Creating Distance from Body Issues: Exploring New Materialist Feminist Possibilities for Renegotiating Gendered Embodiment. (25th February 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Coffey, Julia
• Is Part Of: Leisure sciences. Volume 41:Number 1/2(2019)
• Page Start: 72
• Page End: 90
• Publication Date: 2019-02-25
• Subjects: body image -- embodiment -- feminism -- gender -- the body; Leisure -- Periodicals; 306.4812
• DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2018.1539685
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0149-0400

Abstract

Abstract: The body's active role in the production of gendered embodiments is a key focus for feminist cultural studies and leisure studies. The article draws on new materialist feminist scholarship to explore how gender relations are produced and negotiated in physical culture through one case study example taken from a wider study of young people's experiences of the body and self-image over time. The article explores how gendered embodiment is assembled through the socio-material circumstances of everyday life. For one particiapnt, 'Ann', "creating distance" from appearance concerns was an embodied process which involved new practices and encounters (e.g., walking for leisure, reading feminist literature) and relationships and engagements with others (e.g., a partner, friends, family). The potential for feminism to open possibilities to imagine the body otherwise is also discussed in relation to recent efforts to foster social justice imperatives in leisure sciences and feminist physical cultural studies.