809 $133,793 CF45 1831 $86,809 $133,793 GH60 1835.01 $74,262 $101,181 GH7 1834.02 $70,682 $69,378 BG8 1834.02 $70,682 $69,378 BG18 1834.02 $70,682 $69,378 BG22 1834.02 $70,682 $69,378 CF4 1836.06 $68,750 $109,703 BG11 1836.06 $68,750 $109,703 CF24 1836.06 $68,750 $109,703 CF39 1836.06 $68,750 $109,703 MO55 1836.06 $68,750 $109,703 BG6 1836.04 $49,350 $61,841 GH16 1836.04 $49,350 $61,841 GH25 1836.04 $49,350 $61,841 CF31 1836.04 $49,350 $61,841 UU40 1836.04 $49,350 $61,841 MO26 1195.01 $47,943 $62,545 BG47 1195.01 $47,943 $62,545 BG3 1197.01 $39,569 $52,895 UU17 1197.01 $39,569 $52,895 CF28 1197.01 $39,569 $52,895 BG37 1197.01 $39,569 $52,895 CF53 1197.01 $39,569 $52,895 CF58 1197.01 $39,569 $52,895 BG54 1836.03 $32,049 $55,605 UU50 1836.03 $32,049 $55,605 CF34 1836.03 $32,049 $55,605

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UU19 1836.03 $32,049 $55,605 GH5 1836.03 $32,049 $55,605

*no address information provided Source – US Census Bureau, American Fact Finder, 5 year estimates (2006-2010). http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml. Accessed October 16, 2012.

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Appendix I_sample demographics

age

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid 14 years old 6 14.3 14.3 14.3 15 years old 14 33.3 33.3 47.6 16 years old 18 42.9 42.9 90.5 17 years old 4 9.5 9.5 100.0 Total 42 100.0 100.0

education level primary caregiver

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid partial high school 3 7.1 7.1 7.1 high school graduate 3 7.1 7.1 14.3 (traditional) high school graduate (GED) 2 4.8 4.8 19.0 some college (no degree 7 16.7 16.7 35.7 received) specialized training 2 4.8 4.8 40.5 (vocational or technical education) bachelor's degree 8 19.0 19.0 59.5 partial graduate school 1 2.4 2.4 61.9 graduate or professional 15 35.7 35.7 97.6 degree associate's degree 1 2.4 2.4 100.0 Total 42 100.0 100.0

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education level secondary caregiver

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid partial high school (10th or 2 4.8 5.6 5.6 11th grade) high school graduate 8 19.0 22.2 27.8 (traditional) high school graduate (GED) 3 7.1 8.3 36.1 some college (no degree 4 9.5 11.1 47.2 received) specialized training 7 16.7 19.4 66.7 (vocational or technical education) bachelor's degree (BS/BA) 2 4.8 5.6 72.2 graduate or professional 10 23.8 27.8 100.0 degree Total 36 85.7 100.0 Missing Don't know 2 4.8 No response 4 9.5 Total 6 14.3 Total 42 100.0

number of people in household

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid 2 5 11.9 11.9 11.9

3 13 31.0 31.0 42.9 4 11 26.2 26.2 69.0 5 7 16.7 16.7 85.7 6 3 7.1 7.1 92.9 7 2 4.8 4.8 97.6 8 1 2.4 2.4 100.0 Total 42 100.0 100.0

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number adult females in household

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid 1 32 76.2 76.2 76.2 2 7 16.7 16.7 92.9 3 2 4.8 4.8 97.6 4 1 2.4 2.4 100.0 Total 42 100.0 100.0

number adult males in household

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid 0 17 40.5 40.5 40.5 1 24 57.1 57.1 97.6 2 1 2.4 2.4 100.0 Total 42 100.0 100.0

number of minor females in household

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid 0 24 57.1 57.1 57.1 1 12 28.6 28.6 85.7 2 4 9.5 9.5 95.2 3 2 4.8 4.8 100.0 Total 42 100.0 100.0

number of minor males in household

Cumulative Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid 0 24 57.1 57.1 57.1 1 16 38.1 38.1 95.2 3 2 4.8 4.8 100.0 Total 42 100.0 100.0

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341

Appendix J_Phase I Survey

Body Culture, African American Girls, and Physical Activity Engagement Phase I Survey

The purpose of this survey is to find out more about the range of situations, feelings and experiences of people enrolled in this study with respect to several factors. By answering the questions in each of the categories below, you will help us to do this. Please answer all the questions as completely and honestly as you can. If you don’t understand something, please ask the study team member who gave you the survey; she will be happy to help you.

