AbNormAll Bodies. Gender, dis/ability and health in sport, physical education and beyond

Abstract

The overall theme guiding this dissertation concerns the ways in which body norms are constructed, reproduced, negotiated and resisted in different contexts. The central research questions are: 1) How do Dutch youth and adults discursively construct (their) bodies and health; 2) How are these constructions informed by discourses about gender and dis/ability; and 3) How do discourses about gender, dis/ability and health intersect to produce specific subjectivities and a hierarchy of bodies? To unpack these issues surrounding normative embodiment I draw on the work of Foucault and feminist poststructuralist approaches. In the majority of this dissertation I focus on sport and physical education as sites where body norms are constructed, negotiated and challenged. In the empirical chapters I tease out the constructions and experiences of three different groups: physical educators (chapter 2), able-bodied youth (chapter 3) and disabled youth (chapter 5). In chapter 4 I widen my scope to explore how body norms are constructed in similar ways beyond physical education and sport and what can be learned about intersections of different embodied social markers (e.g. gender, dis/ability, race/ethnicity, sexuality and age) that can result in exclusionary practices. In chapter 6 I pose similar questions about normative embodiment to the ones I investigate in the other chapters, but instead of focusing on sport and PE, I explore my own experiences related to the context in which I am professionally embedded: my university department. The results of this research indicate that participants in the various studies emphasized discourses about health and appearance. The participants constructed a normative body that was white, male, abled, heterosexual, middle class and slender. The non-normative Other bodies that the participants constructed – a constellation of female, non-white, disabled, fat, homosexual and lower class bodies – functioned as important cues that they used to position themselves in normative ways. The marginalization and exclusion of these non-normative Others was apparent but often implicit. I argue that the disciplining practices that emerge from those dominant constructions of body norms are based on several sources which form part of an ‘assemblage’. Furthermore, I describe how disciplinary practices seems to shift along two axes. The first axis ‘visible-invisible’ suggests that disciplinary practices vary according to the visibility of an embodied marker that is deemed salient in the construction of normative embodiment. The second axis ‘changeable-fixed’ suggests that disciplinary practices depend on the degree to which people perceive the embodied marker under scrutiny to be changeable. Additionally, the data show that resistance to dominant body and health norms emerged mostly through interaction with peers and from marginal subject positions. Empathic understanding and critical reflexivity appear to be necessary skills that enable people to resist dominant discourses. I argue that more attention should be paid to the development of these skills in order to expose and decrease social inequalities. The use of creative research methods such as those that utilize stories, poetry, photo material and visual images could help achieve this goal. Furthermore, critical media literacy could be incorporated in schools to offer students and teachers the opportunity to analyze and challenge dominant body norms related to gender, dis/ability, body size etcetera. This may help disrupt dominant discourses about the body in order to move towards a truly ‘healthy’ environment in which bodies of all sizes, shapes, genders, colours, and abilities can be celebrated.