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(

THE GENDERED CONSTRUCTION OF mE FEMALE ATHLETE

Joanne Kay Graduate Programme in Communications McGiIl University, Montreal March,1997

(

A thesis submitted to the Faculty ofGraduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment ofthe requirements ofthe degree ofMaster ofArts

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Canad~ ( CONTENTS

Abstract iii Acknow/edgements iv

Introduction 1 The Question 1 Why the Female Athlete? 1 Situating the Question 4 Theoretical Framework 12 Evidence 19 Thesis Outline 20 References 23

Chapter One: Creating The Female Athlete 25 Sport and the Masculine Mystique 26 The Physiological Body and the Female Athlete: Pathologization and Medical Discourse 28

Il Inhibited Intentionality": Learning to Throw Like a Girl 35 'Habitus' and Cultural Capital 38 The Social Interpretation ofFemale Sport Practices 45 ( VisionIDivision ofthe World 46 Transgressions and "Ideological Seams" 48 References 52

Chapter Two: The Female Bodybuilder: Parody and the Performance ofDrag 54 Freud, Fettishism and Difference 57 Parody and Subversion: The Body in Drag 64 Celebrating with Caution 70 References 74

Chapter Three: Cyborgs and the Technology ofFemale Sport 76 The Cyborg in Posmodernity 79 The Techno-Body 82 The Suspicious Female Athlete-Body and Concerns for Eugenics 84 Bodybuilding and the Technology ofthe "Selr' 91 References 95

Chapter Four: Conclusion 96 References 102

Bibliography 104 ( ( Abstract

Sport is a particularly ideologically-charged terrain within contemporary gender relations because it is centered on the body. The body is our most 'naturaI' marker of sexual identity, and thus, in our socio-cultural imaginations, ofgender identity. Accordingly, gendered boundaries in sport have traditionally constructed and promoted an ideology of'naturaI' gender differences, and sport is a site- a microcosm- where traditional beliefs and assumptions about female weakness and male strength are promoted and maintained. Sport is understood to be both retlective as weil as indicative ofthe feroale/male dichotomy which exists in the more general social mythology. Gendered boundaries are constructed, and work to ideologically contain the female athlete. However, these boundaries are also the ideological seams, through which one can potentially challenge the normalizing processes ofsport.

( Résumé Le sport est un domaine idéologiquement chargé dans le cadre des relations contemporaines homme-femme puisqu'il est fondé sur le corps. Etant le plus 'naturel' des indices d'identité sexuelle, le corps se lie ainsi dans nos imaginations socioculturelles à notre identité de genre. En conséquence les frontières inspirées du genre dans le sport ont traditionellement fabriqué et encouragé une idéologie de différences 'naturelles' de genre et le sport en est un lieu--un microcosme--où les croyances traditionelles et les données concernant la faihless féminine et la force masculine sont encouragées et entretenues. On considère que le sport reftlète et indique la dichotomie màle-femelle qui existe dans une mythologie sociale plus générale. Les frontières fondées sur le genre sont fabriquées et contribuent à limiter la femme athlète. Toutefois, ces frontières sont aussi des fentes idéologiques à travers lesquelles l'on peut éventuellement mettre en question les démarches normalisantes du sport.

( ( Acknowledgments 1 am grateful to G.G. Robinson who served as my thesis director, and ta my mother, Barbara Kay, for her editorial help. 1am also grateful ta Christine Leibich for her help with translation, and to ail the friends and family who eut out articles and referred me to sources that have helped me write this thesis. 1must also acknowledge ail the athletes, coaches, men and women who have been involved in my athletic life, and who have helped to spark my passion for this tapie.

(

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IV ( INTRODUCTION

The Question

Gendered identities are both social and historical COflstnlcts, and gendered subjectivities are emhodied hy individuals as they grow from childhood into adult sen/al identities. Masculinity andfemininity become personally embodied and this always occurs in specific social contexts that historically have privileged masculinity over femininity and particular ways ofbeing male orfemale over other ways. 1

Sport is an area in which norms ofmale strength and female weakness have been

naturalized and actively reproduced through developmental practices that have taught

males and females to live their bodies in active or passive ways. "Sport", as Susan Birrel1

maintains, Ildoes not stand outside the econornic, cultural, political, and theoretical

conditions in which it takes forro and reform; Sport and the bodies that stand at its center 1 are always made and remade within particular histories and places."2

The questions to be explored in my thesis, therefore, will be the following: fil which ways is the female athlete cOllstnlcted and how is she therehy affected as an

athlete? How can one account for the naturalizing processes ofsport on the female athlete

body? and what gendered knowledges and practices are produced through and by sport?

Why the Fen,ale Ath/ete?

[ am interested in these questions both as a female athlete and as a student in the

field ofcommunications studies. First ofail, 1am interested in understanding my own

experiences: as a girl growing up a "tomboy"- and as a woman devoted to athletic

lSusan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture & the Body (Berkeley: University ofCalifomia Press, 1993) 165. 2Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, Women, Sport and Culture (Illinois: Human Kinetics, 1994) vi. ( pursuits. Secondly, my academic interests, stemming naturally from my personal ones, are

focused on exploring theories ofgendered identities in sport: the athlete body as a site of

social and cultural inscription, and the area ofsport as a terrain where categorical concepts

and critical assumptions ofmasculinity and femininity are reified and reproduced.

"There is perhaps no domain where myths, attitudes and beliefs remain 50

persistent as in the world ofsports. ,,3 There are myths related to the female's physical and

psychological masculinization, to her menstruation and pregnancy, and ta her physical and

psychologicallimits in performance. Most ofthese beliefs are rooted in long-standing

socio-cultural attitudes and assumptions. Claims about the physicallimits offemale

athletes, accordingly, stem from assumptions regarding the biological inferiority of

women.

These daims are based on a notion ofbiological determinism- the beliefthat ( biological makeup fundamentally determines human nature. This notion has been widely

contested in feminist scholarship which has illuminated the social and historical

construction ofthe natural sciences themselves. The dualistic tendencies that science

posits are criticized for their androcentric and hierarchical nature whereby privilege is

accorded to human over non-human/nature, mind over body, and researcher over

informant.+In such a scientific model, men, who are ultimately linked to reason and

activity, are privileged over women, who are linked to nature and the (passive)

reproductive body. Central to my thesis is the feminist notion that the scientific model

extends to sport, privileging male participation over female.

3J. Borms, M. Habbelinck, A. Venerando,"Women & Sport", S. Karger, Medecine & Sport, vol. 14 (NY: S. Karger, 1980) 1. ( +D.M. Costa and Sharon R. Guthrie, eds., Women & Sport: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Champaigne, Il: Human Kinetics, 1994) 139.

2 ( The term 'sport' is often used to denote a spectrum ofphysical activities ranging from the more recreational, unorganized pursuits ofuncommitted individuals through to

competition at its highest levels, requiring intense training and commitment. 'Sport', in this

project, is understood to be more limited in scope, differentiating itselffrom recreational

'physical activity' by virtue ofits competitive and more intense nature.5 However,

whatever the Immediate definition, a distinction must also be made between the social

reality ofsport and the relationship ofthe individual to it.

There is both an objective and a subjective dimension to an individual's

involvement in sport. The objective dimension has been explored through feminist

approaches such as the earlier 'equity approach', focusing on lack ofwomen in sport as

weil as unequal media coverage, and the 'difference approach', focusing on the binary

gendering mechanism. The more recent research, however, has only just begun to explore

the subjective dimension ofsport through a 'gender approach' which problematizes the

( very categories at the structural base ofgender. This approach "interrogates and analyzes

the production ofsex/gender systems, identity effects and bodies through the practices of

sport. ,,6 Both ofthese dimensions make up the experience ofthe female athlete, and it is

the negotiation made by the female athlete between the two that 1want to explore in my

thesis.

Like their objective experiences, the subjective experiences ofwomen in sport are

mediated by cultural assumptions and expectations; athletes interpret their own experience

through the 'Iens' ofcultural beliefs that they have come to accept. 7 M. Ann Hall explains

that for wome~ the experience in sport is qualitatively different to that ofmen because it

is male sporting qualities and evaluative criteria against which women are judged.8 Hall

51 offer a more complete conceptualization ofsport in chapter four 6Birrell and Cole, vii. 7Mary E. Duqui~ "She Flies Through the Air with the Greatest ofEase: The ( Contributions ofFeminist Psychology", Costa and Guthrie, 292. 8With the obvious exception of 'aesthetic' sports such as rhythmic gymnastics and

3 points to the very important distinctionlproblem ofwomen's sport, explaining that • women's sport, unlike its male counterpart, is rarely evaluated as "sui generis": [Women's sport is /lever] somelhillg worthwhile in ils own righl as an alitonomOliS sphere of hl/man experienee in which girls and women who wish to do so can explore their athletie potential without threat ta their feminine identity, or witholll expOSllre 10 illegilimale or irrelevant comparisons with the qualitatively differellt achievement ofmales.9

Situating the Question

Cheryl Cole situates the "cultural production ofbodies" as a problematic central ta

the agenda ofsports studies. Framed by feminist cultural studies, as Cole argues, the

categories ofsport, gender, sexuality, nature, the body, difference, power, representation,

subjectivity, and opposition, as weIl as the relations among them need to be rethought. 10

As Cole points out, the 'crisis' ofsport can serve as the background for a project that

begins to rethink the study ofsport from a feminist standpoint: ( This project needs ta recognize 'sport' as a discursive constnlct that organizes multiple praetices that intersect with and produee multiple bodies embedded in normalizing technologies and consumer culture. /11 addition, this project needs to recognize that the knowledge and practices produced by sport are dispersed and expressed in the everyday normalizing practices of remaking bodies, identities and pleasures. Attention to sport- and the issues of physicality, sexuality, power, and dominance that are played ouI in sport- illcrease our understandings of the dynamics ofpower that underlie contemporary gender relalions, and of the ideologies that work ta conslnlet the bOllndaries of our evelyday experiences. Il

synchronized swimming. 9M. Ann Hall, Sport & Gender: A Feminist Perspective on the Sociology ofSport (Calgary: University ofCalgary Press, 1978) 2. IOCheryl Cole, "Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies ( ofthe Body", Birrell and Cole, 23. UCole, "Resisting the Canon", 2.

4 l am therefore interested in pursuing such a project through a communication • analysis injormed hyjeminist, social andcultural theories ofselfandgender identity. Such an analysis examines the systems that construct sex/gender identities and their effects

within practices associated with sport.

Such a study, however, can only be pursued by acknowledging the interdisciplinary

theoretical analyses which have contributed to the study ofgender identity, corporeality,

and sport. These analyses are informed by theories from fields such as sociology,

psychology, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, cultural studies, and sport history.

Feminist Sport History

Until recently, historians ofwomen's sport have generally tended to accept the

assumptions and use the constructs ofmaie-defined and maIe-dominated scholarship rather

than focus on critical conceptual and methodologjcaI issues. Most feminist research on ( women's sport has been set in a liberal-feminist framework, seen as a graduai, progressive unfolding ofincreased opportunities for participation in the existing social order. I2 As

Catriona Parratt points out, because the research has been largely descriptive and

uncritical, the scholarship in women's sport history has left unexplored an important area

ofstudy: how sport has been implicated in the social construction and maintenance of

gender relations.

The historical studies ofwomen's sport have been viewed as problematic by

researchers interested in more critical theories ofgender and identity construction through

and by sport. Recently, therefore, studies have begun to address the question ofsport's

role in shaping gender relations and are clearly informed by critical feminist theories.

These studies are particularly useful to my project. "Researchers are looking at such

fundamental issues as sexuality and reproduction, and are acknowledgjng that concepts

( 12Catriona M. Parratt, "From the History ofWomen in Sport to Women's Sport History: A Research Agenda", Costa and Guthrie, Il.

5 such as gender and sexuality are not immutable, but are cultural constructs that have • changed in the past and can be changed in the future. ,,13 Therefore, as Parratt concludes, as our understanding ofsport's role in the construction ofvarious power relationships is

still limited, critical questions need to be asked about the diversities, complexities and

tensions engendered by differences such as race, dass, ethnicity, and gender. The study of

women's sport history should move away from atheoretical investigations ofpatterns of

women's involvement to a theoretically informed critical analysis patterned on recent

feminist scholarship using gender as a central category. In Parratt's words, sport history

needs to move from a study ofthe history ofwomen in sport to a study ofwomel1's sport

his/ory.

Feminist Sociology of Sport

When analyses move beyond an historical consideration ofrelative opportunities ( and participation, as recent analyses have, they move to a consideration ofthe cultural meaning and significance ofsuch participation. 1~ Such projects focus on elements of

discriminatory practices against women in sport that continue to be justified today by the

daims that there are biologicallimits to women's capacity for high level sport performance

and that competitive sport is inherently problematic for women while beneficial to men. 15

Men are encouraged to take part in sports, for example, because it is an area in which they

will acquire courage, stamina, ingenuity, close friendships, and leadership. For men,

physical prowess has always been linked to moral strength. For women, however,

warnings are still heard that they are far more vulnerable than men to serious injury and

that strenuous exercise by women may lead to infertility, osteoporosis and social problems

13Parratt, Il. 14Susan Birrell and Nancy Theberge, "Ideological Control ofWomen in Sport", Costa and Guthrie, 341. ( 15Helen Lenskyj, Qut ofRounds: Women, Sport and Sexuality (Toronto: The Womenls Press, 1986) 79.

6 related to 'questionable' sexuality. These warnings, like those of 19th century physicians, • are a powerful mechanism for controlling women's sport experiences and ultimately restricting our understanding ofwomen's athletic abilities.

The domain ofsociology has developed theories based on the need for an

examination ofthe ways in which sport is used to construct and promote an ideology of

nallirai gender differences and female inferiority, as weIl as the ways in which sport serves

as a site for the reproduction ofgender relations that privilege men over women. As Susan

Birrell and Nancy Theherge explai~ such a study necessarily implies an examination of

sport as a male preserve and as a particularly powerfuI setting for the construction ofan

ideology ofmale dominance. 16

The sociological study ofwomen in sport developed similarly to the study of

women's history in sport, ultimately leading up to the need for a more critical analysis of

gender and identity. It has developed against a backdrop oftwo related themes: The tirst

( is the history ofwomen's exclusion, which was supported and reinforced by the second, a

set ofheliefs about women's frailty and inferiority which rendered them unsuited for

vigorous physicai activity. 17 Early sport sociology in the 60's focused on the social world

ofsport and somatic-related activities, and its relationship as a social institution and

cultural practice to other institutions such as the political economy, media, education and

religion. 18 In the 70's, challenges to restrictive gender prescriptions and the unequal

participation ofwomen in society led to a gradually developing consciousness ofthe

condition ofwomen in sport. More recent critical approaches beginning in the 80's,

viewed the social world ofsport as problematic because it is grounded in systems of

stratification that fortify white male dominance. The critical emphasis on problems of

16Theberge and Birrell, 323. ( 17Theberge and Birrell, 323. 18Costa and Guthrie, 233.

7 androcentric bias aligned sport sociologists with feminist social theorists and a critical • feminist perspective developed.

Feminist Cultural Studies It is out ofthe critical feminist perspective adopted by recent researchers that a

feminist cultural studies approach focusing on the social world ofwomen in sport has

developed. This approach differs from traditional approaches in sport sociology~ for

example, which emphasized 'sport as a mirror ofsociety' and thus as passively reflecting

the social relations that exist in the larger social realm. Cultural studies sees sport as lia

dYl1amic culturalproduct that is actively created and recreated and can thus be

changed. ,,19 As well~ there is an examination of"how play~ games and sports reproduce

the dominant culture and the ways in which they become transformed as persons and

groups actively respond in the sporting context to the conditions oftheir social ( existence."20 A feminist cultural studies approach specifically follows women's responses ta patriarchal dominance in sport and views sport as a prime site for constructing gender

relations.

A change in recent research is the move away from the study ofsex differences as

the basis for assumptions that dichotomous psychological differences paralleled and

resulted from biological female-male differences. CUITent scholars question these

interpretations and suggest that psychological characteristics and behaviors associated

with females and males are neither dichotomous nor biologically based, and are~ rather,

normally distributed among both males and females. 21

19Costa and Guthrie, 234. 20Costa and Guthrie, 234. ( 21Diane L. Gill, "psychological Perspectives on Women in Sport and Exercise"~ Costa and Guthrie, 254.

8 1 Feminist Psychoanalytic TheOl"y According to feminist psychoanalytic theory, domination and gender differences

can be accounted for by focusing on the dynamics ofearly childrearing. 22 According to

this theory, females and males develop differently because women are the primary

caregivers during the early years when gender identity is learned. They incorporate into

their gender identity values of caregiving~ nurturance and ernpathy. Boys separate their

identity from their mother and define thernselves in opposition; "They incorporate into

their gender identity domination ofnature, a dispassionate or disembodied nationalism" a

repudiation ofthe body and emotions, and the perception ofself-other relations as

threatening or conflictual." Sport is seen as an area of male identity and bonding: "... A

positive exclusive sphere without the attributes ofnurturance and dependence associated

with the feminine." 23 Children ofboth sexes learn to associate athleticism with maie

identity. ( As psychoanalytic theory postulates that masculinity is associated with separation from the mother figure, females in the male preserve ofsport are seen as a threal 10

masculine identity. This perceived threat forms the basis for the male's desire ta have

power and control over females and leads to a denigration and disavowal ofwhat is

considered feminine. This theory further postulates that male sport socialization and

certain sport environments promote violent, misogynistic and homophobic attitudes and

behaviors.

Feminist Poststructuralist Theory

Poststructuralist theory, like communications theory, focuses on the social

construction ofidentity: "the ways in which social forms and institutions, through

language and symbol systems, construct social reality and self-identity; how a culture's

( 220uquin, 293. 230uquin, 295.

9 language and symbol systems define and legitimize what is to be taken as true or untrue. • normal or abnormal, and good and bad in society."2~ With the emphasis on power (the power to name, define and give meaning to reality) language not only defines legitimate

categories ofthought but also communicates hierarchies ofstatus. The power referred ta

in this theory, therefore, is not ooly the overt power ofcoercion, but the more subtle

powers ofdefinition, normalization and legitimization.

A primary tool in poststructuralist theory is deconstruction- examining the

historical and cultural variability in the construction ofa social identity. One ofthe

strengths ofthis theory, therefore, is the recognition ofthe socially constructed nature of

knowledge. As Donna Haraway explains, IIRather than knowledge being seen as universal.

etemal and value-free, we can now show it to be provisional, culturally and historically

specifie, and both arising trom and contributing to social interests. 1l25 We have no direct,

innocent or unconstructed knowledge ofour bodies, rather, we are always reading our ( bodies according to various interpretive schemes.26

The social construction offemale athlete identities is produced through many

symbol systems. How females come to understand what it means to be an athlete and what

they come to value about the sporting experience is a complex phenomenon.

Poststructuralist theory, therefore, as Mary Duquin has discovered, can be used to make

visible the multiple interpretations ofreality, to reveal the power in creating definitions,

and to clarify the processes involved in the social construction ofgender.27

Poststructuralism, as Susan Bordo explains, has encouraged recognition ofthe fact

that prevailing configurations ofpower, no matter how dominant, are never seamless but

"are always spawning new forros ofsubjectivity, new contexts for resistance to and

24Duquin, 297. 25Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinventioll ofNature (NY: Routledge, 1991) 298. ( 26Bordo, 289. 27Duquin, 297.

10 ( transfonnation ofexisting relations." As well~ it has encouraged us to recognize that the

body is not only materially accultured as it conforms to social nonns and habituai practices

of'femininity' and 'masculinity', but aIso "mediated by language and semantical grids that

organize and animate our perception ofexistence. ,,28

Feminist Sport Psychology

Finally, feminist sport psychology, with its emphasis on the subjective experience,

reminds us ofthe importance ofsocial relations and social narratives in the formation of

psychological identities. "Ideology regarding the female body~ which is deeply embedded

in Westem sciences, reinforces a patriarchally imposed movement vocabulary that

physically disables women and thus oppresses women. ,,29 For example, Sharon Guthrie

and Shirley Castelnuovo identify specifie notions ofwomen's bodies which historically

have been converted into scientific findings and have regulated sporting practices for

( women. These notions include the following: that women's bodies are inferior to men's

because they are embedded in their physicallives (menstruation~ pregnancy, childbirth);

that women's bodies are softer, weaker and more vulnerable to injury and hence need to be

protected; that movement activities are useful for females only when they help produce

healthy, potentially procreative bodies; that women's bodies are not suitable for sports that

require physical contact and the use ofone's bodily powers to overcome an opponent; and

that women who participate and excel in such sports are masculine or are not 'real'

women.30

Another beliefinsists that certain sports masculinize the female athlete to the point

that they promote lesbianism. "At the heart ofthe long-standing concem with the

2RBordo, 289. 29Sharon R. Guthrie and Shirley Castelnuovo "The Significance ofBody Image in Psychosocial Development and in Embodying Feminist Perspectives", Costa and Guthrie, ( 308. 3°Guthrie and Castelnuovo, 308.

Il supposed masculinizing effects ofsport is homophobia- fear or intolerance of • homosexuality, gay men or lesbian women, and even behavior that is perceived to be outside the boundaries oftraditional gender role expectations."31 Such beliefs and

practices have constricted the sporting experience offemale athletes; and have resulted in

a restricted and oppressive movement vocabulaty for most women.

