Exploring women’s experiences: embodied pathways and influences for exercise participation

Journal article


Clark, A. 2019. Exploring women’s experiences: embodied pathways and influences for exercise participation. Societies. 9 (1). https://doi.org/10.3390/soc9010016
AuthorsClark, A.
Abstract

It has been well-documented that women face pressures to conform to a slim, toned, and athletic body, becoming “tyrannised” by beauty ideals. Under these contemporary ideologies of perfectionism, women are placed under constant surveillance, evaluation and, objectification and are thus reduced to “being” their bodies. However, there is little known about the potential relationships between different types of exercise, body image, and exercise motivation. With this in mind, this paper contributes towards a small but developing body of research that utilises feminist phenomenology to reveal twelve women’s early embodied motivations for exercising and draws upon material gathered from a three-year ethnography into the embodied experiences of women in fitness cultures. This paper delves into the influences on their continued participation over time and explores how these experiences shape their understandings of the embodied self and the broader constructions of the gendered body.

The discussion provided illuminates how early influences on exercise participation and how pressures on women to conform to dominant notions of the “feminine” body are imposed by structural, cultural, historical, and localised forces in ways that affect and shape future physical activity participation, and the physical cultures where these tensions are played out.

KeywordsFeminism; exercise participation; physical education; embodiment; feminist phenomenology; body image
Year2019
JournalSocieties
Journal citation9 (1)
PublisherMDPI
ISSN2075-4698
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.3390/soc9010016
Publication dates
Print19 Feb 2019
Publication process dates
Deposited19 Feb 2019
Accepted14 Feb 2019
Publisher's version
Output statusPublished
Additional information

This is an Open Access article.

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https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/88ywv/exploring-women-s-experiences-embodied-pathways-and-influences-for-exercise-participation

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