Participant #: ______

I. Demographics

1. Your Age Year in School

14 8th grade 15 9th grade 16 10th grade 17 11th grade 12th grade Other ______

2. Annual Family Income (circle one)

1 = 0-$10,000.00 2 = $10,001.00 – $20,000.00 3 = $20,001.00 – $30,000.00 4 = $30,001.00 – $50,000.00 5 = $50,001.00 – $70,000.00 6 = greater than $70,000.00

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342

Parent/Guardian Education

3. Primary caregiver’s education (circle the highest level of education completed): 1 = Less than 7th grade 2 = Junior high school (9th grade) 3 = Partial high school (10th or 11th grade) 4 = High school graduate (traditional) 5 = High school graduate (GED) 6 = Some college (no degree received) 7 = Specialized training (vocational or technical education) 8 = Bachelor’s degree (BS/BA) 9 = Partial graduate school 10 = Graduate or professional degree

4. What is this person’s relationship to you (for example, mother, father, grandmother, uncle, foster parent)?

5. Secondary caregiver’s education (circle highest level of education completed):

1 = Less than 7th grade 2 = Junior high school (9th grade) 3 = Partial high school (10th or 11th grade) 4 = High school graduate (traditional) 5 = High school graduate (GED) 6 = Some college (no degree received) 7 = Specialized training (vocational or technical education) 8 = Bachelor’s degree (BS/BA) 9 = Partial graduate school 10 = Graduate or professional degree

6. What is this person’s relationship to you (for example, mother, father, grandmother, uncle, foster parent)?

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343

II. Household composition and Dynamics (Note: Your household is where you live most of the time)

A. Household Composition 1. Number of people in household: ______(including yourself)

a. Adult females: ______Relationship: ______b. Adult males: ______Relationship: ______c. Female minors: ______Relationship: ______d. Male minors: ______Relationship: ______

B. Household Dynamics (Please read each statement and circle the response that best reflects how you feel about that statement.)

Gender Dynamics 1. In my family, the standards of behavior for males and females are pretty much the same.

Very True Sort of True Not at All True

2. In my family, the standards of behavior for males and females are different.

Very True Sort of True Not at All True

3. I share my family’s beliefs about standards of behavior for males and females.

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344

Very True Sort of True Not at All True

Parental Weight and Fitness Concerns

1. In the past year, how often has your father made a comment to you about your weight or your eating that made you feel bad?

Regularly Fairly Often Sometimes Seldom Never

2. In the past year, how often has your mother made a comment to you about your weight or your eating that made you feel bad?

Regularly Fairly Often Sometimes Seldom Never

3. In the past year, how often has some other adult in your household made a comment to you about your weight or your eating that made you feel bad?

Regularly Fairly Often Sometimes Seldom Never

4. In the past year, how important has it been to your mother that you be thin?

Very Important Somewhat Important Not at All Important

5. In the past year, how important has it been to your mother that you be physically active and fit?

Very Important Somewhat Important Not at All Important

6. In the past year, how important has it been to your father that you be thin?

Very Important Somewhat Important Not at All Important

7. In the past year, how important has it been to your father that you be physically active and physically fit?

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345

Very Important Somewhat Important Not at All Important

8. My mother feels the same about my weight as she does about the weight of all the kids in our household.

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

9. My mother feels the same about my physical activity/physical fitness as she does about the physical activity/physical fitness of all the kids in our household.

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

10. My mother’s beliefs about weight for boys are different than her beliefs about weight for girls.

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

11. My mother’s beliefs about physical activity for boys are different than her beliefs about physical activity for girls.

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

12. My father feels the same about my weight as he does about the weight of all the kids in our household.

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

13. My father feels the same about my physical activity/fitness as he does about the physical activity of all the kids in our household.

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

14. My father’s beliefs about weight for boys are different than his beliefs about weight for girls.

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346

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

15. My father’s beliefs about physical activity for boys are different than his beliefs about physical activity for girls.

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

Behavioral Influences

16. In thinking about who influences you the most in in terms of how often you exercise (who is your role model), who would you say Most Influences you? (Please check one):

a. Your Mother b. Your Father c. Your Grandmother d. Your brother e. Your sister f. Your aunt g. Your Grandfather h. Your friend i. Other? Relationship to you:

III. Regional Family Culture and History

1. Do you have family currently living in the South? Yes No (The South is defined as the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas)

2. If yes, what generation? siblings/first cousins aunt/uncle second cousin or higher grandparent(s) great-grandparents

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347

3. How much contact do you have with your family who live in the South? (Check all that apply)

Contact frequency Generation

- cousin or

nd Sibs/first Sibs/first cousins Aunts or uncles 2 higher grandparents Great granbarents I have no contact with my family who live in the South We speak regularly on the phone We speak infrequently on the phone We email or IM regularly We email or IM infrequently I visit them more than three times per year They visit me more than three times per year I visit them 1-3 times per year They visit me 1-3 times per year Visits last more than 2 weeks on average Visits last less than 2 weeks on average

