Women, gender, leisure and place: towards a more ‘humanistic’ geography of women's leisure

To cite this article: Matthew Atencio (2008) 'Freaky is just how I get down': investigating the fluidity of minority ethnic feminine subjectivities in dance, Leisure Studies, 27:3, 311-327, This article addresses a lacuna of research into minority ethnic young women's leisure participation by specifically focusing on the experiences and embodied subjectivities of two ethnic young women participating in dance. In the context of a qualitative research study based in an American inner-city, post-structural theory is used to signal the operation of intersecting racial, ethnic, gender, and class discourses and power relations. This analysis focuses on how the two young women engaged with dance cultures that were underpinned by particular dance forms; these dance forms arguably reproduced specific versions of 'normalised' femininity. The article then illustrates how the young women actively negotiated their dance cultures in order to construct multiple and shifting minority ethnic subjectivities. Commentary from one young woman, 'Carrie', indicates that she used her high school dance spaces as well as festival and club dance spaces to take up fluid white, black and 'mixed' subjectivities. I then investigate how a Salsa dance space provided the discursive resources through which another young woman, 'Jenny', constructed a proliferating diasporic identity. While Jenny identified as both black and Haitian, her hyperbolic dance performances re-enacted various other subjectivities. These accounts demonstrate the possibility that young women can take up multiple versions of femininity in their leisure participation. These femininities reflect both alignment and resistance to dominant discourses which have ascendancy within young women's leisure contexts.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

‘Freaky is just how I get down’: investigating the fluidity of minority ethnic feminine subjectivities in dance

Atencio

2008

“…There is a body of work of devoted to the geography of sport (Bale, 1989(Bale, , 1993(Bale, , 1994 and, more generally, leisure (Crouch, 2000;Henderson and Frelke, 2000) which has been built upon to a limited extent in order to examine more fully the links between sport and sectarianism in Northern Ireland (Bairner and Shirlow, 1998. In terms of the application of geography to the leisure experience, undoubtedly some of the most impressive research has dealt with gender and specifically with constraints on female use of leisure spaces (Mowl and Towner, 1995;Scraton and Watson, 1998;Aitchison, 1999). The paper draws upon all of this existing literature and more importantly on new research findings in an attempt to arrive at a more meaningful picture than has so far been offered of the relationship between territory, sectarianism and the use of leisure centres in Belfast.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

When leisure turns to fear: fear, mobility, and ethno-sectarianism in Belfast

Bairner

Shirlow

2003

There has been a considerable amount of academic discussion of the type of constraints that influence the non-use of leisure facilities. These analyses have taken into consideration such factors as gender, social class, age and mobility. At least some of these include the fear of entering certain spaces as an additional constraint. This paper reveals that in Belfast, fear, which may be based either on personal experience or on imaginary scenarios that result from rumour and innuendo, is a major factor that deters people from using accessible leisure facilities. The paper contains extensive qualitative material that underlines this point. The authors argue that, despite an ongoing peace process, the sectarianization of place has a massive impact on the use of leisure facilities and recommend that fear should be more often taken into account when constraints on leisure participation are discussed.

“…And there are some studies, notably by Mowl and Towner (1995) on leisure, place and gender/class relations, and by Scraton and Watson (1998) on the postmodern city, women and public leisure spaces which identify the intersections of leisure with geography, gender, race/ethnicity and social class. The need to explore further the leisure/sexuality/space dynamic, and the complexities of gender-power relations in leisure spheres has been identified (Aitchison et al, 2000;Aitchison, 2005).…”

Section: Leisure Studies Heterosexuality and Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Sexercise’: working out heterosexuality in Jane Fonda’s fitness books

Mansfield

2011

This paper explores the connection between the promotion of heterosexual norms in women's fitness books written by or in the name of Jane Fonda during the 1980s and the commodification of women's fitness space in both the public and private spheres. The paper is set in the absence of overt discussions of normative heterosexuality in leisure studies and draws on critical heterosexual scholarship as well as the growing body of work theorising geographies of corporeality and heterosexuality. Using the principles of media discourse analysis, the paper identifies three overlapping characteristics of heterosexuality represented in Jane Fonda's fitness books, and embodied through the exercise regimes; respectable heterosexual desire , monogamous procreation and domesticity. The paper concludes that the promotion and prescription of exercise for women in the Jane Fonda Workout books centred on the re-production and embodiment of heterosexual corporeality. Set within an emerging commercial landscape of women's fitness in the 1980s such exercise practices were significant in the legitimation and institutionalisation of heteronormativity.