Feminist sport psychologists point to the need for writing about sport from the

standpoint ofwomen to increase our understanding ofhow sport is experienced, thereby

creating altemate visions ofsport.

Theoretical Framework:

The six interdisciplinary approaches to theorizing the female athlete were

constituted by several key authors whose arguments l find useful in furthering my thesis

project. These writings can be divided into the following categories: Gender andSport, ( Social Theory on Culture and Identity, Feminist Communication Theory, and The Body ill Social Practice.

Gender and Sport

The tirst body ofliterature relevant to my research is that which focuses

specifically on gender and sport. The fusion ofsports studies with social, political and

cultural theory has generally been absent due to the seemingly 'naturalness' ofsport. More

recent sport theory, however, treats gender as a key focus, concemed with the ideology of

gender and sport and the ways in which sport is a terrain on which ideas about gender and

gender differences are constructed. Analyses in tbis domain uncover a hidden history of

femaIe athleticism., examine sex differences in patterns ofathletic socialization, and

demonstrate how the dominant institutional forros ofsport have naturalized men's power

( 31 Lenskyj, 308.

12 and privilege over women. Feminist sport sociologists such as Susan Birrell~ Susan Cahn~ • Cheryl Cole, D Margaret Cost~ Sharon R. Guthrie, M.A. Hall, Suzanne Laberge~ Helen Lenskyj, Susan Greendorfer and Nancy Theberge, see sport not oruy as a gender­

producing, gender-affirming system but as a difference- and power-producing system: "As

a significant gendering activity, sport not only reproduees gender and sex differences but it

produces a logic ofdifferentiation. 1I32

Social Theory on Culture and Identity

Researchers belonging to this domain explore issues surrounding the politics of

identity within socio-theoretical frameworks. Who we are as individuals, and how we get

there, is a continually debated topie within eontemporary academie discourse. Whereas

biologists search for scientific evidenee ofour nature, soeiologists work to understand

who we have become through a proeess ofsocial construction. ( Sociological theory is grounded in the notion that one experiences- and cornes to

understand- onels environments symbolically. When individuals interpret the world

symbolically, they respond to information that has become meaningful in terms of

/anguage- not just speech, but ail the symbolic resources individuals have at their disposaI

to eommunicate with one another. These include the use ofmyth and ritual and of

political, scientific, and aesthetic modes ofexpression; they permit aIl individuals within a

particular collectivity to experience unifonn and universal modes ofdiscourse.33

Pierre Bourdieu, for example, theorizes social structure through a conceptual

system which aceommodates gender quite effectively. Although feminist writers often

critique the androcentric bias in his wor~ authors such as McCall and Laberge have

32Susan Birrell and Cheryl L, Cole, lIDouble Fault: Renee Richards and the Construction and NaturaIization ofDifference", Birrell and Cole, 392. ( 33David Ashley and David Michael Orenstein, Soci%gical Theory: C/assica/ Statemellts (Boston: Allyo & Bacon, 1985) 27-28.

13 ( demonstrated how this can be rectified by integrating gender distinction into his notion of

cultural capital and consequently into rus notion ofhabitus. 34

One ofPierre Bourdieu's central concerns is the role ofculture in the reproduction

ofsocial structures. According ta Bourdieu, unequai power relations are unrecognized as

such and are accepted as legitimate. They are then embedded in the systems of

classification used to describe and discuss everyday life and its cultural practices. These

classifications create a way ofperceiving reality, which then becomes taken for granted by

members ofsociety.35 Bourdieu's notion of habitus describes a set ofdispositions, the

result ofa long process ofinculcation, which generates practices and perceptions. Sport is

usefully understood in the light ofBourdieu's theory ofsocial practice and 'habitus': as a

socio-historical, culturally produced practice that relates social, cultural and mental

structures.

( Feminist Communication Theory

This third body ofwriting investigates gender as a 'meaning-making' structure

through which women's unique social experiences can be explained. Lana Rakow, for

example, sees gender as a social process: as dYllamic: "Gender should be seen as a verb,

that is, work that we do to construct and maintain a particular gender system, and as a

meaning system, that is, organizing categories used to make sense ofthe world and

experience. ,,36 'Masculine' and 'feminine' are more than normative groups ofcharacteristics

for socialized males and females; the concepts constitute a dualism used to classify objects

34Suzanne Laberge, "Toward an Integration ofGender into Bourdieu's Concept of Cultural Capital", Sociology ofSport Journal (1995) 12. 35Pierre Bourdieu, The Field alCultural Production (NY: Columbia University Press) 2. ( 36Lana Rakow, "Rethinking Gender Research in Communication" in Journal of Communication 36(4) (1986) 239.

14 ( both animate and inanimate.37 According to Rakow~ gender is a classification system that

men have used to "think the world with".

Rakow emphasizes that it is important for the continuation ofthe patriarchal order

that gendering be presented as naturaI. "The meaning ofgender in the case ofbeing a

woman- seems to be confirmed by the experience ofit." Karlene Ferrante who has applied

Rakow's theory to baseball, explains that it is not gender that causes the women's

behavior, but our gender system~ which locates sorne people as women in a particular

organization ofsociallife, making that location appear natural and the result ofbiology

and psychology rather than culture and politics. Therefore, gender appears to be a natural

organizing principle "because it is encoded into the philosophical underpinnings ofcultural

symbols such as sports." Just as the reification ofbaseball culture obscures its history as

weIl as its contribution to the continuing process ofgendering, so can this argument be

extended to the entire realm ofmale-dominated sport: "As a symbol ofequal opponunity,

( baseball (and 1would argue sport) has an aura ofsimplicity and purity about it, at the

expense ofwomen, and sorne would say men." This cultural sYffibol is actually part ofa

complex meaning system, structured in a way that validates the correctness and necessity

ofthe patriarchal social order.

Judith Butler explores gender as a social process that is shaped through constant

negotiation with the other.38 For Butler, our gendered identities do not express an

authentic core self, but are the dramatic effect ofour performances. For Butler, we leam

to perform our genders in the same way we leam ta use language: through imitation and

37Karlene Ferrante, "Baseball and the Social Construction ofGender", Pamela Creedon, ed., Women, Media andSport: Challenging Gender Values (Califomia: Sage, 1994) 254. ( 38Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism & the Subversion ofldentity, and Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits ofSex (NY: Routledge, 1990, 1993) 33.

15 ( graduai command ofpublic, cultural idioms. The notion ofa 'natural' or authentic core self

is therefore a corporal fantasy that is used to regulate rather than reflect our sexuality.39

Butler aims to denaturalize the categories ofgender and ofthe "natural" itself- and

suggests how 'gender trouble' is culturally stirred up through "subversive bodily acts" that

exhibit the artificiality ofgender. Through what Susan Borda calls a genealogical critique

ofgender, Butler explores gender categories as the effect ofdiscourse rather than as the

'natural' ground ofidentity. (This, Borda refers to as Butler's decons/nlCtive analysis.)

Through her analysis ofgender as performance (ButIer's cons/nIC/ive analysis), she argues

for parody- and more specifically the body in drag- as the mest effective strategy for

subverting the fixed 'binary frame' of gender.~o

Parody, Butler explains, imitates the myth oforiginality itself Conceived ofas a

parody, a body in drag can effectively subvert the notion ofan original or primary gender

identity. According to Butler, the performance ofdrag plays upon the distinction between

( the anatomy ofthe performer and the gender that is being performed, thereby mocking the

expressive model ofgender and the notion ofa true gender identity~1

By extending her argument to female athletes, 1 will argue that the female athlete-

a female body 'dressed' in 'masculine' muscles and thus consistent with the model ofthe

body in drag- constitutes an arnbiguous symbolic construct and therefore challenges the

seemingly biological 'givenness' ofthe female body. As Susan Bordo has found, Butler's

performative approach is useful as a framework for exploring "the ongoing interactive,

imitative processes by means ofwhich the selt: gender and their illusions ofauthenticity

are constructed."42

39Butler, Gender Trouble, 33. 4oBordo, 289.

41Butler, Gender Trouble, 33. ( ~2Bordo, 290.

16 • The Body in Social Practice In this domain.. theorists explore such concepts as 'technologies' ofthe body, the

'docile' femaIe body, medicalizationlpathologization ofthe femaIe body, body image, as

weIl as biology/nature as a ground for cultural assumptions about men and women.

Theorists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault dissolve mind-body

duaIism and view the body as a critical site ofsocial analysis. There is a recognition that

duaIistic thinking has fostered the objectification ofwomen's bodies and a socially

constructed movement vocabulary closely connected to the biological functions of

pregnancy and child rearing. As weIl, there is a rejection ofscientific paradigms that rely

on the assumption ofan objective reaIity and as such provide only a partial understanding

ofbodies and somatie experience. From a feminist perspective, sueh a paradigrn does not

aceurately and fully render women's movement experiences. It is personal bodily

( experience and subjectivity, however, which are the more basic and accurate sources of

reality.

Although the generaI tendency in social theory has been to repress or erase the

body, Michel Foucault is a theorist who has amplified the need to (re)theorize the body as

a site ofcultural politics struggle:B Much ofFoucault's work attempts to explicate

modem operations ofpower in which knowledge and the body are central. In its modem

form., according to Foucault, power is not possessed by or located in individuals or a

particular spaee; it does not function simply through exclusion or repression. Instead,

"power works as a microphysics, as eapillary-like strategies and tactics that operate on a

mierolevel in and through everyday practiees..."4

( 43Cole, "Resisting the Canon", 13. "4Cole, "Resisting the Canon", 14.

17 Foucault places the body and sexuality at the center ofsocial analysis~ examining • how bodiIy desires are directed and controlled by scientific discourses associated with the body. Foucault, for exarnple~ identifies two poles ofdevelopment around which the

organization ofpower over life is deployed: the emphasis on the body as machine in

which disciplinary procedures are used to optimize the economic usefulness ofthe body~

and the emphasis on the body as a "species body" ~ in which propagatio~ birth~ mortality and health are paramount ta existence. ~5

According ta Foucault, the notion ofsexual identity, which historically combines

anatomical and biological elements with sensations and pleasures in an artificial unity,

became the critical nexus ofthe two poles and the juncture around which the management

ofsocial life was organized. ~6 Post 17th century society emphasized femininity and

masculinity as the critical elements ofself-identity. As a result~ one's 'true' sexual identity

(feminine or masculine) became the primary and restricted way that individuals defined ( themselves. Foucault shows us therefore, that sexual identity is not an unmediated reality;

rather it is the creation ofsocial constructs and classifications.

Sport is also usefully understood as a technology in the Foucauldian sense- "an

ensemble ofknowledges and practices that disciplines, conditions, reshapes, and inscribes

the body through the terms and needs ofa patriarchal capitalism. ,,~ 7 As Foucault explains,

our bodies are produced according to prevailing historical forros ofmasculinity and

femininity. Following trom Foucault's notion oftechnologies ofbodily production, sport

can be understood as an institution whose central feature is one ofdiscipline and

surveillance. Therefore, sport remains a particularly powerful ideological mechanism

~5Michel Foucault, The History ofSexuality: An Introduction vol. 1. (NY: Vintage Books, 1990) 15. ( ~6Foucault, 15. 47Foucault, 15.

18 ( because "it is centered on the body, a site ofsemiotic condensation whose manifest meaning is intimately bound to the biologicaL,,"8

Anne Balsamo explores how gender, a boundary concept like the body, is at once

related to physiological sexual characteristics ofthe human body (the natura! order ofthe

body) and to the cultural context within which that body 'makes sense'. She describes the

body as a houndary concept; our life in 'techno-bodies' is lived in our "hypermediated

technoculture" in which "body awareness is technologically amplified such that we know

not only what we do, but a1so how, why and with what consequences. Il..9 Balsamo

suggests that with the widespread technological refashioning ofthe 'natura!' human body,

gender too has the possibility ofbeing reconstructed.

Evidence

Although l will be 100king at female athletes within the entire realm ofsport, l will ( be focusing on the sport ofhodybuilding to illustrate the arguments and theories 1develop

in my thesis. As this is primarily a theoretical thesis, my goal is to fuse the insights of

different authors into a cohesive argument about the socio-psychological and meaning

dimensions ofthe gendered nature ofsport activities and experiences. Because the female

bodybuilder invades a previously all male sporting activity and breaks conventional gender

boundaries, it provides a particularly good study-site for my purposes. Because

bodybuilders exist in both a male and a female incarnation, they are particularly able to

illustrate the gender-based contradiction which the body ofthe muscular woman poses to

conventional notions of'masculinity' and lesbianism. 1will be using both the images and

practices ofthis sport form ta argue that muscles in this instance are the most "natural"

sign ofsex difference. 'Muscularity', it will be demonstrated constitutes key criteria in

48Cole, IIResisting the Canon", 15 . ( ..9Anne Balsamo, 1996, Technologies ofthe GenderedBody: Reading Cyborg Womell. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996) 10.

19 bodybuilding contest judging, bath official and implied, and this illustrates the sociaIly • constructed gender preconceptions which are at the center ofboth the sport experience and its practices. According ta the prevailing ideology, female bodybuilders, and by

extension, female athletes, who necessarily take on 'natural masculine attributes' by virtue

oftheir involvement in a male preserve, transgress the boundaries and are thereby

constructed as 'unnatural' and denatured as athletes and women.

This thesis will not address biomedical comparisons ofmale and female athIetic

capacity. Though studies in sports biomechanics usually determine male athletic capability

to be superior to femaIe, l am more interested in the epistemological context in which such

scientific conclusions are reached, and in the sociocultural factors which too often are

ignored.

Thesis Outline

( 1) Creating the Female Athlete

In this chapter l will discuss sport as a social activity which has naturalized specifie

gendered forms ofsocial practices. Because, historically, the realm ofsport developed in

the service ofmen and masculinity, the gradual inclusion ofwomen into this reaIm

produced a spiral ofanxieties and negotiations about the 'proper' role ofwomen in sport. l

\\;11 expose the ways in which medical authorities limited and defined women's

participation in sport by prescribing- and proscribing- physicaI exercise for women in the

service ofpatriarchaI capitaIism. As weIl, this chapter explores cultural notions and

expectations of'femininity', and the implications for women who either accepted or

rejected them both in and through sport. Finally, 1 will explain why the incursion of

women into the social domain ofsport transgressed interpretive classifications of'proper'

behavior for 'properl middle class young women.

(

20 In The Female Bodybuilder: Parody & The Performance of Drag: • In this chapter 1will use the image ofthe female bodybuilder to illustrate the transgressive potential ofthe female athlete's body. Bodybuilders' bodies are generally

viewed as unnatural- clearly the products ofindividual obsession, created through great

effort in the ~ dieting and drugs. However, the female bodybuilder is subject to an

additional 'interpretive' problem not posed by her male counterpart. The display of

muscularity implies no conflict for male-associated identifications ofsex and gender:

muscular men are viewed and interpreted as 'natura!'. Images ofmuscular women, on the

other hand, are disconcerting, even threatening, because they disturb the association of

men with strength and women with weakness- an equation that is still left largely

unchallenged by both women and men (underpinning gender roles and power relations in

our society.) This chapter will explore how the 'muscular' woman rouses anxiety by

threatening to abolish one ofthe seemingly biological differences between men and ( women. 1 intend to demonstrate that when women bodybuiId, not only do they challenge the 'naturaIness' oftheir body, but the 'naturalness' ofthe gender order as weIl.

UI) Cyborgs and the Technology of Female Sport: Transgressions and tLeaky Hegemony'

In this chapter, l continue the discussion of the 'natural' body, and offer an

alternative vision ofthe transgressive female athlete body. In this chapter 1 maintain that

the femaIe athlete's body can be most usefully analyzed through a notion of'technology',

which is weil represented in a discussion ofcyborg identity. The cyborg body- an

imaginary hybrid ofbiological organism and cybernetic mechanism- is a constructed body

that confounds the dichotomy between natural and unnaturaI, made and bom.50 This

chapter will explore the ways in which 'naturalized' gender identities are socially and

( 5ÜN. Katherine Hayles, "The Life Cycle ofCyborgs; Writing the Posthuman", Chris Hables Gray, ed., The Cyborg Handbook (NY: Routledge, 1995) 321.

21 { culturally reproduced as part ofnew technological fOr!llations. In the process, 1will continue the previous chapter's survey ofwhat women's transgression into the male

domain ofsport 'means' in Anglo-Saxon society where sport participation has been used to

relegate women ioto an inferior social position. As in the previous chapter, l will use the

female bodybuilder to ilIustrate the gender-based contradiction posed by the body ofthe

muscular woman. The female bodybuilder is viewed in this chapter as a technologically

recrafted body, and the cultural implications ofthis (re)construction are explained through

a comparison ofthe (cyborg) bodybuilder with the (cyborg) gymnast.

IV) Conclusion: The Constructed Female Athlete: Implications and Performance

This chapter will offer a final conceptualization ofsport and will reintroduce the

various aspects ofsport w~dch (re)produce historical ideaIs ofmasculine strength and

feminine weakness. This chapter will remind the reader that myths offemale inferiority in ( the realm ofsport persist, impacting the ways in which female athletes perceive their own abilities as weIl as the ways in which others understand their involvement in sports. Sport

is therefore theorized as an institution within the larger culture in which ideologies ofmale

superiority and structures ofmale domination are continually reconstructed and

naturalized. 51 Finally, this chapter will tum to look at the future ofsport and the

opportunities that exist for women to define new knowledges, practices and bodies

relating to ungendered terms.

( 51Michael Messner and Donald F. Sabo, eds., Sport, Meil & the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives (IL: Human Kinetics Press) 173.

22 • References Ashley, David and Orenstein, Michael. Sociological Iheory' Classical Statements. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1985.

Balsamo, Anne. Technologies ofthe Gendered Body. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.

Birrell, Susan, and Cole, Cheryl L., eds. Womeo. Sport and Culture. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1994.

Birrell, Susan, and Theberge, Nancy. "Ideological Control ofWoroen in Sport" in Costa and Guthrie.

Borda, Susan. Unbearable Weight· Ferninism Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley: University ofCalifomia Press, 1993.

Borms, J., Habbelinck, M. and Venerando, A., eds. "Womeo & Sport" in Medecine & Sport voL 14. NY: S. Karger, 1980.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field ofCultural Production. NY: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. NY: Routledge, 1990.

Costa, O. Margaret and Guthrie, Sharon R., eds. Women and Sport· Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Champaigne, IL: Human Kinetics, 1994.

Duquin, Mary E. "She Flies Through the Air with the Greatest ofEase: The Contributions ofFeroiDist Psychology" in Costa and Guthrie.

Foucault, MicheL History ofSexuality. NY: Vintage Books, 1990.

Ferrante, KarIene. "Baseball and the Social Construction ofGender" in Creedon, Pamela, ed. Women. Media and Sport· Cballenging Gender Yalues. Califomia: Sage, 1994.

Gill, Diane L. "Psychological Perspectives 00 Women in Sport and Exercise" in Costa and Guthrie.

Guthrie, Sharon R. and Castelnuovo, Shirley. "The Significance ofBody Image in Psychosocial Development and in Embodying Feminist Perspectives" in Costa and Guthrie.

( Hall, M. Ann. Sport and Gender' A Feminist Perspective on the Sociology ofSport. Calgary: University ofCalgary Press, 1978.

23 Haraway, Donna. Simians. Cyborgs and Women· NY: Routledge~ 1991.

• s Hayles, N. Katherine. "The Lifecycle ofCyborg ; Writing the posthuman" in Gray, Chris Hables, ed. The Cyborg Handbook. NY: Routledge, 1995.

Laberge, Suzanne. "Toward an Integration ofGender into Bourdieu's Concept ofCultural Capital." in Sociology ofSport Journal. IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1995 (12), 132-146.

Lenskyj, Helen. Out ofBounds· WomeJ1. Sport & Sexualit}!. Toronto: The Women's Press, 1986.

Messner, Michael A. and Sabo, Donald F. Sport Men and the Gender arder· Critical Feminist Perspectives. Champaign, Illinois: Ruman Kinetics Press, 1990.

Parratt, Catriona. "From the History ofWornen in Sport to Women's Sport History: A Research Agenda" in Costa and Guthrie.

Rakow, Lana. "Rethinking Gender Research in Communication." In Journal of Communicatioo, 36(4) 1986, 11-26. (

(

24 1 CHAPTERONE Creating the Female Athlete

Sport developed in the service ofmen., producing and reproducing gendered

relations ofpower, thus structuring women's marginalization and experiences through

ideological and exclusionary practices. However, though these processes have naturalized

sport across generations as a masculine activity, they aIso contain 'fissures' where feminist

resistance is possible. 1 Though faced with resistance and medicaI warnings, by 1910,

women had, for example, firmly established a place for themselves in the sports reaIm, and

they have pursued athletic activity with more participation and intensity throughout the

century. Their hightened presence in the male realm, however, has never been

unaccompanied by gendered interpretations ofthe 'meaning' ofsuch a presence nor of

expectations of'feminine' performance.

( Sport has developed specifie gendered social practices and knowledges which,

though continuously challenged and negotiated- thereby producing new limits and

acceptance for women's participation- are firmly rooted in unchallenged myths offemale

weakness and pathology. Women's boundaries in sport are determined by cultural

expectations of'femininity' and 'masculinity', and women have learned and intemaIized the

cultural cues for each. Women have rnaintained strategies for both acceptance and

rejection ofthese gendered boundaries, but the graduai evolution ofsport, conceding

more space to women's participation, has demonstrated that women have challenged and

negotiated gendered boundaries that have defined 'proper' feminine athletic performance.