4. Do you have family members who live in Ohio and are from the south?

Yes No

5. If yes, what generation?

siblings; first cousins parent(s) aunt/uncle second cousin or higher grandparent(s) great-grandparents

6. How much contact do you have with your family members who live in Ohio and are from the South? (check all that apply)

Contact frequency Generation

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cousin cousin

nd Sibs/first Sibs/first cousins Aunts or uncles 2 or higher Grandpare nts Great grandpare nts

We see each other daily We see each other several times a week We see each other several times a month We see each other monthly We see each other occasionally (less than 1x/month) We rarely see each other I have no contact with my family who live in Ohio and are from the South

IV. Peer Networks (please choose one response)

1. How many of your close friends are of the same race as you? a. None of them b. 1 - 2 c. 3 or more d. All of them

2. How many of your close friends are of another race? a. None of them b. 1 – 2 c. 3 or more d. All of them

Please indicate which of the following statements is true for you.

3. I am closer with my friends who are of the same race than with my friend who are of a different race.

Very true Sort of true Untrue

4. I am closer with my friends who are of a different race than I am with my friends who are of the same race.

Very true Sort of true Untrue

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349

5. Race is not really a factor in closeness of friendship for me.

Very true Sort of true Untrue

V. Weight Concern and Physical activity (Please read each statement and circle the response that best reflects how you feel about that statement.)

A. Weight Concern

1. I think I would look better if I lost weight.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

2. I worry that I will be overweight in the future.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

3. If members of my family are overweight, then I will probably be overweight.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

4. If I eat enough healthy food, it doesn’t matter how much I weigh.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

5. As long as I am active, it doesn’t matter how much I weigh.

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350

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

6. There are things that I can do to prevent myself from becoming overweight or too heavy.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

7. Weight problems are caused by genes.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

8. Which best describes how you look?

too skinny just right too heavy very overweight obese

9. Which best describes your body type:

Small frame Medium frame Large frame

10. Which best describes your eating habits:

Eat too little Eat just right Eat too much

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11. I feel self-confident.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

12. I am worried about my weight.

Strongly agree Agree Somewhat Agree/ Disagree Strongly Somewhat Disagree Disagree

5 4 3 2 1

13. Do you think your weight is a health problem?

Definitely Yes Probably Yes Somewhat Yes/No Probably No Definitely No

5 4 3 2 1

14. Have you ever tried losing weight? Yes No

15. Are you trying to lose weight now? Yes No

B. Physical Activity

1. On how many of the past 7 days did you exercise or participate in physical activity for at least 20 minutes that made you sweat and breathe hard, such as basketball, soccer, running, swimming laps, fast bicycling, fast dancing, or similar aerobic activities? a) 0 days b) 1 day c) 2 days d) 3 days e) 4 days f) 5 days g) 6 days h) 7 days

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2. On how many of the past 7 days did you participate in physical activity for at least 30 minutes that did not make you sweat or breathe hard, such as fast walking, slow bicycling, skating, pushing a lawn mower, or mopping floors? a) 0 days b) 1 day c) 2 days d) 3 days e) 4 days f) 5 days g) 6 days h) 7 days

3. During the past 7 days, on how many days were you physically active for a total of at least 60 minutes per day? (Add up all the time you spend in any kind of physical activity that increases your heart rate and makes you breathe hard some of the time.) a) 0 days b) 1 day c) 2 days d) 3 days e) 4 days f) 5 days g) 6 days h) 7 days

4. In an average week when you are in school, on how many days do you go to physical education (PE) classes? a) 0 days b) 1 day c) 2 days d) 3 days e) 4 days f) 5 days

5. During an average physical education (PE) class, how many minutes do you spend actually exercising or playing sports? a) I do not take PE b) Less than 10 minutes c) 10 to 20 minutes d) 21 to 30 minutes e) 31 to 40 minutes f) 41 to 50 minutes g) 51 to 60 minutes h) More than 60 minutes

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6. During the past 12 months, on how many sports teams did you play? (Include any teams run by your school or community groups.) a) 0 teams b) 1 team c) 2 teams d) 3 or more teams

7. Over the past three months, how would you summarize your overall physical activity (Read Categories): a) I don’t exercise b) Haven’t in the past 3 months but have regularly in the past c) I exercise but not on a regular basis d) 1 to 2 days per week e) 3 to 4 days per week f) 5 to 7 days per week

Thank you!

353

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