Margaret Carlisle Duncan, "The Promise of Artemis"
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Engendering physicality

The gender oppositions that concern us here, however, relate to contrasting styles of physicality. Gendering practices serve to produce and play up physical differences between girls and boys.[9] From infancy, boys are encouraged to become knowledgeable about their bodies, to strengthen and discipline them, and to test their physical limits.[10] They are expected to be active and boisterous at home, in school, on the playground. Boys learn what their bodies can do for them by constantly experimenting, and they often acquire basic movement skills - throwing, kicking, batting, climbing, running, swimming - early on. Their parents give them skateboards, bikes, footballs, basketballs, baseballs, and bats, toys that develop the gross motor skills related to the large muscles of the body.[11] Through sports boys are taught to strive hard, to compete, and to win. Even the ways boys sit, stand, and recline suggest an ease with their physical capabilities; they take up more space and make more expansive gestures than girls.[12] Boys are encouraged to take ownership of their physicality in a way that girls are not.[13]

Girls learn that they must subdue their bodies. It is considered unbecoming for a girl to fidget, to engage in vigorous, noisy horseplay, to excel in sports.[14] Teachers and parents instruct girls to keep their bodies in check; girls are told that running, jumping, and yelling are not ladylike in any setting.[15] Parents give girls tea sets, dolls, dollhouses, and coloring books, encouraging activities that develop the fine motor skills related to the small muscles in their hands. By observing older girls and women, girls learn that they should take up as little space as possible by crossing their legs, ankles, and arms and by restricting their gestures.[15] Early on, girls learn that they should not be the center of attention, so they suppress the kinds of bodily movements that would call attention to themselves. [17]

Yet there is no question that girls have the potential to be excellent athletes. Like boys, girls can master a wide variety of sports, dance, and fitness activities with proper skills instruction in movement fundamentals. In fact, more than one sport scholar has argued that the physical differences between boys and girls are less salient than the differences within each gender group.[18] In the last decade, women in the Olympics have demonstrated astounding virtuosity, even in aggressive high-contact sports that are not considered "gender appropriate" (e.g., graceful and aesthetically pleasing), such as ice hockey and basketball.[19] The victory of the American women in the World Cup soccer championship showed even the most misogynist sports fan that girls and women are capable of great athletic achievements. [20] In short, what girls lack is not athletic talent but the social support to participate and excel in physical activity.

Thus, ideals linked to physical proficiency, choices of activities, and types of movement are a function of gendered practices, not innate differences.[21] More significantly, particular kinds of athleticism such as strength, explosive force, speed, and competitiveness are thought to be most properly male;[22] in a very real way, these qualities define masculinity.[23] It is no wonder that what determines a boy's popularity is his success at sports.[24]

If girls wish to participate in sports or physical activity, our system of gender oppositions creates a dilemma for them. For if boys are powerful, fast, and aggressive, then girls must be weak, slow, and passive in order to be considered feminine. Yet these qualities handicap girls who have a passion for sport. In order to play against the boys, girls have to contravene the dictates of femininity. The more girls succeed in sport, the less suitable their behavior appears.[25] Thus, athletic girls and women are often perceived to be inappropriately masculine; they become interlopers whose incursion into male territory offends the sensibilities of boys and men.[26] In short, when girls want to play, sport becomes a contested terrain.[27]

During adolescence, these gender oppositions intensify.[28] Girls are often encouraged by peers and family members to exhibit what Connell calls "exaggerated femininity," the female counterpart to hegemonic masculinity.[29] Although boys' popularity continues to depend on their athletic prowess, girls' popularity is more likely to depend on a combination of factors such as appearance, clothes, and boyfriends.[30] Adolescent peers tend to scrupulously police the boundaries of gender.[31] This means that both girls and boys are rewarded for "gender-appropriate" behaviors and stigmatized for "gender-inappropriate" behaviors. Girls who cross gender lines by exhibiting such "masculine" behaviors as enthusiasm for sports may be scorned and ostracized.[32] About the time that girls enter middle school or junior high, many of them discover that it is no longer acceptable to act like a tomboy. What was tolerated in the years leading up to adolescence does not now pass muster.

Because of the relationship between sports participation and sexuality, the consequences of girls' demonstrating their athleticism can be especially punitive. Other kids may sexually harass sporting girls, labeling them "lesbians" and "dykes," regardless of their sexual orientation.[33] Unless girls are extraordinarily impervious to this kind of social abuse, many abandon sport and involve themselves in activities that do not provoke such homophobic reactions,[34] sometimes returning to sports when they are older. Even girls who are passionate about sport will back away from it under the threat of having their sexuality impugned. For teenage girls, the social costs of sport participation may be far too great.[35]

Against this backdrop of girls' socialization into "gender-appropriate" behaviors, I now offer two specific examples of how these gendering practices can backfire in ways that may seriously jeopardize girls' health and well-being. The first example describes the "hidden curriculum" in the context of physical education courses. Here I draw on the work of several excellent researchers in sport and PE pedagogy. The second example discusses the surveillance of girls' bodies as one expression of the routine sexualization of female bodies in our society. As evidence, I cite some of the findings from my own work analyzing fitness magazines.