The incursion ofwomen into sport can ultimately be interpreted as a transgression of

( ISusan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, eds., Women. Sport and Culture (Champaign, Il: Human Kinetics, 1994) 161. 1 interpretive classifications. Sport's capacity as an agent ofwomen's oppressio~ therefore, can aIso be viewed as a potentiaI agent for the transformation ofgender relations. 2

Sport and the Masculine Mystique

Athletics have long been the province ofmen. In the Western world not onIy have

men dominated the playing fields, but athletic qualities such as aggressio~

competitiveness, strength, speed, power, and teamwork have been associated with

masculinity as weIl. For many me~ sport has provided an arena in which to cultivate

masculinity and achieve manhood. Consequently, in accordance with the male/femaIe

taxonomy which disallows women from sharing these 'masculine' qualities, women's

participation in sport broached fundamental questions about the content and definition of

womanhood and manhood. Would women engaging in a traditionally male activity

become more manlike? What exactly were 'masculine' and 'feminine' qualities, and did they ( have to be limited to men and women respectively? And ifathleticism was not essentially

masculine, did this mean that aH gender differences were mutable and not ordained by, and

permanently ensconced in, nature?3

The making ofmodem sports are generally understood to have begun during the

fractious industrialization ofeighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain..J In the

emmigration from the countryside, agricultural workers, the traditional players of 'folk

games', were denied access to their games as the repression ofpopular amusements all but

eliminated active forms ofpopular recreation. These games, however, continued to be

2Nancy Theberge, "Toward a Feminist Alternative to Sport as a Male Preserve", Birrell and Cole, 181. 3Susan K.Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender andSexuality in Twen/ieth-Celltllry Women's Sport (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, (995) 3. ( 4Bruce Kidd, The Stnlgglefor Canadian Sport (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1996) 13.

26 played in the elite, alI-male 'public' schools such as Eton, Harrow and Rugby. School • curricula quickJy evolved to include regulated sports which were believed to prepare boys and young men for their careers by instilling mental and physical "toughness", obedience

to authority and loyalty to class. The 'manly sports' (the more vigorous activities) were

consciously promoted to extend and celebrate male power and privilege in the face of

first-wave feminism. By the middle ofthe nineteenth century, this new approach to game

plaYÎng was being introduced in universities and private clubs, spawning the creation of

new associations for sport's promotion, conduct and regulation. 5 At the tum ofthe

century, sports- almost everywhere- were meant to be masculine: "a training ground for

those qualities ofphysical artistry and strength, courage and stamina, ingenuity and loyalty

that gave men their daim to the greatest share ofthe social surplus. ,,6 Sports were

promoted to sustain the 'mystique ofmale superiority' and were taught as an antidote to

the 'feminization' ofyoung boys.

( The needs and experiences ofwomen were not accounted for in the male preserve

ofsport. Girls and women were denied facilities and opportunities, were ridiculed for their

attempts to participate in vigorous activity, and were threatened with the "spectre ofiIl

health and race-suicide" when they did. 7 In determining which sports and what level of

participation were safe for female physiology, physical educators, sports administrators,

joumalists and the general public treated medical opinion as the voice ofreason and

authority. "Not coincidentally, the [activities prescribed] were seen to enhance femininity,

a socially constructed and historically specifie concept encompassing personality,

appearance and comportment."8 Acceptable aetivities promoted 'appealing' and

SKidd, 14. 6Kidd,26. 7Kidd,26. ( 8Helen Lenskyj, Out ofBounds; Women, Sport and Sexuality (Toronto: The Women1s Press, 1986) 139.

27 'appropriate' female characteristics such as general and reproductive health~ heterosexual • attractiveness, passivity, and conformity.

The Physiological Body & the Female Athlete: Pathologization and Medical Discourse

Strategies for preserving the 'naturaI' female body have persisted since women's

involvement in sport. Common early in the century was a Darwinian explanation ofthe

superiority ofmen as athletes: According ta this theory, Stone Age women had

responsibility for home and children, and did not need the ability to run, strike, or throw.

Men, however, had to hunt and proteet their families, and thus developed those qualities

which made them superior athletes centuries later. 9 ~aturaI' gender distinctions, therefore,

have implied 'natural' male athletic superiority.

Ta regulate women's participation in sport and to maintain 'natural' gender

distinctions, the female athlete's body has been coded through biological and medical

( discourse. Historically, as Anne Balsamo has argued, it has been pathologized and

equated with reproductio~ thereby shaping notions ofproper gender behavior according

to prevailing forms ofmasculinity and fernininity. Historically women athletes have battled

two perceptions: that their physical differences make them incapable ofperforming sports

competently, and that sports masculinizes females and makes them ahnonnalllesbian

women. lO

Feminist sociologists explain how sports experts continued the quest to locate

women's inferiority in her physiologieal body after the science ofcraniology failed ta

prove her inferiority resided in her brain. Il Reproduction became another way of

characterizing female athletes, and reproductive physiology became intimately tied to

9Mary Jo Festle, Playing Nice: Polities andApologies in Women's Sports (NY: Columbia University Press, 1995) 5. lOFestle, 265. IlAnne Balsamo, Technologies ofthe Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996) 42.

28 woman's gender identity. Textbooks for the medical profession ofthe early nineteenth • century provided evidence that the 'fact ofreproduction' was 50 used when prescribing safe and appropriate sporting activities for women. A woman's physiology and her moral

obligations associated with that physiology disqualified her from high level sport:

Both women's unique anatomy and physiology and their special moral obligations disqualify them jrom vigorous physical activity. Women have a moral duty to preserve their vital energyfor childbearing and 10 cullivale personality traits suited to their wife-and-mother role. Sport wastes vital forces, strains female bodies and fosters traits unbecoming to "lnle womanhood". 12

Another way ofdiscouraging women trom participating in sports was through the

alignment ofa physiological phenomenon such as 'bleeding' with cultural associations

concerning the reproductive cycle. In the medical textbooks ofthe day, women were

diagnosed as 'eternally wounded', thus chronically weak and victims ofpathological ( physiology. Therefore, not only was the female body inextricably linked to an obligation of reproduction, but also, through the association between femininity and 'the wound', the

female body became coded as inherently pathological. Limiting women's participation in

sport and exercise served both to control women's unruly physiology and to protect them

for the important job ofspecies reproduction. 13

When these interpretations were implicitly challenged, cultural authorities tried to

contain the damage. For example, in the fall of 1911, Lippincott's Monthly described the

modem athletic woman: Il She loves to walk, ta row, to ride, ta motor, to jump, ta run... as

man walks, rows, rides, motors, jumps and runs. 1I14 The article, entitled "The

Masculinization ofGirls", concluded that "with muscles tense and blood aflame, she plays

ll the manly raie." The II manly role generated deep hostility and anxiety among those who

12Balsamo, 42. 13Balsamo, 43. 11 ( 14 Martina and Chrissie: At the Top for a Decade, Il Ms. 13 (may, 1985) 72 quoted in Cahn,7.

29 feared that women's athletic activity would not ooly damage female reproductive capacity, • but would also promote sexuallicentiousness, and blur 'natural' gender differences. 15 When women began pursuing cycling, critics claimed that excess riding caused women

serious physiologicai damage. Medical authorities cautioned against the risk ofuterine

displacement, spinal shock, pelvic damage, and hardened abdominal muscles. Avid cycling

reputedly could aIso harden the facial muscles into a "hideous 'bicycle face', notable for its

protruding jaw, wild staring eyes, and strained expression." 16

Sport was not completely proscribed to women, but was always regulated to

maintain proper notions ofgender differences. Against a background ofexpanding

consumerism, the benefits ofsport for female health and beauty was emphasized. "To

reduce flesh" a woman's magazine reads, "the charm ofa well-proportioned figure is not

to be overestimated, and it is one which aImost any woman can possess by the expenditure

ofsystematic effort, acquiring incidentafly good health with her good figure" [italics

( mine]. Sorne even extended the argument by linking athletic beauty ta evolutionary gains

for the species. Dudley Sargent, founder ofthe prestigious Sargent School for women's

physical education, claimed that both "good form in figure and good forro in motion...

tend to inspire admiration in the opposite sex and therefore play an important part in what

is termed 'sexual selection'." 17 The instinct ta improve bis species, therefore, would

predispose man ta select a fit, atWetic woman as a mate.

Oespite the thrust for a new feminist beauty, anxiety still persisted about athletics

masculinizing the female body and character. Medical experts not ooly reiterated their

earlier wamings against strenuous sport, but warned that "the nerve-straining violence of

15Cahn, 15. 16Cahn, 16. ( 170udley A. Sargent, M.D., "How Can l Have a Graceful Figure?" LHJ29 (February, 1912) 15 quoted in Cahn 19.

30 ( unmodified sport was a proven cause ofneurosis". Experts perceived the female psyche as naturally prone to stress and nervous illness:

In the figure ofthe "overzealous girl". so incited by competition that she could not stop, experts foclised on the ''power/ul impulses" roused by competition, impulses that would cause her to ail too easily succumb to the ''pitfall of over-indulgence." Cheered on by the "wild huzzahs," the "adoration" and "applause ofthe multitude, " she was likeiy /0 give in to the "intoxication ofou/stripping her competitors. "18

Physical educators began using supervised moderate exercise for limited purposes,

such as "to adjust the shopgirl ta her work environment" or "ta prepare the female

collegian for her role as a proper bourgeois woman" and, most importantly, "ta strengthen

women for motherhood." By the early twentieth century, decades ofdeclining birthrates

and poor health among middle- and upper-class white women caused serious alarm among

wealthy Americans ofAnglo-Saxon Protestant descent. Strengthening women for

motherhood therefore became a solemn concem for eugenicists. With cries of Il race­ • suicide", eugenicists predicted that immigrant populations and the "prolific poor" would soon overwhelm white, native-born "racial stock". 19 Fears ofpopulation decline among

the "better classes Il caiIed attention to the Iow maternity rates ofeducated women. While

many scientists continued to dwell on the dangers athleticism posed to the female

reproductive system, sorne eugenicists Iooked to sport as a way to increase the fertiIity

and improve the physical vigor ofmiddle and upper-c1ass American women: "A

reinvigorated motherhood would a1low the 'flttest' race to expunge weaker strains and

take its natural place atop the social order." Under the banner ofeugenics, physical

educators negotiated the tension between fit motherhood and masculine athleticism. While

they wamed that lack ofexercise left women unfit for motherhood, they also counseIed

18Cahn,21. • 19Cahn,28. 31 that overexertion would dissipate female reproductive resources and~ as a result, the • race. 20 Physical educators were very careful to cultivate "sportswomen" and not

"athletes." "Sportswoman" connoted a lady casually swinging a golfclub or tennis racquet

at the country club. An "athlete", on the other hand, connoted an aggressive, ambitious

male who was dedicated to becoming an expert in one sport, single-mindedly pursuing

victory.21 A women's desire to compete, in fact, was portrayed as lia selfish quest far

inferior to the goal ofserving others."22 (Mary Jo Festle refers to this as the "serve, don't

compete" philosophy.) While men were encouraged to compete at the highest (Olympic)

level~ having assimilated the credo that athletics inculcate determination, confidence and

independence, the better ta serve as fathers, husbands and citizens, women were being

taught that athIetics would hinder their ability to serve family and nation. Women, far from

finding support for high-level athletic participation~ were only encouraged to take part in

( sporting activities which "could teach women how to aid a husband... enjoy being a

spectator and work successfully with others.,,23 In his 1929 article, Frederick Rand

Rogers alleged that "brute strength, endurance, and neuromuscular skill ... were

'profoundly unnatural' for female athletes. ,,24 Asserting that the Olympics "are essentially

masculine in nature and develop wholly masculine physiques and behavior traits," Rogers

claimed that the masculinizing effects would make women unfit for motherhood and

would sacrifice their "health, physical beauty, and social attractiveness". The "wholly

masculine" female athlete became a freak ofnature, an abject ofhorror rather than esteem.

The discussion ofwomen's Olympic participation concluded with the remarks:

20Cahn,29. 21Festle, 12. 22Festle, 17. ( 23Festle, 21. 24Frederick Rand Rogers, "Olympics for Girls?" 190-194 quoted in Cahn, 114.

32 ( The O/ympics are ail "allimalistic" ordealfor women. [..'/ Man/y womell. .. may constill/te nature's greatest failures, which should perhaps, he corrected by as drastic means as those by which the most hideolls deformities are treated. 25

By mid-century, many women had taken up competitive athletic careers despite

warnings about and anxiety over the dangers to health and race. Many female track

athletes, for example, had attained great success in their sport, thereby inflaming sport's

reputation as a 'masculine' endeavor unsuited to feminine athletes. Olympie governing

bodies ofthe 1950's considered eliminating severa! women's track and field events from

the games for the reason that they were "not truly feminine". In a statement representative

ofthose made by many crities ofwomen's participation in the Olympie games, Norman

Cox, an Olympie official sarcastically proposed that rather than ban women's events, the

IOC should create a special eategory ofcompetition for the unfairly advantaged ( lIhermaphrodites" who regularly defeated "normal" women, those less-skilled "child­ bearing" types with "largish breasts, wide hips and knocked-knees".26 This

'recommendation' highlights the familiar argument that victorious wornen Olympians were

most likely not biologicai fernales. This assertion rested on the deep conviction that

superior athletieism signified masculine capacities inherent in the male body. Based on this

conviction, the roc instituted anatomical sex checks in 1967, followed by mandatory

chromosome testing ofwomen athletes.

By the mid-70's, sport became increasingly politicized in response to feminist

criticism ofcircumscribed female gender raies. As they became familiar with flerce

competition, female athletes grew mentally and physically stronger. Women were

encouraged to exercise for weight loss and muscle tone shortly after the onset ofthe so­

called fitness craze. The argument for regular, vigourous exercise, though, was not ooly

( 25Cahn, 115. 26Cahn, Il 1.

33 aesthetic but Medical, and, consistent with the rest ofthe century, was made by doctors • and medical authorities. The progress ofwomen in sports has finally led to acceptance for the fit, muscled

body ofthe female athlete. However, the muscled body is only tolerated ifit remains

'feminine'- with smaIler, softer muscles than her male counterpart. We still seem to be

more comfortable with the ideas ofequality and sports for women than with the actual

muscular, intensely competitive athlete herself Festle argues that the cultural climate has

changed ta the extent that one does not want to publicly say ignorant things about women

or women's sports, but apologetic behavior continues. "Rumors oflesbianism," for

example, "unconfirmed, unjust and using information that ought ta be irrelevant,

constitute a sort of 1990's version ofMcCarthyism in the athletic subculture."27 Holly

Brubach, style editor ofthe New York Times Magazine, believes that the image ofthe

muscular woman has been slow to gain currency, and this is because ta sorne degree our

( attitudes toward women's physical strength are conflicted: "We applaud the notion of

women at long last coming into their own. And yet we wonder whether their achievement,

by encroaching on what has traditionally been a man's prerogative, might in sorne way

skew the balance between the sexes: women's gain is suspected ofbeing men's loss. ,,28

The zero-sum theory dictates that a gain for one must result in a 10ss for another. The

suppression ofwomen's athletic gains is therefore a political act, bred from insecurity,

which naturally creates a situation where one must be dominant over the other.

The history ofwomen in sport demonstrates how notions ofproper gender

behavior are historically rooted in an ideology which shapes our bodies according to

prevailing historical forros ofmasculinity and femininity. Sport has naturalized norms of

( 27Festle, 165. 28Holly Brubach, The Athletie Esthetie (June 23, 1996, Cyberspace).

34 ( male strength and femaie weakness and has actively reproduced these through

developmental practices. These developmental practices have historically been based in

notions of'natural' gender distinctions according to which the female body is 'naturally' inferior and passive.

'lnhibited Intennonality': Learning to 'Throw Like a Girl'

The 'male genderedness' ofsport activity in AngloSaxon society has not only

contained implications for female praetices within sport, but for the female athlete body

itself Female athletes have not only been limited in their choices and opportunities for

participation in specific sports, they have been limited in physical mobility, appearance and

behavior as weil. The 'embodiment' ofsocial norms and expectations has been accounted

for on two distinct levels. First, it has been understood on an 'intentional' or calculated

level where female athletes strategÏze for compliance with extemal prescriptions for

( 'feminine' behavior. Secondly, it has been understood on a more intemallevel, where

female athletes perform 'feminine behavior' with little or no intentionality but rather as a

result ofa social developmental process.

Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna outline the complex process through which

gender identity is constructed and the importance ofdichotomous categorizing to that

construction. A 'role', as the concept is used in sociology and as described by Kessler and

McKenna, is a set ofprescriptions and proscriptions for behavior- expectations about what

behaviors are appropriate for a person holding a particular position within a particular

social context.29 A gender role is a set ofexpectations about what behaviors are

appropriate for people ofone gender. Because gender roles in our society are treated as

'ascribed' roles, they are based on attributes over which people supposedly have no

control. Within tbis ascription process, certain gender role expectations are seen as being

29Suzanne 1. Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach (NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1978).

3S essence, gender identity is self-attribution ofgender. Gender identity, however, should • aiso not be confused with gender-role identity which refers to how much a person approves ofand participates in feelings and behaviors which are seen as 'appropriate' for

hislher gender. "How you think you should behave and how you experience your behavior

as female or male are related to what gender you feel yourselfto be~ but they ought to be

recognized as separate issues. Il Though role-conflict theory has been largely contested in

sport sociology, tbis last point remains an extremely important one. Failing to separate

these two concepts leads to the conclusion that someone with atypical feelings about how

their maleness or femaleness should be expressed in behavior has a gender identity

problem. This is the logic, for example, by which female athletes are seen ta be

appropriating male behaviors (namely~ athleticism) and are thereby deemed unfeminine.

The Ali-American Girls Softball League which began in 1942, provides an example

ofbehaviors that can be attributed to a concept of'role'~ which~ as we have seen, refers to ( a set ofnerms or expectations existing independently ofand extemally ta the agent. The

team organizers developed a players' handbook to ensure that players embodied the

desired "feminine mode and attitude." The Ieague's spring training sessions featured a

mandatory evening charm schoolled by beauticians and experts on posture, makeup,

fashion., table manners and "graceful social deportment at large." Guidelines on personal

appearance accompanied the beauty tips. Reminding players that "boyish bobs and other

imitations ofmasculine style and habits are taboo," management ordered players to keep

their hair shoulder length or longer, to wear makeup and nail polish~ and never to appear

in public wearing shorts~ slacks, or jeans.

Femininity has been a powerful and fundamental social prescription and a building

block ofidentity in the dominant culture. Whether they thought sports were geod or bad

for women., as Mary Jo Festle~ points out,28 women never questioned that femininity was ( 28Festle, 45.

36 ( necessary. The task for female athletes, then, according to Festle, was to convince people

that women could somehow participate in sports and still be feminine. T0 do this, they

resorted to what sport sociologist Jan Felshin caUs "apologetic bahavior." This was

compensatory behavior intended to reinforce the socially accepted aspects ofsport while

minimizing the perceived violations ofthe norms. Festle points to specifie behaviors as

being apologetic:29 paying attention to onels appearance, not appearing too muscular,

downplaying onels athletic career, displaying or at least expressing desire for a

heterosexual relationship and for motherhood, and seeking the approval ofmen. The

paradox that existed was that although the apologetic behavior made the female athlete

appear more feminine, the behavior further entrenched the notion that sports were not a

feminine activity.30 Ultimately, the apologetic strategy kept the burden on the female

athlete to prove her femininity in order to play. The typical athlete was trapped by

dichotomous narrow prescriptions offemininity: "By being an athlete, she was an ( exception in one area offemininity, and ifshe didn't want to be kicked out ofthe category

altogether, she had ta be extra careful ta confonn to its other aspects. ,,31 Although

l Icomplicit' in her own behavior, the alternative was the loss ofher Inormal status • The

accomodation, however, further reinforced stereotypes and restrictive prescriptions for

gender. As Mary Jo Festle explains:

The compensationsfurther distancedfema/es from "norma!". that is. male. athletes. Thus, not only didfemale athletes remain "other" as women, but they remained "other" as athletes. That "otherlless" lelltfurther credibility to the notion that women were different, inferior athletes. and that sport was not a "natllral" arenafor wome11.

As apologetic behavior suggests, a role conflict has always existed for the female

athlete; there has been a contradiction between onels role as an athlete and as a female.

29Festle, 45. ( 30Festle, 51. 31Festle, 51.

37 1 Not ail female athletes behaved apologetically. Sorne did everything within their power to minimize the damaging effects ofparticipating in a male damain. Most female atWetes

have been somewhere in between. None~ however, have escaped the

athlete=abnormal=unfeminine=lesbian equation32 because the dichotomous nature of

gender has always been the basis for categorization and a role conflict is inevitable.

