Margaret Carlisle Duncan, "The Promise of Artemis"
(page 3 of 4)

The surveillance of girls' bodies

Besides the "hidden curriculum" in PE that disadvantages girls and privileges boys, a second major obstacle relates to the way that female bodies are objectified and sexualized in our culture. During adolescence, the surveillance of girls' bodies shifts into high gear, and this is enabled by the popular media.[50] At this time, when their bodies are changing, often in dramatic ways, girls become focused on their appearance as never before.[51] If they weren't cognizant of the female body ideal before their entry into the teen years, they become aware - even hyper-aware - of the standards they are now supposed to emulate. Popular television shows, movies, and a variety of glossy teen magazines inundate girls with images of gorgeous, thin, and mainly white models.[52]

Younger, less sophisticated girls may believe the rhetoric of commercials and advertisements, not understanding that their main function is to create personal insecurity and generate profits. These media images suggest that girls have an obligation to better themselves by purchasing any number of cosmetics, clothes, hair products, and deodorants, niche-marketed especially to adolescents.[53] Fashion and figure magazines declare that if a girl falls short of beautiful, it is her own fault for not trying harder and buying more products.[54]

Given this environment, it is no wonder that many girls become extremely self-conscious and feel that their bodies are being viewed critically by others. From there, it is a small step for girls to turn that objectifying gaze inward - on their own bodies in the manner of Foucault's panopticon.[55] The glossies (even the teen magazines) incorporate written and photographic features that I call "panoptic mechanisms." These features increase every reader's sense of being judged on her appearance and found wanting, subjecting her, for example, to the discourse of personal initiative, weight-loss "success" stories, and the sly conflation of being fit and looking good. Such strategies are what sell magazines and provide audiences to advertisers. It is no surprise that many girls experience their bodies as deficient.[56]

No girl is left untouched by these assaults on her subjectivity. Although research has suggested that some girls (primarily African Americans) are more resistant to the unrealistic white body ideal than others,[57] the rising rate of eating disorders in the black population suggests otherwise.[58] In addition, Taylor et al. report that the African American and Latino middle school girls they studied were particularly anxious about how they looked when boys were watching.[59] There is also a sense in which girls of color are caught in a double whammy: not only is the white body ideal of emaciation nearly impossible to achieve, but the standard of blonde hair, white skin, and blue eyes ensures that girls of color will always fall short.[60]

Teenage girls' sense that they are being judged on their appearance is, unfortunately, justified. Empirical evidence that boys and men are in fact assessing girls' appearance abounds. When girls reach adolescence, they are routinely watched and sexualized, and in the setting of PE, their surveillance is rendered easier by uniforms that are often revealing, especially if the girls are swimming.[61] In their study of physical educators, for instance, Webb et al. found that the male teachers scrutinized the girl students' appearance and ranked them according to who had the best body parts, e.g., "best breasts."[62] To cope with the gaze, girls may develop avoidance strategies, such as feigning illness or simply refusing to take physical education.[63]

Moreover, if class and race are taken into consideration, the outcomes of surveillance may become part of a matrix of oppression[64] that is qualitatively more damaging to girls from non-dominant groups. By turning girls away from physical activity, the surveillance that is so much a part of girls' adolescence jeopardizes their health and works against their best interests, both physical and emotional.

These two major themes, the "hidden curriculum" of physical education and the surveillance of adolescent girls' bodies, suggest why girls disengage from physical activity and sports during their teens. Clearly, it is not female intransigence that causes "the problem with girls"; instead, the ways in which our social institutions penalize girls for athletic prowess and objectify them via panoptic mechanisms place girls in an impossible position. Many girls avoid PE for understandable reasons.

Artemis redux

What can be done? First I offer a liberal response and discuss how we might change things by working within the present system. Such a response might improve girls' chances of staying healthy and fit, but it would not change the circumstances that cause girls' oppression in the first place. In that sense it offers only a partial solution. Next I suggest a more radical response, which would dismantle the system by challenging the gender order itself. This would strike at the root of the problem, but it would depend on the group that benefits from the current social arrangements being willing to give up their privileged status. Only in that unlikely event would we be able to ensure an equitable balance of power, if the long, protracted battle over Title IX is any indication.[65]

A liberal response

To begin, girls need adult advocates, just as Atalanta needed Artemis. They need to be supported in their physical endeavors, rather than discouraged, especially during their adolescence, when they typically learn to extinguish their inclinations to be physical. This support is critical, given the sedentary American lifestyle. It may mean encouraging girls to join sport leagues where the primary purpose is to learn skills, and encouraging them to do so at the same age that boys typically begin playing in leagues, so that they might feel competent on the playing field during PE, recess, and extracurricular sports.

Parents, teachers, and other key figures also need to lobby for regular physical education classes in school, wielding whatever influence they have to ensure that their child's first experiences with organized sports or fitness activities are positive. This might entail regularly attending PTA meetings, talking to teachers (especially PE teachers) and principals, and petitioning school board members. Because children spend a great deal of their time in school, whether they have the appropriate quality and quantity of physical activity experiences is important to their well-being, as the Healthy People 2010 Information Access Project points out.[66] Unfortunately, in an era of educational cutbacks, PE is sometimes considered to be dispensable.

Next, women and girls who have bucked the system and become enthusiastic athletes despite the social obstacles should be pressed into service as mentors and role models. In an institutionalized form at the national level, the Women's Sports Foundation has done just that by interviewing successful female athletes and publicizing the achievements of sportswomen's lives. (The WSF also funds girls' sports programs, offers sporting resources, and provides leadership in girls' sports.[67]) However, we also need mentors and role models at the state, local, and neighborhood levels. The function of Artemis as mentor is crucial to helping girls nurture their desires to be physically active and skillful.

Third, the pedagogical model for PE classes must be changed. Ennis suggests an alternative to the typical multi-activity, team-sport PE curriculum that favors boys but disempowers girls.[68] This is a model called Sports for Peace (SFP), a hybrid of peace education theory and the Sport Education model,[69] created by Ennis and her research group. The purpose of this model is to build teams with roughly even levels of skill and ability wherein both experienced and novice athletes can make recognizable contributions to the success of the team. A fair, caring environment and concern for team members other than oneself are part of what renders this model significantly different from conventional PE paradigms.

Students are taught that they are accountable for maintaining a supportive climate for all team members. To that end, they learn conflict resolution and negotiation strategies. Players receive skills coaching from other team members, and everyone rotates through the different positions, experiencing them all, including the roles of statistician, scorekeeper, and official. The unit spent on a particular sport is seven to nine weeks long, far longer than typical physical education units. In this way, students have the opportunity to master skills and affiliate with their team members by committing to the goals of the group. This model suggests that teachers and peers should take on the role of Artemis by exercising a responsibility to the group's (team's) well-being.

Although this model is clearly superior to the typical physical education regimen in the sense that girls receive needed skills instruction and contribute to the achievements of the team, it does not create the conditions for equality.[70] It improves the lot of girls in PE classes, but does not affect the gender order that enabled the inequities in the first place. It is hard to know how well SFP would work in a variety of settings, or whether PE teachers would even be willing to adopt an approach with values so different from those promoted by the current model. Coaches, parents, and other family members would need to buy into SFP for it to work and effect a widespread change in the way kids think about sports and behave in physical activity settings.