While both men and women work out in contemporary gyms, popular conceptions of the gym as a masculine institution continue. The authors examine organizational processes within a chain of women-only gyms to explore whether and how these processes have feminized the historically masculine gym. They examine the physical setting and equipment, the established procedures for customers' use of machines, and the interactional styles of employees as components of the organization's structure. They argue that the organization's use of technology and labor mobilizes customers' participation in a feminized organizational culture of nonjudgmental and noncompetitive sociability. Organizational processes create a context that fosters gendered interactions and identities among customers. The organizational context calls gendered behavior into play such that the performance is naturalized. The processes outlined may occur in other cases of organizational recoding and suggest ways that transposable gender practices may change the gender coding of an institution yet leave gender hierarchies intact.
This study provides a textual analysis of the 2009/2010 Food Network series, Tailgate Warriors (TW). The show features teams representing National Football League (NFL) cities in competition to determine who has the best tailgate fare. TW is part of an evolution in Food Network programming from an instructional model with a largely female audience to a competition-based entertainment spectacle geared increasingly toward men. Hegemonic masculinity is reinforced across the four themes identified in our analysis of the mediated intersection of food and sport. Competitive spectacle, the preoccupation with meat, the complexity of menus and food preparation, and discourses around place identity all work to distance cookery from the femininely coded domestic space of the kitchen.
In 1972 Rosemary (Rosie) Casals, an established player in women’s tennis and winner of several doubles championships at Wimbledon, appeared on the court of the staid English event in a tennis dress with a purple design with a ‘VS’ (Virginia Slims – a cigarette brand marketed to a female audience) embroidered on her outfit. The next day she appeared on the number one court for the women’s doubles semi-final match with the cigarette insignia clearly displayed across the front of the athletic wear. Instructed to adhere to Wimbledon’s dress code of ‘predominantly’ white outfits, officials warned Casals would be banned from further play if she did not comply. Forced to obey Wimbledon dress codes, Casals conceded, though not without a verbal assault directed at tournament officials. In this paper we argue, analysing oral history as well as various press reports in the US and abroad, that Casals’ ensemble and the reaction by officials and those in the media symbolized far more than a perceived fashion faux pas by the tennis star. Rather, Casals’ attire and public reaction to it throw into sharp relief debates around equal rights and female independence that raged throughout society during the late 1960s and 1970s. Importantly, the discussions and tensions in relation to Casals’ tennis outfit did not simply mirror these broader conversations they contributed greatly to them. The dress, like Casals, challenged rules of conduct on the court – and social convention off it. The attire was, for her, a form of self-expression, which personified a style she was eager to portray to a public, some of whom were not necessarily similarly keen on its exhibition.
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