'Habitus' and Cultural Capital

It has been demonstrated that the behaviours offemale athletes are aRen

'calculated' for social approvaL These behaviours have changed over time in accordance

with prevailing notions of'femininity'. On a less caIculated level~ a more internalized form

ofgendered behaviour is leamed in childhood and reinforced as one developes into

adulthood. Pierre Bourdieu describes this behavior as habitus:

The habitus is sometimes described as a 'feel for the game', a 'practical sense' that inclines agents 10 act and react in specifie situatiolls in a ( manner that is not a/ways calculated and that is Ilot simp/y a question of conscious obedience to the nlles. Rather il is a set of dispositions which genera/es practices and perceptions. The habitus is the resu/t of a long process of inculcation, beginnillg in early childhood, which becomes a 'second sense' or a secondnature. 33

According to Bourdieu's definition~ the dispositions represented by the habitus are

'durable' in that they last throughout an agent's lifetime; they are 'transposable' in that they

may generate practices in multiple and diverse fields ofactivity, and they are 'structured

structures' in that they inevitably incorporate the objective social conditions oftheir

inculcation. The 'habitus', unlike the 'role', is not easily changed as prevailing notions of

'femininity' become less restrictive. In fact~ rather than evolving with historicaI

transformations in expectations offeminine behavior, the habitus embodies historical

notions offemininity. Further~ because it is self-imposed~ it is seemingly more 'complicit'

( 32Festle~ 155. 33Bourdieu, 5.

38 ( on the part ofgirls and women. Ultimately, however, it is imposed through cultural norms

and external expectations, relying less on 'complicity' than normalization and

internalization. In this sense, Bourdieu's notion of habitus has been described as:

...our embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history. [It isJ the active presence of the whole past ofwhich it is the product... The habitus is a spontenaeity without consequence or will... Habitus is also the means through which agents partake of the history objectified in institutions, il is what makes il possible to inhahit institutions, to appropriate them practically, and so to keep them in activity.3..J

The childhoods ofgirls and boys are structured through discourses offemininity

and masculinity and by gendered practices ofplay that teach us ta inhabit and experience

our bodies in profoundly different ways. David Whitson identifies the practices and

ideologies that have justified and, for many, naturalized such differences:

The encouragement and the institutional support that boys generally enjoy ( ill allY efforts they make to develop physical strength and sports ski/ls are contrasted with the historical cOllstnlction offeminillity as preUilless and vulnerability and the amhigllDus messages that are el1Colintered evell today by strong, active females. 35

Whitson demonstrates the ways in which childhood sports teach boys to use their

bodies in skilled forceful ways while providing them with a detailed and accurate

knowledge oftheir physical capacities and limits. "Boys learn to develop force through

leverage, coordination and follow-through and to transmit this power through their limbs

or through extensions, like ball bats and golfclubs. Il In contrast, "the movement patterns

ofmost girls are characterized by their partiality, by their failure to take the sort of

34Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (London: Routiedge, 1996) xi. 35Iris Young, "Throwing Like a Girl: A phenomenology offeminine body comportment, ( motility and spatiality", Human SIl/dies (3) 137-156 quoted in David, "The Embodiment ofGender, Discipline, Domination and Empowerment", Birrell and Cole, 353.

39 ( Young demonstrates the ways in which childhood sports teach boys to use their

bodies in skilled forceful ways while providing them with a detailed and accurate

knowledge oftheir physical capacities and limits. "Boys learn to develop force through

leverage, coordination and follow-through and ta transmit this power through their limbs

or through extensions, like ball bats and golfclubs." In contrast, "the movement patterns

ofmost girls are characterized by their partiality, by their failure to take the sort of

advantage ofthe torque that is generated when the entire body is mobilized into a throw, a

swing, or a taclde. Il Young contrasts the athletic styles ofgirls and boys:

Not only is there a typical style ofthrowing like a girl, but there is a more or less typical style ofnlnning like a girl, climbing like a girl, -nvinging like a girl, hitting like a girl. They have in common, jirst, that the whole body is not put intofluid and directed motion, but rather, in -nvinging and hitting, for example, the motion is concentrated in one body part; and second that the woman's motion tends not to reach, ertend, lean, stretch, andfollow through in the direction ofher intention. 40 ( Young further suggests that the partial and half-hearted movement patterns derive

ultimately from discourses and practices that have encouraged the woman to experience

her body as an object-for-others, whereas men have learned to experience themselves in

active, forceful ways: "to act, instead ofbeing looked at and acted upon." Young draws

on Merleau-Ponty's proposition that human subjectivity is rooted in the lived body:

For Mer/eau-Ponty, 'l', '[ call', and '1 cannat' are ail embodied experiences, and one's sense ofoneself as ail active person is deve/oped precisely through erperiences ofmastering olle's body and realizing olle's intentions in physical movements in and through space. 41

motility and spatiality", Humall SIl/dies (3) 137-156 quoted in David Whitson, "The Embodiment ofGender, Discipline, Domination and Empowerment", Birrell and Cole, 353. 40Young, 353. ( 41Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology ofPerception (NY: Humanities Press, 1962) quoted in Whitson, 355.

40 1 Young also draws from de Beauvoir to argue that women historically have been taught to embody "inhibited intentionality," in which feminine body comportment,

feminine movement patterns, and tentative uses ofspace all say '1 cannot' in the very act of

trying:

ln such movement habits. women embody the contradictory nature oftheir experience in patriarchal societies, a contradiction between their phenomenal experience of themselves as active subjects and their social constnlclion as objects for others. 'Femininity' here is not an essence that ail women have naturally or even that some have more than others. lt is, rather, a product of discourses, practices, and social relations that constnlct the situation of women in patriarchal societies in ways that typically dis-ahle women in relation to men. 42

Pierre Bourdieu's discussion of'cultural capital' explains the ways in which male

and female bodies are assigned cultural values which are internalized and understood to be

natural and normal. Bourdieu explains the paradoxical process whereby the realization of ( culture becomes 'naturaI'. [Cultural capital is only achieved] by negating itselfas slIch, that is, as artificial and artificially acquired, so as to become second nature, { ..] so completely freed from the constraints of culture and so liUle marked by the long. patient training of which it is the product that any reminder of the conditions and the social conditioning which have rendered il possible seem to he at once obvious andscandalous. 43

Cultural competence participates in the perpetuation ofsocial differences to the extent that

it is taken to be a natural talent available to ail on an equal basis. It is thus not recognized

as the result ofa specifie process ofcultural transmission and training which is, in fact, not

available to aIl. Cultural capital thus participates in the process ofdomination by

legitimizing certain practices as 'naturally' superior to others and by making these practices

42Young, 355. ( 43Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field ofCultural Production (NY: Columbia University Press, 1993) 93.

41 seem superior even to those who do not participate, "who are thus led, through a negative • process of inculcatio~ to see their own practices as inferior and to exclude themselves from legitimate practices. ,,4~ Because athletic ability is understood to be both 'masculine'

and a form of 'cultural capital', women who either do or do not participate in sports are

understood to have less cultural competence.

According to L. McCall, gender can be considered an inherent active property in

the conceptualization ofcultural capital because it embraces the vision that cultural

capital exists in different fOrIns, among which is the embodied state. ~5 Bourdieu explains

this concept:

Most of the properties of cultural capital can he deduced from the fact thal, in ils fundamental state, il is linked to the body and presupposes embodiment. The accumulation ofcultural capital in the embodied state, i.e. in the form of what is called culture, cultivation, 'Bildllng', presupposes a process ofembodiment, incorporation, which insofar as it imp/ies a labor of inculcation and assimilation, cosls lime, lime which ( must be investedpersonally by the inveslor. 46

Gendered dispositions appear to be thoroughly akin to the embodied state ofcultural

capital. Gendered dispositions pertain precisely to those body and mind dispositions which

are acquired over time through the process ofsocialization. According to McCall,

gendered dispositions are multiple and not, ofcourse, attached only to sexed biological

bodies, yet they become attached to the body in the fOrIn ofembodied gendered

dispositions shaping individuals' social trajectories.

Suzanne Laberge explains that these gendered dispositions also work as sources of

power; the more or less feminized or masculinized the bodily hexis an individual may have

44Bourdieu, 93. 45L. McCall, "Does Gender Fit? Boudieu, Feminism, and Conceptions ofSocial Order", quoted in Suzanne Laberge, "Toward an Integration ofGender into Bourdieu's Concept of ( Cultural Capital", Sociology ofSport Journal (1995, 12) 137. 46Pierre Bourdieu , IIThe Forms ofCapitalIl (1986) quoted in Laberge, 138.

42 ( worked to acquire may operate as a form ofcapital in the position the individual occupies in the social space. ~7 An example ofthis is the relative popularity ofAmerican tennis

player Chris Evert compared to Czechoslovakian-born Martina Navratilova. Evert (often

referred to as "Chrissy") wore very traditionally feminine dresses, hair ribbons, nail polish

and makeup. She was quoted as saying, "rd rather be known in the end as a woman than a

tennis player."48 Her game, though successful, was unaggressive and she went out ofher

way to downplay the gamets importance for her, once declaring "no point is worth falling

down over,,,49 and expressing her ultimate desire to have a family. Navratilova, on the

other hand, played an aggressive game, was open about her lesbian sexuality, was foreign,

wore no makeup and even wore shorts during toumements (at the time, she was the only

woman to do 50). Evert was extremely popular with the fans and enjoyed Many more

endorsements than her rival Navratilova. Navratilova, on the other hand, had to endure

intrusive sensational media coverage and rumors that speculated on her status as a 'real

( female'. Obviously, her chances for commercial ventures decreased.

Later in her career, Navratilova became more aware ofher image and she

consciously worked to improve it. She visited a fashion consultant, she changed the style

and color ofher hair, began wearing makeup and expressed a desire to have children.

Evert, however, revised her plan to retire for marriage, she a1tered her playing style,

becoming more aggressive, and stopped wearing makeup. When fans saw beneath the girl­

next-door exterior, they saw, and did not like, this intensely competitive winner: lia hard

and unappealing woman. ,,50 Women thus compensate for their relative lack ofcultural

capital by accumulating their own cultural capital in the fonn of'femininity'. Because

'femininity' and the 'masculinizing' effects ofsport work ta counteract each other, not only

47Laberge, 138. 48Festle,152. ( 49Festle, 152. 50Festle, 152.

43 ( can women not accumulate cultural capital through sport, but they can actually lose cultural capital iffemininity is sacrificed.

This example shows how embodied femininity and masculinity affect a person's

cultural capital. These cases further illustrate the way that this cultural capital can affect

economic capital as weil. The more 'feminine' Evert and Navratilova appeared, the more

they won the fans' favor and thus commercial endorsements. The more 'masculine' they

appeared, the less fans appreciated them, and the fewer endorsements they received.

When cultural values such as masculine strength and female weakness are

internalized, as Young describes, they continue to constitute both cultural norms and self-

expectations:

To whatever extent a jemafe is induced illto pursuing a jeminine persona, the more Iikely il is tha! she will Jeef ambivalent about her own strength and wilf aetually become more inhibited and tentative in her movement patterns... To the degree that we choose ourseIves as body-objects, we find ( il difficull 10 become enthusiastic body subjects and jrequelltfy do not desire to challenge our bodies in sport. 5 1

Wheo, however, as we have seen, such 'cultural values' are rejected, self­

expectations conflict with cultural norms and there are social repercussions for the female

athlete. The repercussions have not always been 'subtle', however. Historically, in fact,

when women overstepped the boundary between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' feminine

behavior, the attempts ta exclude them from sport were sometimes quite harsh. In 1966,

for example, Bobbi Gibb applied for entry into the Boston Marathon, which, at that point,

did oot aIlow women. Her application was refused for the reason that "women are not

physiologically able ta run. ,,52 AIthough she completed the race, she was not recognized

as an official participant. Ayear later, Katherine Switzer completed the race lunofficially',

but not without being harassed by a race organizer who chased her during the race,

( 51Young, 359. 52Runner's World: "Boston, The IOOth" (April 1996).

44 ( grabbing for her race number and screaming "get the hell out ofmy race". These examples point not ooly to the difficulty ofovercoming 'naturalized' behaviors, but they demonstrate

the historical emphasis on the constitutionally weak feminine body as a dominant strategy

for maintaining 'natural' gender distinctions. The two levels of'embodiment' point not ooly to the entrenchment ofcultural norms but to their flexibility as weIl. While the 'habitus' is

not easily negotiated, a more 'calculated' behavior can potentially challenge expectations of

'feminine' behavior.

The Social Interpretation ofFemale Sport Practices

The cultured body, though subject to discipline and normalization, is an 'activel

body with the potential to negotiate cultural norms. Michel Foucault recognizes the

(limited) resistant potential ofthe female body. Foucault views the discipline and

normalization ofthe female body as a particularly powerful strategy for social control ( because the myth ofmale supremacy is played out on the body rather than simply on an ideological terrain. Foucault, like Bourdieu, reminds us ofthe primacy ofpractice over

belief through the organization and regulation ofthe time, space, and movements ofour

daily lives. "Our bodies are trained, shaped and impressed with the stamp ofprevailing

historical forms ofselfhood, desire, masculinity, femininity." 53 Through the pursuit ofan

ever-changing, elusive ideal offemininity, female bodies become docile hodies- regulated

by the norms ofcultural life. 54

Foucault recognizes, in bis theory ofthe docile body, that it is the noncorporal

disciplinary constraints that are the most powerful knowledge formations and systems of

power that regulate corporal practices. According to Foucault, the body is subjected to

physical constraints in order to reach norms and obey the exigencies ofan omnipresent

53Michel Foucault, History ofSexuality (NY: Vintage Books, 1990) quoted in Bordo, ( 166. 54Foucault, 166.

45 and penetrating power- a power~ as Foucault imagines, as diffuse as it is structured. "The • platform ofour organized societies~ effective and complex with their hierarchies~ rests on this efficient mechanics: discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies~ 'docile bodies'."55

However, this version ofthe controlled body, whereby the body is passively

shaped by culture~ often screens another version ofthe controlled body as suggested by

Foucault and as recognized by Georges VigareIlo: a more "open" version attributing force

and activity to the body. Constraint cannot be envisaged~ according to Vigarello~ without a

complicity with the 'active'~ and the body must be seen as skilled~ efficient~ profitable: a

body that builds~ realizes. 56 'Complicity'~ therefore, when understood as 'active'~ Can also

be seen as potentially challenging to cultural expectations and therefore to interpretive

classifications such as 'masculine' and 'feminine'. Culture reflects the body just as the body

reflects culture, and chaIlenging norms on the corporallevel can uitimately challenge them

( on a noncorporal one. Therefore~ the discipline and normalization ofthe female body- a

'docile body'- is a durable andflexible strategy ofsocial control.

Vision/Division ofthe World

The incursion ofwomen into sport, an inherent challenge to cultural norms, can

therefore be interpreted as a transgression ofinterpreting classifications ofgender. The

possibility ofchallenging notions offemininity and masculinity, however, doesn't

necessarily challenge the notion ofthe structuring dichotomy itself Beate Krais assesses

the problem ofinterpretive classifications by theorizing gender in terros ofthe social

theory ofPierre Bourdieu: as a social construction and as a social relation emphasizing the

sYmbolic order ofthe world. She points to Bourdieu's starting point for social analysis:

55Foucault, 166. ( 56Georges Vigarello, "The Life ofthe Body in Discipline andPunish" Sociology ofSport JOl/nlal 12 (1995) 158-163.

46 ( that objects ofknowledge are construeted~ and that the principle ofthis construction is practical activity oriented towards practical functions. "Practice always implies a cognitive

operation~ a practical operation ofconstruction which sets to work, by reference to

practical functions~ systems ofclassification (taxonomies) which organize perception and

structure practices. ,,57 Therefore, as Krais explains, vision ofthe world is also 'di-vision' of

the world.

Suzanne Laberge explains that the binary symbolic fonns ofclassification structure

social agents' practical knowledge ofthe social world and therefore belong to the "social

mythology".58 The social mythology is used as grounds for the hegemonic relationships of

difference that are inscribed in the social structures, and stereotypes relating to gender

constitute cultural expressions ofour social mythology: "These cultural expressions would

operate as classificatory schemes or cognitive structures in the social agents' perception

( and construction ofthe social world."59 The habitus, for example, as a set ofacquired

dispositions and schemes ofperception inculcated by the social environment~ becomes a

'socialized subjectivity' conveying a social logic to practice and action.

According to Krais, the male-female taxonomy, as the most powerful taxonomy, is

used to perceive/structure the division oflabour which becomes the basis ofthe

vision/division ofthe world. In the "collective unconscious", the malelfemale taxonomy

not only orders the social world~ but the nalura! world as weil.

The division oflabour between man and woman objeclifies itselfin a very fundamenta! sense, as il hecomes embodied: the differelltiatioll of male

S7Beate Krais, "Gender and Symbolic Violence: Female Oppression in the Light ofPierre Bourdieu's Theory ofSocial Practice", Craig Calhoun, Edward Lipuma and Moishe Postone, Bourdieu: Critiea! Perspectives (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1993) 158. 58Laberge, 133. c 59Laberge, 134.

47 andfemale shapes the body, the 'heris', and the habits ofthe body; guides perception of one's OWll body and of others' bodies; and determines the agent's relation to his or her body and ils senslial perceptions and • expressions, and therefore determines identity in a very fundamental, "bodily" sense. The body cannot be thought of if not as "male" or "female". With this bodily point ofreferellce and with its embodiment, the division oflabor between the gellders is not only as deeply rooted in the social agent as is possible; it also seems to refer to nothing but

"nature ft. 60

The division oflabor between the genders is a social construction and a social

structure that lends itselfail the more to naturalization since it is based on the division of

sexuallabor- in reproduction- and thus has a biological foundation. Krais locates the

ideology ofmale supremacy in the rationales surrounding the process ofhuman

reproduction, ofwhich sexuality is but a part. Women are excluded trom social activities

through the denial ofwomen's reproductive labor in reproductive consciousness. This is

achieved through symbolic representation ofbiological aspects ofreproduction in which ( women's reproductive Jabor is not seen as 'Iabor', and in which the reproductive process is localized in the symbolic order ofthe world, operating within dichotomies of

public/private, reason/nature, and society/nature.61

In the course ofsocialization, every agent inevitably acquires a gendered habitus,

"an identity which has incorporated the existing division oflabor between the genders, Il

and which is restricted to one oftwo gender identities.

The space ofthe possible- actions, feelings, evaluations, expressive acts, verbal and hodily behavior- is restricted for evelY illdividual. ''Male'' aspects/dispositions in the girl are suppressed, and ''female'' dimensions in the boy are suppressed- but they are a/ways related.. What is female cannot he male and vice versa... The process ofacquiring gender identity is a constant check ofactions, signais and so forth along a binary code,

( 6°Krais, 160. 6 1Krais, 163.

48 huilding up a mode ofexistence hy cOl1stantly suppressing the "other" of 1 the Iwo possibilities.62

Transgressions and ldeological Seams

The concepts associated with gender (such as 'role' and 'identity'), although distinct

classification procedures, are firmly rooted in the dichotomous treatment ofgender.

Although individual athletes historically have developed personal strategies to resolve the

tension between their love ofsport and the cultural condemnation ofmasculinized athletic

practices, they have not been able to challenge the dichotomous nature ofgender

classifications themselves.

Anne Balsamo argues that despite appearing as a fonn ofresistance, transgressions

rearticulate the power relations ofa dominant social order. In terms ofFoucault's account

ofthe production ofthe docile body, therefore, the 'resistant' body can also be seen as no ( less a product ofcultural discipline than the 'dominated' body- the body of'gender normalization.' Therefore, it cao be argued, as long as the categories ofmasculine and

feminine are used to make meaning ofthe world, the notions ofboundaries and of

transgressions will only reify the status ofthe structuring dichotomies. Transgressions can

challenge notions of 'nature', ofthe body and ofgender identity, but can do little to

disturb dominant cultural processes whereby the subordinate female body is the na/lirai

body and the transgressive female body- the femaie athlete- is defined as the unnatural

one.

Susan Bardo argues, however, that those who would daim that revaluing 'female'

resources only inverts the c1assic dualisms rather than challenging dualistic thinking itsel(

in fact, depends upon too abstract, disembodied, and ahistorical a conception ofhow

cultural change occurs. "The ongoing production, reproduction, and transformation of

( 62Krais, 170.

49 ( culture is not a conversation between talking heads, in which metaphysicaI positions are accepted or rejected wholesale." Rather, "the metaphysics ofa culture shifts piecemeaI and

through real, historical changes in relations ofpower, modes ofsubjectivity, the

organization oflife. ,,63 Susan Bordo therefore articulates a concept ofthe feminine body

as a "site ofstruggle where we must work to keep our daily practices in the service of

resistance to gender domination, not in the service of'docility' and gender normalization."

Dua/ism thus cannat be deconstnlcted in culture the way il can be on paper. To be concretely- that is cu/tura//y- accomp/ished reqzlires that we bring the "margins" 10 the "center", that we /egitimate and 'nlrture, in Ihose institutionsfrom which they have been exc/udecJ. marginalized ways ofknowing, speaking, being. Because re/ocations of Ihis sort are a/ways concrete, historica/ events, enacted by real, historica/ people, they cannol challenge every insidious duality in one fe// swoop, but neither can they reproduce exactly the same conditions as before, trin reverse". Rather, when we bring marginalized aspects of our identities (racial, gendered, ethnie, sexual) into the central arenas of culture they are themse/ves transformed, and tral1sjorming. 64 ( Bordo identifies what Janice Radway would cali an "ideologicaI seam"65- an interstice in

the social fahric where, in the case ofnormalizing women's inferiority, female discourse

can rename aspects ofthe patriarchal social order. However, feminist researchers in sport

should be constantly aware that sport, as Cheryl Cole points out, remains a particularly

powerfuI ideological mechanism because "it is centered on the body, a site ofsemiotic

condensation whose manifest meaning is intimately bound to the biological. [...] The

biologistic knowledges and their appeal to the natural work to dissolve the traces of

cultural and productive [abor on and the training ofthe body and its movements." Sport is

most usefully understood therefore, according to Bourdieu's theory ofsocial practice- as a

socio-historical, culturally produced practice that unites social, cultural and mental

63Bordo, 41. 64Bordo. 41. ( 65Janice Radway, "Identifying Ideological Seams: Mass Culture, AnalyticaI Method and Political Practice", Journal ofCommunication (1986, vol.9) 93-123.

