New Sporting Femininities Embodied Politics in Postfeminist Times

This edited collection critically explores new and emerging models of female athleticism in an era characterised as postfeminist. It approaches postfeminism through a critical lens to investigate new forms of politics being practised by women in physical activity, sport and online spaces at the intersections of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and ability.

New Sporting Femininities features chapters on celebrity athletes such as Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey, alongside studies of the online fitspo movement and women’s growing participation in activities like roller derby, skateboarding and football. In doing so, it highlights key issues and concerns facing diverse groups of women in a rapidly changing gender-sport landscape. This collection sheds new light on the complex and often contradictory ways that women’s athletic participation is promoted, experienced and embodied in the context of postfeminism, commodity feminism and emerging forms of popular feminism.

1. Femininities, Sport and Physical Culture in Postfeminist, Neoliberal Times; Kim Toffoletti, Jessica Francombe-Webb and Holly Thorpe.- Section 1: Postfeminism and the Sport-Media-Industrial Complex.- 2. What’s New About Sporting Femininities? Female Athletes and the Sport-Media Industrial Complex; Cheryl Cooky.- 3. Don’t be a Do-Nothing Bitch: Popular Feminism and Women’s Physical Empowerment in the UFC; Jennifer McClearen.- 4. The Performance of Blackness and Femininity in Postfeminist Times: Visualising Serena Williams Within the Context of Corporate Globalisation; Kristi Tredway.- 5. Postfeminist Paradoxes and Cultural Difference: Unpacking Media Representations of American Muslim Sportswomen Ibtihaj and Dalilah Muhammad; Sumaya F. Samie and Kim Toffoletti.- 6. Killing the Football Widow: NFL Marketing Beyond “Pink It & Shrink It”; Jeffrey Montez de Oca and Molly Cotner.- Section 2: Everyday Athletic Girls and Women Negotiating Postfeminism.- 7. Re-focusing the Image of the “Superwoman” with “No Colour”: “Writing Back to the Centre” from a Globalised View; Laura Azzarito.- 8. New Sporting Femininities in China: The Embodied Politics of Roller Derby; Adele Pavlidis.- 9. Footballing Femininities: The Lived Experiences of Young Females Negotiating “The Beautiful Game”; Jessica Francombe-Webb and Laura Palmer.- Section 3: Postfeminism in Online Sport and Fitness Spaces.- 10. Lean Light Fit and Tight: Fitblr Blogs and the Postfeminist Transformation Imperative; Sarah Riley and Adrienne Evans.- 11. #TakeBackFitspo: Building Queer Futures in/Through Social Media; Cathryn B. Lucas & Matthew R. Hodler.- 12. Sport, Postfeminism and Women with Disabilities: Female Paralympians on Social Media; Kim Toffoletti.- 13. Empowering “Sporty Sisters” through “Active Living”: A Feminist Multi-modal Critical Discourse Analysis of the Lorna Jane Fitness Fashion Website; Meredith Nash.- 14. The Girl Effect and “Positive” Representations of Sporting Girls of the Global South: SocialMedia Portrayals of Afghan Girls on Skateboards; Holly Thorpe, Lyndsay Hayhurst and Megan Chawansky.

Kim Toffoletti is Associate Professor of Sociology at Deakin University, Australia. She specialises in the study of women’s sporting experiences and representations, using transnational feminist and critical postfeminist perspectives.

Holly Thorpe is Associate Professor of Sport and Physical Culture at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her recent publications include Women in Action Sport Cultures (Palgrave, 2016) and Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures (Palgrave, 2014).

Jessica Francombe-Webb is Lecturer in Sport and Physical Culture at the University of Bath, UK. Her research draws from the discipline of feminist physical cultural studies in order to explore the contested politics of the (in)active body in relation to health, physical activity, body size, and appearance.