The hidden curriculum

Most children first experience organized sports at school during physical education class. What occurs at this early stage may profoundly influence whether kids like to participate in sports and fitness activities and will become life-long sports enthusiasts or whether they dislike physical activities and will avoid them in the future.[36]

Physical education teachers often lament the difficulty of motivating girls during class. They usually ascribe girls' avoidance of movement activities to their laziness or intransigence and refer to it as "the problem with girls."[37] Yet within the last decade, a group of researchers focused on PE pedagogy have produced some surprising results. Investigators in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia all seem to agree that the typical subject matter of PE and the way it is taught privilege boys while disadvantaging girls.[38] This finding holds regardless of race and class. In fact, because African Americans and Latinos may subscribe more fully to conventional gender roles, girls in these groups are more likely than white girls to shun physical activity.[39]

Teachers of physical education tend to spend most of the activity time on a series of team sports. These sports are taught in relatively short units, and basic skills practice is given short shrift.[40] The assumption that seems to underlie these classes is that girls and boys already have the requisite skills to play the sport du jour well and that the most talented athletes should receive the largest portion of the teacher's attention and playing time.[41] This, at least, is what typically occurs in PE classes. While this formula may work well for most boys, who have already been socialized into sport and have developed good skills to play an assortment of sports, it completely overlooks the realities of many girls' experiences. Girls (and sometimes boys) come to class with different levels of skills, ability, and knowledge.[42] Girls often do not feel confident of their abilities, since they may have nowhere near the amount of experience that enables many boys to perform well in team sports.[43] Compounding the problem is the fact that sporting performances are very visible to observers, and when a girl strikes out or misses the crucial basket, everyone knows it. Teachers and other students may publicly deride girls' performances and humiliate them if they fail.

Furthermore, teachers often choose the kinds of sports that are celebrations of masculinity; in other words, they put a premium on the typical attributes of hegemonic masculinity: aggression, power, speed, and size.[44] The big three - football, baseball, and basketball - privilege these qualities. Sports that build on the strengths of girls or women, activities that capitalize on endurance, agility, and balance, for example, are seldom part of the PE curriculum.[45]

Ennis conducted extensive ethnographic research on PE classes in which racially diverse children in 20 urban middle and high schools on the East Coast participated. She found that the typical PE curriculum was structured in a way that led to divisions between girls and boys, inequities by gender and ability, and a focus on sport performance with negligible time given to skills learning and practice. If girls had the option, many of them refused to take physical education. Those who did opt for PE complained about their experience. Low-skilled girls often felt neglected and were rarely given opportunities to sharpen their skills. Boys seemed intent on winning the game and showing off their Michael Jordan moves: "in high school [boys are] like maniacs or something . . . They throw the ball so hard you can't catch it and push and knock girls down if they're in their way."[46]

Taylor et al.'s research involving middle school African American and Latino girls in Texas and California confirmed Ennis's findings. Almost all of the girls they interviewed disliked PE and reported that the play was dominated by the boys, who often excluded the girls from sports and physical activities. Girls expressed resentment toward the boys and toward the teachers, who spent little time teaching them how to play the game: "all the coaches care about is getting to the boys, and they don't teach you the basics."[47]

These findings were by no means unique to American girls. Garrett reported in her retrospective study that PE teachers in Australia expected girls to perform well in team sports, even when they had had almost no instruction, coaching, or other kinds of experience that would have allowed them to develop the necessary sport skills to succeed in PE classes: "I don't think [the teachers] took the time to really teach the skills which would have been good if they did take a bit of time out to explain it to the kids, but a lot of them already knew how to play [sports]."[48] Like the boys in Ennis's and Taylor et al.'s studies, the Australian boys tended to control the play and to make it as competitive as possible. The aggressive nature of the game made the girls distressed and anxious about their own performances and the ridicule they might suffer from the boys.

Santina et al.'s research on PE teachers' motivational strategies yielded similar results in four American urban middle schools. Teachers tended to respond to girls and boys in markedly contrasting ways, for example, creating special rules for girls that made it easier for them to score and grading them less rigorously than boys. Here the assumption of female inferiority and male superiority is obvious. The authors concluded that "the effects of differential [PE] teaching strategies were decreased motivation and the silencing and alienation of female students."[49]

It is not surprising that girls distance themselves from PE, if they take it at all. What is remarkable is that some girls refuse to give up sports, given the daunting challenges they face. In all of the pedagogical research cited previously, the authors argue that the "problem with girls" is actually the problem with a gender order that creates and recreates conventional femininities and masculinities.