50 struetures- and as a strategie technology in the Foucauldian sense- a durable but flexible • ensemble ofknowledges and practices that disciplines, conditions, reshapes, and inscribes the body through the terms and needs ofa patriarchal capitalism.

The next two chapters explore the notion of'boundaries' and of'transgressions',

and the possibility ofbringing the 'margins to the 'center'. In the next chapter, the pursuit

offemale bodybuilding will be considered as a site where women can resist gender

domination by overstepping the 'boundaries'. Bodybuilding produces complex social

practices ofbody discipline and gender performance resulting in ambiguity and the

potential for transgression because it rejects traditional categorizations ofgender. The

anxiety provoked by the 'muscular' woman, however, aIso results in strategies ta limit the

resistence.

(

(

51 References ( Balsamo, Anne~ Technologies ofthe Gendered Body' Reading Cyborg Women Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.

Birrell~ Susan. Women, Sport and Culture, Illinois: Human Kinetics, 1994.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field afCultural ProductiQn, NY: Columbia U. Press, 1993.

Bourdieu, Pierre. lIThe Forms ofCapital", 1986 quoted in Laberge.

Brubach, Holly. The Athletic Esthetic, June 23, 1996. Cyberspace.

Cahn, Susan K. Coming Qn StrQng' Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Womenls Sp.Qrt, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995

FestIe, Mary Jo. Playing Nice' polifics and Apologies in Women's Sports. NY: Columbia University Press~ 1995.

Foucault, Michel. HistQry ofSexualit.y. NY: Vintage Books, 1990.

Gatens, Moira. Imaginary Bodies' Ethics, power and Corporeality, London: Routiedge, ( 1996. Kidd, Bruce. The Struggle for Canadian Sport. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1996.

Krais, Beate. Gender andSymholic Violence: Female Oppression in the Light ofPierre Bourdieu's Theory ofSocial Practice in Calhoun, Craig, Lipuma, Edward and Postone, Moishe, eds.. Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1993.

Kessler, Suzanne and McKenna, Wendy. Gendec An Ethnometbodological Approach. New York: lohn Wiley & Sons~ Ine., 1978.

Laberge, Suzanne. "Toward an Integration ofGender into Bourdieu's Concept ofCultural Capital" in SQciolQgy ofSpQrt Journal. IL., 1995 (12) 132-146.

Lenskyj, Helen. Out ofBounds' Women, Sport and Sexuality, Toronto: The Women's Press. 1986.

MeCall, L. "Does Gender Fit? Bourdieu, Feminism and Conceptions ofSocial Order", 1992 quoted in Laberge.

Merleau-Ponty. phenomenQlogy and Perception. NY: Humanities Press, 1962.

52 1 Radway, Janice. "Identifying Ideological Seams: Mass Culture, AnalyticaI Method and Political Practice" t Journal ofCommunication, 1986, vol. 9 pp. 93-123.

Runner's World' "Boston, The IOOth", April 1996

Theberge, Nancy. "Toward a Feminist Alternative to Sport as a Male Preserve" in Birrell and Cole.

Whitson, David. "The Embodiment ofGender: Discipline, Domination and Empowerment" in Birrell and Cole.

Young, Iris. "Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology ofFeminine Body Comportment, Motility and SpatiaIity". Human Studies (3) 137-156.

(

(

53 CHAPTERTWO • The Female Bodybuilder: Parody & the Performance of Drag

Comic-book masculinity depicts men one-dimellsionally as stoic, brave 10 a fault, a/ways in control, aggressive, competitive, and ahove ail, weil built. No form ofsport or popular cultllre seeks to replicate the trappings ofthis notion ofmasculinity more than bodybuilding. 1

Images ofmale bodybuilders depict the atavistic notion ofmasculinity- a notion

which appears, although excessive and exaggerated, natural to the male body. Muscularity

not only implies 'maie' qualities such as bravery, stoicism., control, aggressiveness,

competitiveness, and strength, but is understood to be a male prerogative. 'Comic-book' femininity, on the other hand, might depict an "odalisque", as described by Holly Brubach,

in a Victoria Secrets catalogue: her attitude langorous, passive and complacent, her

proportions improbable. 2 Images of female bodybuilders depict muscular women whose ( bodies not only look similar to those ofmen, but similar to those ofmale bodybuilders,

thus ilIustrating a contradictory influence on the female body.

Anne Hollander believes that muscles are a way for women to colonize the space

around them as men do- "to add physical substance... which makes everyone take notice

and listen ta what you have to say and pay attention to your existence. ,,3 Hollander notes

that in other centuries, substance was something women achieved through the c10thes they

wore. Queen Elizabeth l, for example, wore pounds ofpadding to expand her torso at the

sides, giving her the dominance her role demanded. Queen Elizabeth's techniques were

intended ta subvert the prevailing notions ofwomen and power. In the 16th century, male

l Alan M. Klein, "Little Big Man: Hustling, Gender Narcissism, and Bodybuilding Subculture", Michael A. Messner, Sport, Men and the Gender Order: Feminist Critical Perspectives. (IL: Human Kinetics Press, 1990) 128. ( 2Brubach, Holly. The Athletic Esthetic (June 23, 1996. Cyberspace). 3Anne Hollander, "Seeing Through Clothes", quoted in Brubach. bodies were 'substantial' bodies and female bodies- the kind much admired in the love • poetry ofthe time, was the "narrow nyrnph's body", weak and powerless, taking up minimal space.

Female bodybuilders build bodies of 'substance' in a culture in which waif-like

frames remain the feminine ideal. They therefore have the potential to aIter notions of

women and power, and increasingly are being described as subversive. Doug Aoki, for

example, comments that female bodybuilders are very important figures in a socio-politicaI

sense- even though few would articulate themselves as such- as "they provide images and

exemplars ofa powerful new image ofpossible womanhood, that can both unhinge and

transform a culture's vision and understanding ofwhat sex and gender and selthood are aIl

about. ,,4 Susan Cahn describes the combination oftraditionaIIy feminine rituai and dress

with masculine muscles and posturing as a "daring form ofgender provocation...

bodybuilders engage in a playful performance that biends polarities- tiny bikinis and

( enormous muscles- and transgress boundaries through a celebration ofwomen inhabiting a

'male' sport and posture. ,,5 Perhaps Marcia lan best explains this new "political"

understanding ofthe bodybuilder's body:

111 the eyes ofmost beholders, the more muscle a woman has, the more "masculine" she is. The same, ofcourse, is tnle for men: the more muscle a man has, the more masculine he is too. Bodybuilding i/1 a sense is a sport dedicated ta wipillg out "femininity", insofar as femininity has for centuries cO/1noted sofmess, passivity, 1l01l-aggressivity, and physical weaklless. Eradicating feminillity may be the pllrpose of both male and female bodybuilders. Even so, for men to wage war on jeminillity, whether their OWll or somebody else 's, is nothing new. For women, however, it is. Insofar as women have for centuries obliged cultural expectations by em­ bodying femininity as immanent, bodybuilding affords women the

4Doug Aoki, Images ofthe Muscular Woman (Dctober 21,1995, "Femuscle", Cyberspace.) ( 5Susan K. Cahn, Coming on Strang: Gender andSexuality in Twentieth-Centllry Women's Sport (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) 275.

55 opportunity to embody instead a refusai of this embodiment, to cease • somewhat /0 represent man's complementary (and complimentary) other. 6 T0 a great extent, therefore, feminist interest in images offemaIe bodybuilders is linked to

the transgressive potential ofgender in ambiguous bodies. Such interest, as has been

demonstrated, is concerned with the cultural significance ofthe muscularity developed

through bodybuilding and the conflict posed between masculinity and femininity. This

interest suggests, according to Cheryl Cole, that bodybuilding at least potentially

challenges the naturaIized order by calling into question the natura! body and undermining

the truth ofthe passive-female body.7 In doing so, one disturbs assumptions about what

the culture understands ta be masculine and feminine in the human body. This is

additionally disturbing, as Anne Holmlund argues, because we forget that the ways we

look at and speak about the body are historically variable, and we continue to see and

speak about the body as the last bastion ofnature.8 ( It would be apparent, understanding the body in this way, that bodybuilders' bodies

are /10/ natural- they are Ilclearly produced by means ofintensive labor over a long period

oftime, [and are] created with painstaking effort and obsession through training, dieting

and drugs." 9 Whereas the male bodybuilder's practices are associated with muscularity,

there is for them no conflict between sex and gender. The female bodybuilder, in contrast,

poses a problem: her muscular body is interpreted by our culture as unnaturaI. Richard

Dyer, on the subject ofmale pin-ups, explains that "muscularity is a key-terrn in appraising

6Marcia Ian, "From Abject to Object: Woments Bodybuilding" in Postmodern Culture (v. 1 no.3, May, 1991. Cyberspace). 7Cheryl Cole, "Resisting the Canon: Femininst Cultural Studies, Sport and Technologies ofthe Body", Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, eds. Women, Sport andCulture. (IL: Human Kinetics, 1994) 17. ( SCahn,277. 9Cahn, 300.

56 men's bodies... muscularity is the sign ofpower- naturaI, achieved, phallic." 10 Images of • muscular women (and by muscular women, it is meant those who have achieved equai or greater musculature than is deemed 'naturaI' on men), on the other hand, are disconcerting,

even threatening. Il As Christine Anne Holmlund argues, "they disturb the equation ofmen

with strength and women with weakness that underpins gender roles and power relations,

and that has by now come to seem familiar and cornforting to both women and men."12

Freud, Fetishism and Difference

Beneath the threat ofthe masculinized femaie body there lurks, as psychoanalytic

theorists point out, "the fetishist's fearful wish that there may finaIly be no difference at aH

between the sexes." 13 In Freud's analysis offetishism, 1.... men see women not just as

different, but also as castrated, as 'not men'. The male subject simultaneously recognizes

and denies difference: the woman is ditrerent- unheimfich, yet she is aIso the same. At one ( and the same time he desires and dreads the woman's visible difference: it evokes his fears ofloss and/or inadequacy ofthe penis, while simultaneously establishing male superiority

based on possession ofthe penis. Female bodybuilding entails the near-naked female body,

and for the male spectator therefore, it is fraught with both danger and delight. 15 In his

essay, Fetishism, Freud maintains that men negotiate castration anxiety in three different

ways: sorne become homosexual, others ward it offby creating a fetish, and the great

majority overcome it and choose women as their love objects. Male ambivalence toward

lORichard Dyer , "Don't Look Now," Screen (23, no.3-4, September-October 1982) quoted in Christine Anne Holmlund, "Visible Difference and Flex Appeal", Birrell and Cole,301. IlDyer quoted in Holmlund, 301. 12Christine Anne Holmlund, "Visible Difference and Flex AppeaI" Birrell and Cole. 302. Blan, "From Abject to Dbject". 14Sigmund Freud, "Fetishism" (1927), Angela Richards, ed., On SexlIafity ( (Hannonsworth: Penguin 1983). 15Holmlund,303.

57 women's bodies is, however, omnipresent. "A fear ofvisible difference and a fear ofthe • abolition ofdifference paradoxically coexist, so tightly are power and body interconnected." 16

The images ofthe more muscular women inflarne male anxiety because they

threaten the abolition ofdifference. Laurie Schulze argues: "the danger to male

heterosexuality lurks in the implication that any male sexual interest in the muscular female

is not heterosexual at all, but homosexual: not only is she unnatura/ but she possesses the

power to invert normal male sexuality." 17 Homophobic patriarchal society insists that men

who find her attractive must be gay, and that women who find her attractive must be

lesbians. "The muscles, dress, heavy facial features and 'unfeminine' body language evoke

the stereotype ofwhat a lesbian looks like: the butch, the lesbian who is immediately

recognizable as such, visibly different." 18 Women who find her attractive, would, as a

result, be defined aslems, lesbians who are 'known by their choices' while blltches are

( 'known by their appearances.' In each case, the stereotypes ofwhat kinds ofbodies gay

men and lesbian women find attractive, as Schultz maintains, are constructed around the

phallus: "gay men are assumed ta be wimps who worship 'he-men', while lesbians are

assumed to be women who are 'he-men' or women who worship 'he/she-men'." 19

For Freud, women, far more than men, are concemed about the loss oflove

attendant on the abolition ofsexual difference. In Freudian terms, loss oflove, not

castration, constitutes the most significant female anxiety. The association ofmuscularity,

masculinity and lesbianism invokes these fears ofa loss oflove for spectators ofboth

sexes, therefore, though in different ways. Holmlund gives two reasons why this is 50. If

ll 16Freud, "Fetishism , 216.

l'Laurie Jane Schultz, "Getting Physical: Text/Context/Reading and the Made-for-TV­

Movie, Il Cinema Journal (25, no.2, Winter 1986) quoted in Holmlund, 303. ( 18Schultz, 303. 19Schultz, 303.

58 heterosexual men see the muscular female as a lesbian, she is threatening: "Because • lesbians incarnate sexuaI indifference to men." 20 IfheterosexuaI women see her as a lesbian, they must reject her because "to like her would mean adrnitting that they

themselves rnight be lesbian, which could in tum entail the abnegation oftraditionally

feminine powers and privileges."21

As a consequence, images offemale bodybuilders, as seen in bodybuilding

magazines, for example, often attempt to defuse rather than provoke male and female

anxieties about muscular women "by fetishizing women's bodies and by making them the

objects ofheterosexual desire."22 Distinctly feminine cues such as dress, hair and makeup

attempt to counteract the threat posed by muscular women. "Though muscular, breasts

and buttocks still appear as tits and ass."23 Female bodybuilders themselves are forced to

negotiate the tension between their fe mininity and 'masculinized' physique: competitive

bodybuilders have ta be concerned with how much muscle they actually build, as the ( quality offeminine muscle definition is an ongoing concem for the (mostly male) judges of

female bodybuilding contests. 24

Relative ta the cultural norms ofmasculine and feminine bodies, the female

bodybuilder indeed masculinizes herself Interestingly, as Marcia lan points out, the male

bodybuilder's body remains un-'feminized' by the 'feminine' conventions to which his body

subscribes in the process ofbuilding and displayjng bis body:

The double V-shape is most desirable for the bodybllilder, who ideally, should have wide shoulders and back taperillg like a V down to a pllnctiform waist. from which the thighs are sllpposed to flare outward to form the legs ofal1other, upside down v: The bodybuilder's body... should resemble an hour glass made of rock-hard muscle. with blood nlnning

20Holmlund,304. 21 Holmlund, 304. 22Holmlund, 304. ( 23Holmlund ,306. 24Anne Balsamo, "Feminist Bodybuilding", Birrell and Cole, 346.

59 through il instead of sand. a form which combines and exaggerates ( aspects of both convel1tionally feminine and cOl1velltionally masculine bodies. 25

lan further considers the maIe bodybuilder's "curvaceous pectoral mounds ofthe well­

developed chest", bis "firm meaty thighs and spherical buttocks", and his "hairless, well-

lubricated flesh ll Above ail, lan asks ifthe male bodybuilder does not feel feminized by the

devotion with which he strives to embody a set ofideal categories- symmetry, proportion,

muscularity- for the aknowledgement ofwhich he offers himself to a panel who objectify

mm in those terms.

lan contends that despite the fact that in recent years the top female competitors

have displayed increasing amounts ofhard, striated muscle, the sport ofbodybuilding, as

marketed and represented by those enterprises founded by Joe and Ben Weider and ( contests like Mr. and Ms. Olympia, "reproduces ail the cliches ofmasculinism trom the barbarious to the sublime. (sic)" Bodybuilding competition, according to lan, rather than

being a "democratic republic biologically based on the universality ofhuman musculature",

remains "the violent reinscription ofgender binarism, ofdifference even where there is none: 1126

Spllrious gender difference is maintained and rewarded in bodybuilding through the discriminatory valorization of certain aesthetic categories. lndeed bodybuilding tries to /imil the achievements offemale physique athletes by adding "femininity" to the list ofaesthetic categories they are expected tofulfill. 27

25Marcia lan, "How do you Wear Vour Body?; Bodybuilding and the Sublimity ofDrag", Dorenkamp, Monica and Henke, Richard, eds. Negotiating Lesbian and Gay Subjects (NY: Routledge, 1995) 75. ( 261an, "From Abject to abject". 27ran, "From Abject to abject",

60 lan refers to the popular film "Pumping Iron II: The Women" (1985), a staged • documentary about the 1983 Miss Olympia contest, to illustrate the illogical and sexist judging ofbodybuilding contests: "while the men are ranked on the basis oftheir muscle

density, definitio~ over-all symmetry and proportionality, as weIl as for style, skill and

fluidity oftheir posing, the women are in addition judged for a quality called "femininity"

which surreptitiously but effectively limits all the others."28 There is obviously no clear

line delineating at which point a woman's body becomes tao muscular before it ceases to

be feminine. The female bodybuilder is therefore being told ta Iimit her achievement for

fear oflosing bath her femininity and the contest.

The work that the female bodybuilder must do to fit the contest's gender

restrictions seems similar to the apologetic behavior required oftennis players who had to

play a less aggressive style ofgame under penalty ofbeing labeled mannish or Iesbian.

Bodybuilders, like tennis players such as Chris Evert, obsess over their appearance, trying

( to look as 'feminine' as possible. lronically, although a competitor can achieve a 'feminine'

look through hairstyle~ makeup and costume, she can be disqualified for 'padding' her

bikini top as trus would make her appear more feminine than she really is. Many female

bodybuilders therefore opt for surgical breast implants (which are legal and presumably

considered less 'artificial' than padding or performance enhancing drugs) in order ta

Ilsalvage their femininity" .29 Like female tennis players, female bodybuilders are not only

restricted by cultural gender prescriptions, they are restricted by the contest mies

themselves. Since 1902, when the United States Lawn Tennis Association passed a mie

limiting women's matches to two out ofthree sets instead ofthe customary three out of

five ,30 cultural assumptions have remained strong enough that women have played by the

281an, "From Abject to Object". 29Ian, "From Abject to Object". ( 30Mary Jo Festle, Playing Nice: Politics andApologies in Women's Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) 55.

61 ( same mies up until now. It is not surprising, then, that women in the sport ofbodybuilding

are impacted by the same assumptions. The difference between bodybuilding and tennis,

however, is that 'apologetic' behavior is written into the mIes ofthe former. Chris Evert

couId choose to be more or less 'feminine' and though this might affect her popularity, it

could not affect her chances ofwinning or Iosing a match. A 'masculine' femaIe

bodybuilder can be popular with audiences (as is often the case) but wiIllose favor with

contest judges. Early in the century, 'girls' mies' generaIly tumed a given sport into a

slower, inferior, "truncated version ofthe real thing," implying that "while passivity,

weakness and large busts were attractive, muscles and aggression were ugIy."31 Rules

differences still exist in bodybuilding, and therefore acknowledge beliefofbasic

differences in men's and women's natures. The most dramatic distinction between

competitive men's and women's bodybuilding, for exampte, is the compulsory pose event

in which men perform seven compulsory poses white women perform only five; "The front

( and back lat spread poses were early in the history ofwomen's competitive bodybuilding

identified as 'unfeminine' and abandoned in contests. ,,32 Although women have

demonstrated that their back musculature is as competitive as men's, this mIe has not been

modified.

The past decade in female bodybuilding, according to Marcia Ian, has in fact

witnessed a dramatic change in the style ofbody physique ta which femaIe athletes are

aspiring. Judges appear to be opting for the aesthetics ofbodybuilding over other

standards offemale beauty.33 The female bodybuilder, thel\ is catching up with the male

in terms ofhow much shape and hard muscle mass she displays to the judges. However,

31Festle, 32. 32CamiUa Obel, "Collapsing Gender in Competitive Bodybuilding: Researching Contradictions and Ambiguity in Sport", International Reviewfor the Sociology ofSport (31/2, 1996) 188. ( 33Ian, "How Do You Wear", 79.

62 ( although women are no longer given numerical scores for a quality called "femininity",

judges continue to invoke the judgemental category of'femininity' through implicit rather

than explicit guidelines. 34 Women competitors are still required to pay tribute to an

aesthetic body image which does not exc1ude a feminine aesthetic but rather inc1udes it

together with an emphasis on 'aesthetic muscularity'.35 With increased muscle mass,

compensatory femininity is even more highly valued by judges because it is increasingly

important to balance the hyperbolicaIly masculine muscles. Stereotypes cannot be

eradicated in one decade, but they can be intemalized and invoked more subtly: a

"cupcake" (Marcia raniS term for the muscularly under-developed bodybuilder with an

extremely 'feminine' appearance) may no longer prevail over the bigger~ harder, veinier

muscled woman who lacks 'femininity', but the 'femininity' factor will surely play a raie in

deciding the wioner amongst the top contenders. As weil, the '0Id guard' in bodybuilding is

still vocal enough ta be heard; officiaIs in the sport often complain about the CUITent trend

( in female bodybuilding, saying "we cao't let the sport go in tbis direction toward manlike

muscles on women."36 Mr. Caruso of'Caruso's GYm' in Montreal, for example, has

watched women bodybuilders train and compete for decades. For the first time in his long

career, he feels the situation is serious enough to "get active" about teaching women how

to train and display their bodies properly. To him women shouldn't have manly muscles

because it is "grotesque" and "wrong. Il On the surface, it appears that contest-judging

criteria in bodybuilding has evolved, as it does in most subjective sporting contests, and

female bodybuilders can now display increasing amounts ofhard, striated muscle.

However, as Marcia lan believes, bodybuilding remains the re-inscription ofdifference

even where there is none."37 lan draws on Jane Gallop's work: "In Western culture gender

34I~ "How Do You Wear", 78. 350bel, 189. 36Ian, "How Do You Wear", 78. 371~ "From Abject to Object".

63 ( is no 'true' binary or antithesis but rather an aIgorithm ofone and zero. Bodybuilding

expands the equivalence 'male is to female as one is to zero' to include the specious

antithesis ofmuscle and femininity. ,,38

Parody & Subversion: The Body in Drag

Even ifeach woman dresses in cOllformity with her status, agame is still beingplayed: artifice, Iike art, belongs ta the realm ofthe imaginary. lt is not ollly [that her body is disguisedJ; but that...once she is "dressed", does /lot present herselfto the observation; she is, Iike the picture or the statue, or the actor on the stage, an agent through whom is suggested someone not there that is, the character she represents, but is nol. -Simone de BecllIvoi,.J9

For Judith Butler, as for Simone de Beauvoir, our identities, gendered and

otherwise, do not express sorne authentic core self, but are the dramatic effect ofour

performances. In Gender Trouble as weil as Bodies that Matter, Butler explains that we

( leam to 'fabricate' our identities in the same way we learn how to manipulate language:

through imitation and graduaI command ofpublic, cultural idioms. Within this framework,

the illusion ofan interior and organizing gender core is itself Ila fantasy instituted and

inscribed on the surface ofbodies" through our performances. That illusion, moreover,

effectively protects the institution ofreproductive heterosexuaIity from scrutiny and

critique, "continually regulating rather than merely reflecting our sexuality." Butler's main

purpose is to denaturaIize the categories ofgender and ofthe 'naturaI' itself She suggests

therefore that "subversive bodily acts" exhibit the artificiality ofgender, culturally stirring

up what she has defined as "gender trouble." Butler therefore explores gender categories

as the etfect ofdiscourse rather than as the 'natural' ground ofidentity. Through her

38Ian, "From Abject to Object". ( 39Simone de Beauvoir, quoted in Erving Goffinan, The Presentation ofSelfin Everyday Life (NY: Anchor Books, Doublday, 1959) 57.

64 analysis ofgender as performance, she argues for parody- the body in drag, as the most

• effective strategy for subverting the fixed 'binary frame' ofgender...0

In extending Butlers's argument for parody to the female bodybuilder, we see that

the female bodybuilder's body has the potential to subvert the notion ofan original or

primary gender identity. Like the male body in drag, 'dressed' in cues offemininity, the

female bodybuilder is a female body 'dressed' in 'masculine' muscles. Her body is

ambiguous and therefore defies the natural 'givenness' ofthe female body, provoking

anxiety about- and challenging notions of- female gender identity by its graduai

transformation. Butler's theory illustrates the subversive/transgressive potential ofthe

female bodybuildeï, â.nd, by extension, the female athlete.

ll "Within the inherited discourse ofthe metaphysics ofsubstance , Butler argues, ( gender proves ta he performative- that is "constituting the identity it is purported ta be."

Gender is Ilalways a doing, though not a doing by a suhject who might be said to preexist

the deed."4l Therefore, identity is performatively constructed through expressions of

gender, with no gender identity behind the expressions ofgender. "Gellder is the repeated stylizatioll ofthe body, a set ofrepeatedacts within a highly rigidframe that cOllgeal

over time to prodllce the appearance ofsubstance, ofa natllral sort ofbeillg. "42

Bulter argues that gender difference has been naturalized through naming ofsexual

difference. By asking whether there is a "physical" body prior to the perceptually

perceived body, Butler indicates that one should he suspicious ofthe gathering of

attributes under the category Ilsex". Language itselfis a set ofacts, repeated over time,

40Susan Bardo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture & the Body (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993) 289. 41 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble; Feminism & the Subversion ofIdentity (NY: Routledge, ( 1990) 25. 42Butler, 33.

65 ( that produce reality- effects that are eventuaIly misperceived as 'facts'. The repeated

practice ofnaming sexuaI difference, therefore, has created the appearallce ofa natural

division. Butler argues that the naming ofsex is an act ofdomination and compulsion, an

institutionalized performative that both creates and legislates social reaIity "by requiring

the discursive and perceptuaI construction ofbodies to be in accordance with sexual

difference."43 Male bodies, therefore, are discursively and perceptually constructed as

muscular- and this construction is perceived as a natural facto Muscles thereby become

incompatible with notions offemininity, because the appearance ofa naturaI division

constructs femaIe bodies as unmuscular and passive.

We are compelled in our bodies and our minds 10 correspond, fealure by feature, with the idea ofnature that has been established for liS... 'men' and 'women' are polilical categories, and nol nallirai facts. Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body...stamping il and violent/y shaping it... but these sheaves are not easily discarded 44 ( Performativity must then be understood not as a singular or deliberate act, but rather as

the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it

names. 45 This aIso suggests that ifreality is fabricated as an interior essence, that very

interiority is an effect and function ofa public and social discourse. Acts, gestures,

articulated and enacted desires create the illusion ofan interior and organizing core, an

illusion discursively maintained for the purposes ofthe regulation ofsexuality within the

obligatory frame ofreproductive heterosexuality. Butler argues, "ifthe inner truth of

gender is a fabrication and iftrue gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface

ofbodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false, but are cnly produced

as the truth effects ofa discourse ofprimary and stable identity. Il

43 Butler, 115. 44Butler, 115. ( 45Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: on the Discursive Limits ofSex (NY: Routledge, 1993) 2.

66 As a strategy to subvert the distinction between inner and outer psychic space~ • Butler analyzes the performance ofdrag: drag~ as parody~ according to Butler~ has the potential to mock both the expressive model ofgender and the notion ofa true gender

identity. She refers ta Esther Newton's argument:

At ils most complex, drag is a double inversion lhat says appearance is an illusion. Drag says 'my outside appearance is jeminille, but my essence inside the body is masculine.' At the same lime it symbolizes the opposite inversion: 'my appearance outside my body/gender is masculine but my essence 'inside' myselfisjeminine. 46

As Butler points out, both daims to truth contradict one another and so displace the entire

enactment ofgender significations from the discourse oftruth and falsity. It is within the

cultural practices ofdrag, as weil as cross-dressing and the sexual stylization ofbutch/fem

identities, therefore, that the notion ofan original or primary gender identity is often

parodied. ( Butler emphasizes that the performance ofdrag plays upon the distinction between

the anatomy ofthe performer and the gender that is being performed. tilt gives us a clue to

the ways in which the relationship between primary identification- that is, the original

meanings accorded to gender- and subsequent gender experience might be framed." This

distinction is crucial to understanding the impact offemale bodybuilder's bodies: in the

case offemale bodybuilders, it is the anatomy ofthe body- the female body that appears as

the male body, dressed in!performing 'femininity'- that lends itselfto readings ofambiguity.

A further blurred boundary is evident in bodybuilding as the bodies are contestants literally

'performing' on a stage. Bodybuilders are therefore anatomically sexed and gendered

bodies performing genders within a performance.

( 46Butler, Gender Trouble, 137.

67 ( Butler identifies three contingent dimensions ofsignificant corporeality: anatomical

sex., gender identity and gender performance. Ifthe anatomy ofthe performer is already

distinct from the gender ofthe performer, and both ofthose are distinct from the gender of

the performance, she argues, then the performance suggests a dissonance not orny

between sex and performance, but also between sex and gender, and between gender and

performance. In other words, in imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative

structure ofdrag itself- as weil as its contingency. Butler insists that the notion ofgender

parody does not assume that there is an original which such identities imitate. The parody

is rather ofthe very notion ofan original. Gender identity might then be conceived of

differently, instead ofas an original identification which serves as a determining cause.

Gender identity, according to Butler, should be redefined as a personal/cultural history of

received meanings, subject to a set ofimitative practices which refer laterally to other

imitations and which, jointly, construct the illusion ofa primary and interior gendered self ( or parody the mechanism ofconstruction.

Interestingly, Butler points out that the imitation that mocks the notion ofan

original is characteristic ofpastiche rather than parody. According to Frederic Jameson, a

pastiche is, like the parody, "the imitation ofa peculiar or unique style. wearing ofa

stylistic mask, speech in a dead language. Il But it is a neutral practice ofmimicry, without

parody's ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, "without that still

latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated

is rather comic. 1147 The notion ofpastiche is, in fact, more appropriately applied to female

bodybuilding as, contraI)' to the performance ofdrag, bodybuilders generally are

'pertbrming masculinity' without humorous intent.

( 47Butler, Gender Trouble, 138.

68 ( The conception ofgender as a 'corporeal style', an 'act' which is both intentional

and performative, where performative suggests a dramatic and contingent construction of

meaning, is important in the context offemale bodybuilding, which itself implies an 'active'

performance. The action ofgender is aIso a ritual requiring a performance that is repeated.

This repetition is both a reenactment and a reexperiencing ofa set ofmeanings already

socially established; "it is the mundane and ritualized form oftheir legitimation."

Bodybuilding, as a ritualized activity which gradually forms/transforms the body through

time and Jabor, can be seen as a microcosm representing the macrocosrn ofgender

performance: bodybuilding, like gender, is an identity tenuously constituted in time,

instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition ofacts.48 "The effect ofgender

is produced through the stylization ofthe body and, hence, must be understood as the

mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements and styles ofvarious kinds constitute

the illusion ofan abiding gendered self1149 This formulation changes the conception of ( gender away from a substantial model ofidentity to a conception ofgender as a

constituted social temporality.50

Butler's theory ofperformance and parody therefore reveal a crucial distinction

between expression and performance: gender attributes are not expressive, but

performative. It is this idea ofan 'active' performance versus a 'passive' expression that

enables one to 'reinvent' femininity. One can therefore challenge the gender boundary by

challenging the notion ofthe 'natural.' Butler iIlustrates how gender attributes effectively

constitule the identity they are said to express or reveal. As these attributes, acts and ways

in which a body shows its cultural signification are performative, there is no preexisting

identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there is no true or false, real or

48Butler Gender Trouble, 140. ( 49Butler, Gender Trouble, 140. SOButler, Gender Trouble, 140-141.

69 ( distorted acts ofgender. The postulation ofa true gender identity is thereby revealed as a

"regulatory fiction. Il

That gender reality is created through slIstained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a /nie or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part ofthe strategy that conceals gender's performative character and the performative possibilitiesfor proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames ofmasculinist domination andcompllisory heterosexuality. 51

Ce/ebrating with caution

According to Susan Bordo, the value ofJudith Butler's theory lies in its

recognition ofthe fact that "prevailing configurations ofpower, no matter how dominant,

are never seamIess but are spawning new forms ofsubjectivity, new contexts for resistance

to and transformation ofexisting relations."S2 It has also encouraged us to recognize that ( "the body is not only materially accultured (as it conforms to social norms and habituaI practices of'femininity' and 'masculinity'), but also mediated by language, by metaphor and

semantical grids and binary oppositions that organize and animate our perception and

experience."S3 We therefore have no direct, innocent or unconstructed knowledge ofour

bodies; rather we are always reading our bodies according to various interpretive

schemes. 54

Butler's theory ofparody and the performance ofdrag has been compared to

postmodem art: in imitating gender, drag, as she explains, implicitly reveals the imitative

structure ofgender itself Her theory ofsubversion equally honors the raIe ofmarginalized

sexualities and what for many thinkers are hallmarks ofpostmodern art: "the use of

51 Butler, Gender Trouble, 141. 52Bordo, 288. ( 53Bordo, 288. 54Bordo,288.

70 obvious artifice. quotation marks, irony and parody to subvert established conventions. ,,55 • In Butler's theory, the system ofgender and its established conventions is subverted through these same methods.

Susan Bardo, like Butler, is committed to cultural constructionism and to the

notion that the biological body never presents itselfto us in innocent or natural forro but is

always historically and politically "inscribed" and shaped. However, Bardo sees Butlers

theory, committed ta a much more radical notion ofthe biological body as itself a fiction.

She therefore argues that Butier's daim that the gender system is continually being

playfully destabilized and subverted fram within is only convincing ifone regards the body

in drag as an abstracto Bardo insists that subversion ofcultural assumptions is not

something that happens in a text, rather it takes place in the reading ofthe text.

Attempting ta give abstract text sorne 'body', then, Borda argues that drag performances ( seem far less destabilizing ofthe 'binary frame' ofgender than those identities that present themselves as not parodying either masculine or feminine but as thoroughly ambiguolls

with regard ta gender. She points out that it is only rarely that we interpret bodies as

sexually ambiguous. Referring to the work ofSuzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna,

Bardo argues that our readings are overdetermined for rnaleness; that is, it only takes a

few male cues for bodies ta be interpreted as male. 56

Although acknowledging that subversive elements are continually at play in our

culture, Bardo points ta the "characteristically postmodern inclination to emphasize and

celebrate resistance, the creative agency ofindividuals, and the instabilities ofCUITent

power-relations rather than their recuperative tendencies. ,,57 Borda therefore recognizes

the subversive potential described by Butler but suggests a 'reality check' whereby theory

55Bordo, 292. ( 56Bordo, 293. 5'Bordo, 294.

71 is applied to social practice. She claims that Butler is romanticizing the degree ofcultural • challenge that is occuring, and thus diverting focus from continued patterns ofexclusion, subordination and normalization. Applied ta the sport ofbodybuilding, one can see both

the traces ofButler's subversive potential, as weil as the remnants ofcultural normalization

remembered by Borda. The anxiety provoked by the ambiguity ofthe female bodybuilder's

body suggests that the potential exists to subvert prescribed notions ofgender. The

compensatory struggle the female bodybuilder faces to realign herselfwith those same

cultural prescriptions suggests that resistance is minimal.

Therefore, Judith Butler's theory ofparody and the performance ofdrag helps one

understand the ways in which gender identities- not representative ofa core self- are

constructed through expressions ofgender within imitative processes, and are the dramatic

effect ofour performances. Through tbis theory, the female bodybuilder can be conceived

ofas a parody (or a pastiche)- a body in drag, a gender-ambiguous body, and can

( therefore be understood as potentially subversive. The transgressive potential ofthe

anatomically sexed female body 'dressed' in masculinity provokes anxiety in the viewer­

male or female, and challenges notions of 'natural' genders. The 'natural' gender

distinction is thereby revealed to be the appearance ofa natural division created through

the repeated practice ofnaming sexual difference. As a strategy to subvert the distinction

between inner and outer psychic space, drag mocks the expressive model ofgender and

the notion ofa true gender identity.

The image ofa muscular woman poses an irreconcilable threat to the viewer

because ofthe inextricable association between muscularity, masculinity and lesbianism.

The image ofthe muscular woman threatens the abolition ofdifference between the sexes

and between the genders and thereby infiames anxiety. Although the image ofthe near

naked woman is, in Freudian terms, "fraught with danger and delight", the near naked

( muscular woman is simply fraught with danger. For there to be any delight in the vision,

72 the danger has to be defused through the fetishization ofwomen's bodies and their • objectification as those ofheterosexual desire through the 'feminine' eues ofbikinis. stilettos~ jewelry, makeup and styled haïr. 58

The potential for subversion posed by the image ofthe museular woman~ however,

necessarily implies that it will be 'read' differently from the image ofthe nonmuscular

woman. In a letter to the editor found on the "Muscle Mail" page ofMuscle Mag

International. 59 a woman eomplains about inequaIity in the sport: "Image is

everytbing.. .It's a simple question ofwhether these ladies want to be looked upon as well­

trained athletes orjust babes with muscles." Although the author oftbis letter asks this

question rhetorically, the answer can only be both or neither: the female bodybuilder is

necessarily tom between both images. The muscular female body- the weil trained athlete-

defuses anxiety over the masculinization through counter-femininization- 'babe' quality.

The feminine body- the babe- cannat be taken seriously as a weIl trained athlete without

muscles.

In tbis chapter~ it became evident that the boundaries between male and female,

naturaI and unnatural are heavily guarded. and even as women overstep these boundaries~

dichotomous classifications are left unchallenged. In the next chapter, the possibility of

negotiating 5uch boundaries such that the margins are brought to the center is explored. A

reconceptualization ofthe female athlete body in which dichotomous characteristics co­

exist is put forward through a discussion oftechnology and the 'cyborg' as a metaphor for

the femaIe athlete.

( 58HolmIund, 1994. 59Muscle Mag International (Jan. 1996) 28.

73 References

• Aoki, Doug. Images orthe Muscular Womeo. Oct. 21, 1995. Cyberspace.

Balsamo, Anne. "Feminist Bodybuilding" in Birrell and Cole.

Birrell, Susan and Cole, Cheryl. Women, Sport and Culture, Illinois: Human Kinetics, 1994.

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism. Western Culture & the Body. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993.

Brybach, Holly. The Athletic Esthetic. June 23, 1996. Cyberspace.

ButIer, Judith. Gender Trouble; Femjnism & the Subversion ofIdeotity, NY: RoutIedge, 1990.

ButIer, Judith. Bodies that Mattee on the Discursiye Limits ofSex. NY: RoutIedge, 1993.

Cahn, Susan K. Coming on Strong' Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women's Sport, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995

( Cole, Cheryl. "Resisting the Canon: Femininst Cultural Studies, Sport and Technologies of the Body" in Birrell and Cole.

Dyer, Richard. "Don't Look Now" Sereen 23, no.3-4, Sept-Oct. 1982 quoted in HolmIund.

FestIe, Mary Jo. Playing Nice· poUlics and Apologies jn Women's Sports. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Freud, Sigmund. On Sexuality, trans. James Strachey, ed. Angela Richards, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983, 1927.

Goffinan, Erving. The Presentation ofSelfin Everyday Li/e, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1959.

Hollander, Anne. "Seeiog Through Our Clothes" quoted in Brubaeh.

HolmIund, Christine Anne. "Visible Difference and Flex Appeal" in Birrell and Cole.

Ian, Marcia."How do you Wear Your Body?; Bodybuilding and the Sublimity ofDragIl in Dorenkamp, Monica and Henke, Richard, eds. Negotiating Lesbian and Gay ( Subjects, NY: Routledge, 1995.

74 [a~ Marcia. "From Abject to Object: Women's Bodybuilding" in postrnodem Culture, ( v.l., no.3, May, 1991.

Klein, Alan M. "Little Big Man: Hustling, Gender Narcissism, and Bodybuilding Subculture" in Messner.

Messner, Michael A. Sport, Men and the Gender Order- Femioist Critical Perspectives. IL: Human Kinetics Press, 1990.

Muscle Mag International, ed. Robert Kennedy, Johnny Fitness, U.S.A, January 1996.

Obel, Camilla. "Collapsing Gender in Competitive Bodybuilding: Researching Contradictions and Ambiguity in Sport", International Review for the Sociology of Spo.rt 31/2 (1 996)

Rich, Adrienne. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence", Sigm. 5, 00.4, Summer 1980.

Schultz, Laurie. "Getting Physical: Text/Context/Reading and the Made-for-TV-Movie," Cinema Journal 25, no.2, Winter 1986. 43.

(

(

75 CHAPTER THREE • Cyborgs & the Technology of Female Sport

[His] gym was the /aboratory where [he] set mil to distill the humanform and spirit to its purist e/ements. If[he1could clear away the human flaws and limitatiolls- pare away the fat, elasticize the limbs and spine, numb the pain, control the nerves- [he1 cOl/Id creale a body light andfluid as a ribbon rippling in the wind [He] could deliver the lI/timate promise of athletics: to reveal the gods withill. 1

With a passion and vision reminiscent ofVictor Frankenstein's, famed gymnastics

coach Bela Karolyi created Olympie gymnast, Christy Henrich, from within his own

system ofmilitaristic control. With the complicity ofher parents, advisors, and assistant

coaches, he molded her body into a machine that acknowledged neither fear nor pain. Her

rigourous self-discipline allowed her to train 50 hard and eat so litde that she was able to

beat back nature and alter the growth rate normally imposed by puberty. She became ( accustomed to taking amphetamines, anti-inflammatories and pain killers, to vomiting up

her already sparse meals, and to competing with fractures, sprains and fevers until she was

inevitably destroyed from the inside2, 'betrayed by her own body'. 3

The elite female gymnast~ iIlustrates one ofthe great myths ofathletics: that

pushing the human body past its limits, training it to take the shape ofa lean, well­

proportioned, muscled, powerful, and graceful human forro distills the body's natural

'essence'. On the contrary, the athletic body endeavors to 'strip' nature and rebuild itselfas

a mechanical being: disciplined, efficient and transcending naturels limits. Athletes today

1Joan Ryan, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making andBreaking ofElite Gymnasls andFigure Skaters (NY: Wamer Books, Inc., 1996) 198. 2Henrich died of anorexia-related multiple organ failure. After nearly five years of starving, her body had cannibalized her muscles, bones and organs for fuel to keep functioning. At 22 years old, she weighed less than 50 pounds. 3Ryan, 111. ( 4The male gymnast achieves athletic sucees only after puberty and is not required to 'fight nature' to compete at the elite level. ( are trained in a culture in which organ transplants, life-extension machinery, microsurgery, and artificiaI organs are the common currency ofmedical practice. Unlike in Mary

Shelley's day, the 'laboratories' where culture conceptualizes/creates/produces nature are

more than fiction, and we seem, as Susan Bardo, points out, on the verge ofpractical

reaIization ofthe seventeenth-century imagination ofbody as machine.5

Although the body is persistently vaunted as one ofthe last bastions ofnature, the

athlete is often viewed as a machine: stronger, faster, more efficient, and more consistent

than mere mortaIs. The athlete herseIfunderstands her body in this way, suppressing

'natural' conditions such as fatigue, pain, hunger, and fear, to rebuild her body as a

mechanicaI phenomenon. Machines belong to the world oftechnology and, as Judy

Wajcman., argues, technology is an integral part ofmasculine gender identity.6 Our

culture identifies men with machines as a result ofideological and cultural processes

created and reproduced through men's monopoly oftechnology and through the gendered

bias in the way technology is defined and developed. For exarnple, it is often suggested

that men are more suited to certain types ofwork. "The construction ofmen as strong and

capable, manuaIly able and technologically endowed, and women as physically and

technically incompetent,,7 is a social process, it is the result ofdifferent childhood

exposure to technology, the prevalence ofditTerent role models, different forms of

schooling, and the extreme sex-segregation ofthe job market. The effect ofthis process is

an implicit bias in the design ofmachinery and job content towards male strength.8

Techn%gy and the machine are not gender-neutral; they are male gendered through

5Susan Bordo. Unbearab/e Weight: Feminism. Western Culture and the Body (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993) 245. 6Judy Wajcman. Feminism Confronts Technology (University Park: Penn State Press, 1991) 22. ( 7Wajcman, 51. 8Wajcman,51.

77 social processes. Understood in this way~ the metaphor ofathlete as machine naturally • reinforces the masculine status ofthe athlete- male or female.

In the previous chapter, we saw that the bodybuilder is an exaggerated

representation ofour culture's anxieties related ta gendered views ofthe female athlete.

She represents what is feared most in the female athlete: the transgression ofthe gender

boundary into a male domain. The female gymnast, like the female bodybuilder, illustrates

another trangression achieved by the female athlete: the transgression between nature and

technology. However, whereas the female gymnast works to defy nature, by increasing

training to diminish the body, the bodybuilder works to defy nature by augmenting and

surpassing the natural body. Just as gymnasts fill their bodies with laxatives, diuretics and

pain-killers~ bodybuilders fill their bodies with steroids and other performance-enhancing

drugs. The gymnast balances on~ vaults off, swings from~ and lands on various static

( apparata with seeming effortlessness, performing with the apparatus as ifwith a more

powerful partner who flings, catches and rebounds her childlike body.9 Bodybuilders'

training regimens are dependent on adversarial machinery that resists muscular exertion,

thus tearing muscle fibers, to rebuild the muscles stronger and bigger. The bodybuilder

challenges nature because she is gladiatorial~ the gymast challenges nature because she is

ascetic.

According to Anne Balsamo, the 'naturaI' body has been refashioned through the

application ofnew technologies ofcorporeality. The female athlete appears to be very

compatible with Balsamo's notion ofthe techno-body whereby the body is a understood to

be a 'boundary concept':

9Male gymnasts' performances emphasize strength and resistance, often displayjng muscles working tensely in stasis. For example, a man who can hold a perfect 'cross' ( position on the moveable rings, has, with visible effort and strength, 'steadied' the apparatus and has thus dorninated over it.

78 c The idea of the merger of the biological with the technological has illfiltrated the imagination of Western culture, where the "technological human" has become afamiiiarfiguration ofthe subject ofpostmodernity. (...] This merger relies on a reconceptualization ofthe human body as a "techno-body", a boundary figure belongillg simliitaneously to at least IWo previously incompatible systems of meaning- the "organiclnatural" and the "technologicallcultural". [...J Techno-bodies are heal/hy, enhanced, andJullyjUllctional- more real than real. lO

At the point at which the body is reconceptualized as a boundary concept rather than as a

fixed part ofnature, Balsamo suggests, "we witness an ideological tug-of-war between

competing systems ofmeaning, which include and in part define the matenal struggles of

physical bodies." Il

The Cyborg in Postmodernity

In a 'postmodem world', the boundanes between technology and nature are in the

( midst ofa deep restructunng. As Roseanne Stone suggests, this means that Many ofthe usual analytical categories have become unreliable for making distinctions between the

biological and the technological, the natural and the artificial, the human and the

mechanical. 12 The power ofdichotomies and boundaries therefore could be losing their

classificatory powers, opening up new possibilities for 'making meanings' and interpreting

the female athlete body.

Donna Haraway, in writing about the collapse ofcategories and ofthe boundaries

ofthe body, 13 suggests that the destabilizing impact of technology can be seen as

10Anne Balsamo, Technologies ofthe Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Womell. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996) 5. IlBalsamo, 5. 12Allucquere Rosanne Stone, "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures", Michael Benedictm ed., Cyberspace: First Steps (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991) 101. ( 13Donna Haraway. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention ofNature (New York: Routledge, 1991)

79 politically valuable. She argues that rather than attempting to restore rigid dualistic • boundaries where they are beginning to crumble, women should embrace the possibility of decentred, multiplex "cyborg identities" that high-technology implies, and in which the

boundaries ofsuch duaIisms as selfand other, person and machine, nature and technology

are no longer clear. Just as Judith Butler understands the transgression ofgender identity

through the performance ofdrag as a positive challenge to the male/female taxonomy,

Haraway suggests that 'cyborg' identity/performance can act in much the same way: with

the boundaries blurred, it becomes possible for a (cyborg) woman to transgress the

boundary between masculine and feminine.

"Cyborg" is a label used for a phenomenon about which there is a lot of

controversy. As Chris Hables Gray points out, the range ofhuman-machine couplings

aImost defies definition: "even existing human cyborgs range from the quadriplegic patient

totally dependent on a vast array ofhigh-tech equipment to a small child with one

( immunization. 1I14 The label is often used to describe the status ofone who lives

simultaneously in a physical state as well as in a bodiless state in cyberspace. However,

the incarnation useful to my immediate purpose is the label that describes the physical

manifestation ofthe natura! and the artificial, whereby nature and technology coexist

within the physical body. Often defined as a "cybernetic organism," a cyborg does not

however exist as an object, rather it exists in the imagination, in ambiguous, intangible and

indefinable terms. It is precisely for tbis reason that the label"cyborg" is a useful metaphor

for envisioning the ways in which a 'sculpted' or constructed body can surmount the

contradiction between nature and culture. As Gray explains, cyborgs remind us that we

are aIways embodied, but that the ways we are embodied aren't simple. 15 The imaginary

14Chris Hables Gray, Steven Mentor, Heidi 1. Figueroa-Sarriera, "Cybergology; Constructing the Knowledge ofCybernetic Organisms", Chris Hables Gray, ed., The ( Cyborg Handbook (New York: Routledge 1995) 4. 15Gray, 7.

80 constructedness ofthe cyborg aIlows one to conjure up images ofbodies simultaneously • natural and crafted, and it is this conception that can help one theorize the transgression of boundaries: not only between human/machine and nature/culture, but between

female/male and child/aduit. As Donna Haraway points out, the figure ofthe cyborg helps

us bring together myths and tools, representations and ernbodied realities. 16 The figure of

the cybarg is useful as a metaphor for thearizing the female athlete: a figure

simultaneously evolved and developed, integrating the constnlctor and the constnlcted.

Haraway defines the cyborg as a hybrid creature, composed oforganism and machine, a

creature ofsocial reality as weil as a creature offiction. The image ofthe cyborg therefore

implies a harmonious union between the naturai and the artificial body. It also implies a

body bath real and imagined- an organic body in, on and through which cultural visions

and illusions are manifested and reflected.

Although it has been argued that the blurring ofboundaries still assumes the

( distinctive categories (nature/technology, female/male) through which one structures one's

world, Francois Dagognet suggests that the categories themselves are becoming less

distinct. These categories are therefore malleable, Iike the boundaries which divide them.

He suggests that the recent debates about whether nature is becoming irrernediably

technologjzed are based on a false dichotomy: namely, that there exists a category 'nature'

and a separate category 'technologyl.17 Dagognet argues that the category 'nature', "instead ofrepresenting sorne pristine state ofbeing," has taken on an entirely different

function in late 20th century econornies ofmeaning:

Not ollly has the character ofnature as yet allother coconstnlct ofcultllre become more patent, but it has become nothing more than an ordering jactor- a constnlct by means of which we attempt to keep technology

16Gray, 2. 17Francois Dagognet, quoted in Allucquere Rosanne Stone "Will the Real Body Please ( Stand Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures", Cyberspace: First Steps, Michael Benedikt, ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). 102.

8] visible as some/hing separa/e from our na/ural selves and our everyday ( lives. 18

In other words, the category 'nature', rather than referring to a category or abject, is a

strategy for maintaining boundaries for political and economic ends, and thus a way of

making meaning. One's notion ofthe 'natural', therefore, can potentially expand to include

the practices and knowledge oftechnology, rather than be suffocated by them.

Iftechnology and nature seem ta be collapsing into each other, then technology,

as Dagognet argues, can be seen as lively and unpredictable- in the way we have always

seen nature. These arguments imply that 'technology' as we think ofit does not exist

either: that we must begin ta rethink the category oftechnology aIso as one that exists

ooly because ofits imagined binary opposition to another category upon which it operates

and in relation to which it is constituted. Therefore, as Paul Rabinow points out, rather

than nature being technologized, the boundaries between subject and environment have ( collapsed and technology is nature. 19 This point is extremely useful to my purposes because it emphasizes the reduction of'nature' and 'technology' to lahels used to describe

and classify. The label of'cyborg' can thereby surmount the problem posed by the

dichotomous labeling of'nature' and 'technology' which have been imbued with

incompatibility. The term 'cyborg' encompasses both concepts without conflict. Blurring

the boundary between nature and technology, 1will argue, implies a blurring ofthe gender

boundary as weil.

The Techno-Body

The cyborg body is therefore a body in which and upon which nature and

technology hecome the other. The coupling between human and machine is located within

the body itself, and the boundary between the materiaI body and the artificial machine is

( 18Stone, 103. 19Paul Rabinow, quoted in Stone, 103.

82 redrawn. Haraway explicitly maps the identity ofwoman onto the image ofthe cyborg. • Haraway also theorizes that cyborg bodies, technologically constructed through hybrid discourses such as female bodybuilding, challenge the "denotative stability ofhuman

identity:"

...cyborg identity is predicated on trallsgressed boulldaries. They fascinate us because they are not like us andyet are just like us. Formed through a radical disnlption ofotherness, cyborg identityforegrollnds the COllstnlctedness ofotherness... Every cyborg image constnlcts an implicit opposition between machine and human, at once repressing similarities andhighlighting distinctions. 20

Balsamo, like Haraway, describes the body as an unstable hybrid, definitely transgressive

ofa dominant cultural order, not so rnuch because oftheir 'constructed' nature, but rather

because ofthe indeterminacy oftheir hybrid design. "The cyborg provides a framework

for studying gender identity as it is technologically crafted simultaneously from the matter ( ofmaterial bodies and cultural fictions... 21 Our technological imagination, Balsamo explains, "imbues cyborgs with ancient anxieties about human difference."22

Understanding the female athlete body as a 'cyborg' body allows one ta understand

the complexity ofour embodiment. A cyborg body, as the female gymnast and the female

bodybuilder's bodies iIlustrate in this chapter, can be bath resistant to or entirely

compatible with cultural expectations. The gymnast and the bodybuilder aiso illustrate the

two versions ofFoucault's 'docile body' described in the previous chapter. Whereas the

gymnast's body reflects a more passive 'complicity' with social control, the bodybuilder's

body reflects a more 'active' object ofsocial control, building and realizing her form in the

service ofresistance to gender domination, not 'docility' and gender normalization.

2~alsamo, 32. ( 21 Balsamo, 18. 22Balsamo. 18.

83 ( Though both the gymnast's and bodybuilder's bodies cao be viewed as 'techno- bodies', the female gymnast is not necessarily transgressive in the way that the female

bodybuilder is. The femaIe gymnast's body is constnlcted- a 'technologically recrafted' body, but is one in which traditional anxieties about human difference are diffused rather

than provoked; her body is childlike and small, and the constructive process is hidden. The

female bodybuilder's body, however, is 'masculine', large and indeterminate, displaying its

technological transformation as both motive and accomplishment. For the female

bodybuilder, cultural fiction blends indisputably with the material body to create a cyborg­

being, a "techno-body" reasserting itselfas a social reality.

The Suspicious Fema/e Ath/ete Body & Concernsfor Eugenics

The power ofthe cyborg body lies not ooly in its defiance ofthe natural 'givenness'

ofthe body, but in its ability to surmount the nature/technology hierarchy whereby one ( has to assert itselfover the other. Without a vision such as that ofthe cyborg, a tug-of­ war between nature and technology developes and reaffirms binary classifications of

sexlgender.

For Balsamo, gender, at once related to physiological sexual characteristics ofthe

human body and to its cultural context, has the possibility ofbeing reconstructed along

with the widespread technological refashioning ofthe 'natural' human body. However,

Balsamo also cautions that the gendered boundary between male and female remains

heavily guarded despite new technologized ways to rewrite the physical body in the flesh:

As is often the case whell seemingly stable boundaries are displaced by technological innovation (human/artificial. life/dea/h. nature/culture), other boundaries are more vigilantly guarded Sa il appears that white the body has been recoded within discourses ofbiotechnology and medicine as helonging ta an arder ofculture rather than ofnature, gender remaÎns a naturalizedmarker ofhuman idelltity.23

( 23Balsamo. 9.

84 1 Therefore, despite the technological possibilities ofbody reconstructio~Balsamo argues, the female body is persistently coded as the cultural sign ofthe "natural", the "sexual", and the "reproductive": "In this sense, an apparatus ofgender organizes the power relations manifest in the various engagements between bodies and technologies. 1124 In offering the

phrase "technologies ofthe gendered body" as a way ofdescribing such interactions

between bodies and technologies, she describes gender, in tbis schema, as both a

determining cultural condition and a social consequence oftechnological deployment."25

However, just as the gendered body is relegated to the 'natural', the wrongly­

gendered or transgendered body cannot be natural. In the late 1980'5, Martina

Navratilova's association with the lesbian community and her overpowering game led to

suggestions that she was a "bionic" creature whose "masculine" skills gave her an unfair

advantage over "normal" women. A "bionic marvel", she was placed in a unique cultural

( gender category ofnot-woman and not-man. Indeed, an Olympie female athlete who has

not had her femaleness documented and certified on a card that athletes have dubbed their

"fem card", is neither permitted to compete with the women nor the men. 26

The case ofRenee Richards, a constructed-female transsexual who left the Men's

tennis circuit to compete on the women's, literally enacts the ideological processes

involved in constructing gender and producing particular notions ofgender, sex, the body,

technology, and nature, both through a technical surgical reconstruction, and through a

more public discursive construction played out in the media. 27 Richards blurred aIl

boundaries: human/artificial, female/male, nature/culture, and thus caused confusio~

24Balsamo.9. 25Balsamo, 9. 26Cahn. 264. 27Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, Women, Sport and Culture (Illinois: Human Kinetics, ( 1994) 374.

85 ( "illuminating sport as an important element in a political field that produces and

reproduces apparently natural, mutually exclusive dichotomies...28 Richards' struggle was

played out across the gender boundary where naturalized markers ofidentity were used to

establish gender. In Richards' case, it was her gender-determinacy which overrode her technologically constructed nature, and empowered her to successfully acquire her new

sex and gender. At first, Richards' petition to playon the women's circuit was contested,

because she was thought not to be a 'true' femaie. Opposition to Richards was framed in

terms ofcompetitive inequality: "The entry into women's events ofpersans not genetically

femaie would introduce an element ofinequality and unfaimess"29 In the end, Richards'

inability to dominate women's tennis was offered as proofofher status as a woman. Not

ooly did the challenge ofRichards' presence in women's sport work to naturalize women

as physically inferior, the cultural beliefin the inferiority ofwomen worked to 'naturalize' Richards. Had she 'played like a man' but been sexed a female, she could not have fit into

( the femaie category.

The meanings ofsex, gender, difference, and power, as demonstrated by this case,

are literaIly inscribed onto the body. Transsexualism appears to challenge the neatness and

logic- indeed the 'reality'- ofa sex/gender system marked by biological difference. "This

reveals not only the social construction ofgender but the social construction ofthe sex­

gender connection."30 As Birrell and Cole argue, though it would seem as though re-

sexing an individual deconstructs notions ofnatural sex identity, in fact by remaining

gendered, the concept ofsexual difference is reaffirmed; "shifting categories merely

stabilizes the ideology by demonstrating the cultural necessity ofhaving a gender-identity,

and reinforces the notion that "mistakes ofnatureIl can and should be technologically

28Birrell and Cole, 374. ( 29The New York Times (Aug. 15, 1976) quoted in Birrell and Cole, 389. 30Birrell and Cole, 393.

86 ( regulated by humankind."31 In other words, a socially constructed hierarchy ofculture over nature reassures a technologically over-stimulated imagination ofculture/man's

ability to prevail in bis encounters with nature; "The role ofthe gendered body serves as

the site where anxieties about the 'proper order ofthings' erupt and are eventually

managed ideologically."32

The reverse scenario reveals the same affirmation ofgender differences. 'SlOll' is

associated with masculinity. When a woman possesses skill, her femininity may be

questioned, but she is not necessarily considered a true male. A "mannish" woman., such

as Navratilova, is a 'fake' male, and not natura!. In fact, Richards is considered a 'truer'

female than Navratilova because ofher exaggerated lfemininity' and her inferior tennis

skills. The associations between masculinity and skill are especially intense at elite levels

ofsport where the meaning ofexcellence remains tightly entwined with concepts of ( masculine skiU and male physiology. Successful female athletes rarely escape suspicion of illicitly attempting to acquire a male body through steroid use. Ail steroid users are

denounced as cheaters, but women are denounced as gender transgressors.33

The Olympic anti-doping protocol, as Bruce Kidd has argued, enforces a regime

that is far stricter than the standards ofpersonal conduct in other spheres ofactivity.

Olympic athletes are proscribed from using more than 300 legal drugs, many ofwhich

have no demonstrable effect on performance. The Olympie drug protocol is defended in

the interest ofathletes' health and a llevel playing field'. However, as Bruce Kidd explains,

the prohibition deals only with the symptoms, and the protocol can do very little to create

a llevel playing field' when widespread inequality distorts access to other resources, such

as specialized facilities and coaching.34

3 lBirrell and Cole. 393. 32Balsamo, 10. ( 33Cahn. 263. 34Bruce Kidd, The Stnlgglefor Canadian Sport (Toronto: University ofToronto Press,

87 ( Women are not only suspected ofplaying unfairly within women's competitio~ they are suspected ofunfairly trying to compete with men. Women struggle for the

resources traditionally enjoyed by men, and achieving this equality could be within grasp.

However, changing the natural body is unacceptable- not because it is unhealthy, nor

because it gives women an advantage over their same-sex rivais, but because they will no longer be 'natura!' women.

The Olympie poliey ofmandatory sex testing rests on similar suspicions. In 1968,

the IOC began genetic testing using a procedure called the buccal smear, where tissue is

scraped from the inside ofthe athIete's cheek and analyzed microscopically to evaluate the

chromosomes offemaIe Olympians. Although the tests have ooly ever uncovered one

competitor attempting to pass as a woman (a German athlete named Hermann Ratjent

reveaIed in 1957 that the Nazi party had pressured him into competing as a woman in the ( 1936 Berlin Olympics,35) several athletes who have been raised as women and understand themselves to be femaIe are discovered to have irregular chromosome patterns and are

banned tram competition.36 Cahn points out that aside from women athletes finding the

procedure humiliating and intrusive, the tests leave no room for instances ofambiguity,

and they equate gender strietly with genetic makeup, ignoring all other factors such as the

physical, hormonal, psychological and cultural. "Men are not tested because they are

presumed male. Women are always tested because they are suspects. ,,37 The dispute over

sex testing mirrors the steroid controversy, simply reversing the charges against the

femaIe athlete. In the first case, the female athlete is suspected ofeoncealing inherent

masculine advantages, and in the latter case, she is suspeeted ofillegally acquiring the

1996) 62-63. 35Cahn,263. ( 36Cahn, 263. 37Cahn, 264.

88 advantages ofthe maIe body. [n either case, the image ofthe female athlete is that ofan • imposter, and the assumption is that athletic superiority is rooted in male biology.38

As demonstrated by the apparatus ofand rationaIe for 'drug testing' and 'sex

testing' in sport, the female athlete body is aIways already a suspicious body. [t is

therefore a body subject not only to suspicion but to its "corresponding technologies of

normalization"39 V-°hich take explicitly gendered forms and subject the female body to

routine monitoring and invasions designed to detect lIillegal" or "unnatural" substances

and abnorrnalities.

The histories of women i11 genera/ and the ath/etic fema/e body more specifical/y are embedded in suspicion, bodily/biological examination, and bodily probes and invasions. {. .. / Gender verification tests constilute one e/ement in a matrix of surveillance and po/icing practices of the boundaries aroundgendered bodies. 40

( As Susan Birrell argues, the transgressive potential of the muscular woman is illustrated in the anxiety that she has provoked historically. The athletic woman has

historically been inscribed by suspicion that can be traced to early theories of

homosexuality in which homosexuality was a symptom ofor caused by gender inversion.

Such theories led to attempts to focale homosexuality (gender deviallce) in the body Ihrough bodi/y examinations aimed at delecting evidence of gender inversion (bodily deviallce). which at least illitially. for lesbians meant a bodily search for masculinity. The female ath/ete was and remains suspicious because of both ils apparent masculinizalion and ils position as a border case that challenges the normalized feminine and masculine body.41

38Cahn, 264-265. 39Birrell and Cole, 18. 40Birrell and Cole, 18. ( 41Cheryl Cole, "Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies ofthe Body", Birrell and Cole, 20.

89 Like Balsamo, Cheryl Cole links the athletic 'woman as suspect' to the new • reproductive body scientific panopticism. Building on Foucault's discussion ofvision and Haraway's arguments about the body/technology relationship, the new scientific

panopticon is one that moves into a different logic ofvisual power by its literai

penetration ofthe body. Scientific technology has produced fetal images, for example,

that work ta establish the fetus as an entity independent ofthe mother's body. "Such

images are then taken up to produce the fetus as 'individual' and to set in place the

appearance ofan adversarial mother-fetus relationship in which the pregnant woman's

body is viewed as a threat to the fetus."42 The fetus becomes a surveillance mechanism

and state interests are pursued through surrogacy politics and a logic ofneo-eugenics.

Cole wams that suspected pregnancy and fetal rights issues may become grounds for

mandatory pregnancy testing offemale athletes.

( Related to the CUITent debates around reproduction is the Human Genome Project, the international project to map and sequence 3 billion pairs ofDNA. Eugenicists are

beginning ta acknowledge the possibility ofbodies designed for enhanced sport

performance: "The Human Genome Project, developments in molecular genetics, and

attempts to determine genetic links ta sport performance have c1ear implications for the

sport world, including reproductive and racial issues. ,,43 According ta geneticists, the

developments ofthe Human Genome Project will extend research that has probed bodies

in search ofgenetic links to sport performance and may lead ta the "in vitro fertilization of

gametesll from donors selected on the basis ofsorne phenotypicai criteria or "the presence

ofdesired genetic polymorphisms." As Mike Featherstone argues:

The potential consequences. for sport are tremendous. Not only is there the capacity ta enhance performance and repair. or replace body parts to

( 42Birrell and Cole, 20. 43BiITell and Cole, 22.

90 produce cyberbodies. There is a/so the potentia/ ta genetical/y design • optimum types ofbodies best suited to partieu/ar sports. oU The 'cyberbody' seems ta be a more readily acceptable cultural concept than that ofthe

transgendered body. 'Masculinizing' drugs may still be denounced even as genetically

coded athletes begin being cultured in laboratories.

Bodybuilding and Technology ofthe "Self'

The Human Genome Project, new technologies and reproductive politics have

foregrounded the body/power relation, "illuminating the role ofthe body as a central

ideological resource, especially its position ofmanagement in a race/sex-gender system in

advanced capitalism."45 Foucault's notion oftechnologies ofbodily production is that of

the panopticon through which modem power works to produce docile bodies, that is, the

manipulation, subjection, and regulation ofbodies in time and space. He suggests the term ( "technology" to name the process ofconnection between discursive practices, institutional relations, and material effects that, working together, produce a meaning or a "truth

effectll for the human body. A "technology" therefore articulates power relations, systems

ofcommunication, and productive activities or practices.46 Following from this notion,

sport can be understood as an institution whose central feature is one ofdiscipline and

surveillance. Although Foucault neglected the gendered forros ofbody technologies, his

explanation ofthe body/power relationship has served as an important background for

understanding the making ofthe feminine body. For example, Susan Bordo refers to the

new feminine aesthetic and its obsessions with self-representation as a "plastic paradigm"-

lia Taylorism ofthe body manufactured within an ideology oflimitless improvement, an

44Birrell and Cole, 23. ( 45Birrell and Cole, 14. 46Balsamo, 21.

91 ( ideology supported by science and technologies." As such, sport provides a narrative that articulates a "technology" or "practice ofthe self'. ~7

The new feminine body, the woman intertwined with a Nauti/us machine, is the expression of the postmodenl-embodied gendered-panoptic subjectivity, the "woman" whose scnllillY extends beyolld her OWIl body 10 other feminine bodies. This gendered surveillance produces contempl for gender ambiguity and "bodies ofexcess" as the power relations and the conditions that produce those bodies are ejjaced48

The femaIe gymnast trains in a world ofdiscipline and surveillance. The female

bodybuilder does too, but whereas the gymnast fights the 'body ofexcess', the bodybuilder

strives for it. The female bodybuilder ilIustrates the new athleticism's contradictory

influences on the femaIe body, but defies 'nature' by creating a 'hyper-built' body. Balsamo

suggests that when Judith Butler describes the gendered body as lia set ofrepeated acts

within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeals over time to produce the appearance

ofsubstance, Il she aIso implies a way ofunderstanding the process whereby II naturalized"

gender identities are socially and cuiturally reproduced as part ofnew technological

formations .....9 In analyzing the mechanical reconstruction ofthe gendered body, it is clear,

for Balsamo, that women's bodies remain a privileged site for the cultural reinscription of

the 'naturaI'. Therefore, "perfectly attuned to contemporary culture, the female

bodybuilder is a machine dream ofcyborg identity, the female form that works to recreate

the female form, using the science ofweights, resistance, and kinesthetic labor. 1I50

Cyborg bodies pump iron- physically fit, yet IIllllatliral/y crafted, theyare hyper-built. Cyborg bodies raise the issue of possible /lew forms of

-l7Hillary Radner, Shopping Around: Feminine Culture and the Pursuit ofPleasure.

48BirreU and Cole, 17. ( 49Balsamo, 10. SOBalsamo, 12.

92 gendered embodiment. Their recrafted bodies defy the na/lirai givenness • ofphysicalgender identity.51 Historically the properly feminine body has been considered ta be constitutionally

weak and pathologicai. T0 be bath female and strong implicitly violates traditional codes

offeminine identity. Thus, as Balsamo argues, women who use bodybuilding technology

to sculpt their bodies can be considered doubly transgressive; tirst, "because femininity

and nature are so closely aligned, any attempt to reconstruct the body is transgressive

against the 'natura!' identity ofthe female body." Second, "when female athletes use

technology to achieve physical muscularity- a male prerogative "(as viewed by feminists

such as Ursula Franklin and Judy Wacjman-) "they transgress the 'natural' order ofgender identity. ,,52 Balsamo concludes:

When female bodies par/icipate in bodybuilding activities or olher alhletic events that are traditionally lInderstood 10 be the domain ofmale bodies. Ihe meanings ofthose bodies are not simply recoded according 10 ( an oppositional or empowered set of gendered connotations. [... / They reveal, instead, how culture processes transgressive bodies in slich a way as ta keep each body in ifs place- that is subjected to the 'other,.53

The culture offemale bodybuilding reveals the artificiality ofattributes of'natural'

gender identity and the malleability ofcultural ideals ofgender identity. Although Balsamo

concludes that, ultimateIy, it aiso announces quite IoudIy the persistence with which

gender and race hierarchies structure technologicai practices, thereby limiting the

disruptive possibilities oftechnological transgressions, she has also demonstrated the ways

in which it has subtly altered the dimensions and markers ofwhat counts as a 'natural'

body.

Muscularity and physical development are now being heralded as women's "new

sex appeal". In a sense, bodybuilding can he seen accordingly, as complicit with the very

51 Balsamo, 39. ( 52Balsamo, 324. 53Balsamo, 324.

93 fonns ofgender identity it seeks to technologically disrupt. However~ in revealing the • fervour with which the muscular body is culturally (re)defined according to dominant beliefs about feminine beauty and health, the athletic capabilities and power ofthe female

body are highlighted. As well~ it is not only the body which is being redefined, it is the

dominant cultural beliefs about femininity which must be transfonned to contain it.

Whether technologically recrafted female bodies are deligitimized as cultural markers of

femininity, or whether they are accepted according ta redefined cultural ideals, the

transformation is not a symbolic one; rather~ it is located in the physiological body and is

therefore real.

Although the female body is subordinated within institutionalized systems ofpower andknowledge andcrisscrossed by incompatible discourses, il is notfully determined by those systems ofmealling; andalthough woman is technologically COl1stnlcted, her excesses accumula/e, assembling the resourcesi1echniques to signify/constnlct herselfas transgressive of. ifnot resistent to, the discourses that seek to contain her. 5~ (

( 54Balsamo, 39.

94 1 References Balsamo, Anne, Technologies ofthe Gendered Body' Reading Cyborg Women, Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.

Birrell, Sus~ and Cole, Cheryl. Women, Sport and Culture, Illinois:Human Kinetics, 1994.

Borda, Susan. Unbearable Weigbt· Feminism Western Culture & the Body. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993.

Cahn, Susan K. Cowing 00 Strong' Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Sport NY: Free Press, 1994.

Cole, Cheryl. "Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies of the Body" in Birrell and Cole.

FestIe, Mary Jo. Playing Nice' poUties and Apologies in Women's Sports. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Gray, Chris Hables, ed. The Cyborg Handbook. New York: Routledge, 1994. ( Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women' The Reinyeotioo ofNature New York: Routledge, 1991.

Kidd, Bruce. The Struggle for Canadiao Sport. Toronto: University ofTorooto Press, 1996.

Radner, Hillary, Shopping Arouod' Feminine Culture and the Pursuit ofpleasure.

Ryan, Joan. Little Girls in pretty Boxes' The Making and Breaking ofElîte Gymnasts and Figure Skaters. New York: Wamer Books, 1995.

Stone, Allucquere Rosanne, "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Staries About Virtual Cultures", Cyberspaee First Steps. ed. Michael Benedikt, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

The New York Times, Aug. 15, 1976.

Wajcm~ Judy. Feminism Confronts Techoology, University Park: Penn State U. Press, 1991.

(

9S CHAPTER FOUR ( Conclusion

A girl was /lot, as 1 had supposed. simply what 1 was; il was what 1 had to become.

-Alice Munroe ("Boys and Girls'') 1

Sport exists in multiple versions and has referred to many forros ofphysical activity

without regard to place, period, mIes or meaning. Although a recognized definition

remains elusive, sport cannot be seen as an unchangjng, transhistorical, and universal

cultural forro performed and understood essentially the same way by aIl people in aIl

societies. Bruce Kidd suggests a definition of'sports'- as a plurality- that can be

understood best as "distinct creations ofmodernity, fashioned and continually refashioned { in the revolutionizing conditions ofindustrial capitalist societies. ,,2 This vision is a useful starting point for a definition ofsport which accounts for gendered knowledges and

practices as a key defining characteristic.

1 choose to conclude with my own notion ofsport rather than beginning with it

because the arguments put forward in my thesis are assumed in this conceptuaIization. My

version ofsport, compatible with Kidd's, is flexible and continually evolving. It includes aIl

ranges ofability and organization, but most importantly, my notion ofsport is competitive

and emphasizes a deliberate pursuit ofever-ascending standards ofexcellence. It is against

the backdrop ofthis pursuit ofathletic excellence that the limitations, prescriptions and

proscriptions for female behavior, as weil as the anxieties about female athletes fulfilling

1Alice Munroe. "Boys and Girls", Dance ofthe Happy Shades (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited, 1968) 119. ( 2Kidd, Bruce. The Stnlgglefor Canadian Sport (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1996) 12. -( their potentiaJ, are revealed. For, when women remain 'weaker', theyare left freer to participate in the male realm with little confrontation. It is when they challenge male

dominance in this reaIm that socio-cultural expectations are imposed.

More specifically, sport is usefully understood using Judy Wajcman's definition of

technology as a metaphor. Wajcman distinguishes three levels ofher definition: tirst,

technology is a form ofknowledge; second~ it is a form ofhuman activity and practice;

and third, it is a collection ofphysical abjects or hardware.3 Accordingly, sport includes

gendered kno\vledges, practices and bodies. Further, sport can he viewed as a system that

involves organization, procedures, symbols, and vocabulary, as weil as a 'mindset' that

incorporates activities, structures and the art ofstructuring.4 Therefore, sport can be

understood as a gendered system and set ofgendered practices that includes forms of

gendered knowledge, human activity and practice, as weil as physical manifestations ofail

ofthese. It can aIso be differentiated from physical activity in the sense that its participants

{ deliberately pursue excellence and strive to fulfill their athletic potential. It is in this sense

that a female athIete's 'fulfillment' may contradict the socially accepted practices and values

imposed by cultural norms.

Throughout our lives, we learn to embody our gendered subjectivities, and we

learn to identify 'normal' and 'deviant' gender performances in others. Athletes leam a

particualer set of behaviors which, though ine>..~ricably linked to ail other forros ofsociaL

cultural and historicai constnlction, are specifie to the realm ofsport. Notions of'proper'

masculinity and femininity affect our understanding ofmen's and women's performances in

sport, and our notions of 'proper' (gendered) sport affect the way we understand its

participants to be 'masculine' or 'feminine' according to their performances. These are

3Judy Wajcman, Feminism Confronls Technology (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1991). ( 4Ursula Franklin defines technology as a system and set ofpractices in Ursula Franklin, The Real World of Technology (Ontario: Anansi, 1990).

97 ( forms ofgendered knowledges and practices produced through sport. The athletes themselves- their bodies- belong to the 'hardware' ofsport, along with the institutions and

resources required to train them. However, none ofthese parts exists without the others:

knowledges, practices and bodies aIl reflect the others' specifie gendered natures.

Sport knowledges and practices are, in fact, particularly ideologicaUy-charged

because they are centred on the body. The body is our most 'natural' marker ofsexual

identity, and thus, in our socio-cultural imaginations, ofgender identity. Accordingly,

gendered boundaries in sport have traditionally constructed and promoted an ideology of

'natural' gender differences, and sport is a site- a microcosm, where traditionaI beliefs and

assumptions about female weakness and male strength are promoted and maintained.

Sport is understood to he both reflective as weIl as indicative ofthe female/male

dichotomy which exists in the more general social mythology.

As we have seen, many gendered boundaries are constructed that work to

( ideologicaJIy contain the female athIete. These boundaries, however, are also the

ideological seams, through which one can potentiaUy- albeit with a limited scope­

challenge the normalizing processes ofsport. The female athlete should therefore strive to

surmount the restrictive boundaries between masculinelfeminine, adultlchild and

constructed/natural, and she should strive towards a notion ofsport where versions ofthis

practice do not invoke connotations ofcompetence or incampetence relative ta the other.

As we approach the year 2000, we are charting new courses ofnegotiations. The

next boundary that the female athlete will have to challenge may he proposed through

genetic research. Whether or not genetic manipulation for athIetic purposes is viewed as

ethically correct, ifsuch processes are embarked upon, female athletes will likely be denied

the opportunities granted to their maIe counterparts, potentially resulting in a new and

improved version ofthe 'naturally superior' male athlete. One therefore must keep

broaching existing boundaries with a weather eye out for the new ones on the horizon. (

98 ( As weil, the opportunity exists for women to challenge the hegemonic structure of

sport- not ooly through self-development, but through the developmental process ofsport itsel( New sports are being cultivated at an unprecedented rate. With the explosion of

commercial (and therefore media) interest in 'extreme' sports, athletes and organizers are

scrambling to innovate, change and expand the experience ofsport. Sport, like gender, is a

dynamic social process, and just as gender-boundaries and definitions can be negotiated,

so too can those ofsport. The definition ofsport is in a state ofgrowth and flux, and

women have the opportunity to stake a daim to the space. For example, in the new

multisport phenomenon known as adventure racing, women are proving with their

remarkable performances that they have the endurance and intelligence to compete with,

and overtake, their male counterparts in gruelling tests ofathIetic ability. Those entering

the sport do not broach a strictly male preserve, but rather one in which women hold a

respected and valuable position. It is naive to assume that beliefs ofmale superiority will

( not persist even in the world ofadventure racing and other such contests, but ifwomen

continue to enlist themselves and succeed at these sports at the entry level, they have the

opportunity to begin the reconstruction ofsporting experiences for women and girls, as

weil as for men and boys. A project for future study (and one that 1 intend to pursue)

should explore the ways in which gendered subjectivities are (re)negotiated in this new

athletic realm.

As we have seen, sport is a gendered terrain producing and maintaining its own particular gendered assumptions and knowledges. "sports animate a rich, dense tapestry

ofmythological and symbolic narratives." 5 As we have also seen, within sport, there

exists another gendered division between 'masculine' and 'feminine' sports. At one polar

extreme, 'masculine' sports generally involve aggressive and/or violent behavior, as weil as

raw power, strength and speed. Football and boxing are good examples ofthese. ( 5Kidd,5.

99 ( 'Feminine' sports, such as rythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming, generally involve 'feminine' aestheticism~ as weil as seemingly effortless precision and grace.

However, just as gender is more usefully understood as the distribution ofcharacteristics

across a continuum rather than as preconceived identities originating from two distinct

poles, so too is sport. Most sports exist somewhere between football and synchronized

swimmimg; Most competitive sports incorporate both 'male' and 'female' ideals. Equestrian

sport, for example- the ooly Olympic sport in which men and women compete against

each other, and therefore a model in this regard for developing sports- is won by the

competitor who can be both aggressive and sensitive~ who can possess both strength and

endurance, and whose movements are both precise and decisive. 6 In another example,

competitors in long distance triathlon7 require as much mental strength as physical.

Cycling, running and swimming aH incorporate elements ofpower and technique~

aggressiveness and endurance, existing somewhere along the continuum in a space which

( cannot be defined as 'male' or 'femaIe' but rather as both and neither. Sport, therefore, need

not be gendered, and dichotomous classifications are counter-productive for both gender

and sport. Knowedges, practices and bodies are multifarious and can not be determined

through gendered classifications.

Finally, the notion of'competition' itselfwithin sport should be embraced by

women. Competitive sport has historically been male-defined because it is inherently

conducive to the arousal of('masculine') aggression, and has always been deemed a

serious and worthwhile (male) pursuit. 'Physical activity' has traditionally been associated

with its opposite= 'feminine', uncompetitive and unimportant. This is not to say that what

we understand ta be 'physical activity' versus what we understand ta be 'competitive sport'

6Joanne Kay, "Gender and Equestrian Sport", work in progress. 7This is known as the "Ironman" distance because it is the title ofthe first such and most famous competition, held in Hawaii. Although this race distance is sometimes equated to ( adventure racing, triathletes undertake the 4km. swim, 180 km. bike and 42.2 km. run individually rather than as part ofa team.

100 ( is not a positive and worthwhile pursuit. On the contrary, it can not only be beneficiai on many levels, it is often more appropriate to an individual than is competitive sport.

However, 'physicai activity' and 'exercise' have come ta connote a more 'feminine' pursuit,

ideal for psychological and physical heaIth, fitness and beauty, yet often more in the

service ofcultural ideals than in the service ofself It is not only problematic because it has

come ta imply a more 'passive' body- an object body on which activity is performed, but,

as weIl, the terrninology and discourse which surround it are reminiscent ofthe early-

century medical discourses which advised amounts and versions of'activity' ta women.

What sport connotes, on the other hand, is an emphasis on performance and 'self­

service'. The body in sport is the subject ofactivity rather than the abject ofculture.8 As

we have seen, dichotomous thirrking in this and other realms is not productive. Perhaps,

therefore, a more appropriate and useful notion ofthe 'active body'- a notion that cao

encompass sport rather than stand in contradiction ta it- is a notion ofa body that pursues

( active physicality rather than physical activity. In other words, one should see the femaie

athlete body as a body that "builds" and Itrealizes", and is capable ofcarving out its own

space, even ifit means chaIIenging cultural norms and expectations. Women and girls

should be encouraged therefore not only to participate in physical activity, but in

competitive sport. Young girls need to be taught to throw, catch, run, jump, and even

tackIe, ta experience their bodies as active rather than acted upon. They need ta be taught

that along with the development ofgrace and poise, cao be the development ofpower,

strength and endurance. Most importantly, they need ta be taught that these are the

qualities ofathletes, not ofmen or women.

8Mary Pipher has written about Simone de Beauvoirs beliefthat adolescence is the time when girls who were the subject oftheir own lives become the abjects ofothers' lives. Sport could therefore be a particularly powerful tool for adolescent girls to maintain their ( "selves" in the face of what Pipher caUs a "girl poisoning culture." Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia; Saving the Selves ofAdolescent Girls (NY: Ballantine Books, 1994) 21, 12.

101 ( 1 arrClnged myself tightly under the covers and wenl on with one of the stories 1 WClS tellillg myse/jfrom night to night. These stories were about myselj, when 1 had grown a little older; lhey look place in Cl world that was recognizably mine, yet one thal presented opporlllnities for courage, boldness andse/f-sClcrifice, as mine never did 9 -Alice Mlinroe ("Boys and Girls'~

1

( 9Munroe, 113.

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