Introduction

For my response to Dr. Stimpson's lecture, I propose to examine a part of the Atalanta myth that is unelaborated, yet resonates with what I know about girls' and women's involvement in sport and physical activity. This is the role that Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, assumes when Atalanta's father tries to rid himself of his infant daughter. In the guise of a bear, Artemis rescues and nurtures the infant, who has callously been abandoned to die. Under the care of Artemis, Atalanta lives to become a young woman and a celebrated athlete, not only a runner and a wrestler but an archer as well. One might even think of her as a martial artist, for she acquires the skills to protect herself and, as Dr Stimpson argues, to "resist devaluation." Here I take Dr. Stimpson to mean that Atalanta learns to challenge anyone or anything that would undermine her sense of self-worth solely because she is female.

The role of Artemis

At this point readers must allow me to freeze the frame, to fill in the myth's gaps using my own imagination. I focus on Atalanta's girlhood, during which she becomes strong, self-sufficient, and independent. How does this happen? I suggest that it occurs in the usual way, and here I refer back to the non-mythical world. Girls develop into resourceful, self-reliant women by being supported and encouraged in their endeavors. They develop with the help of mentors and role models. And they develop by virtue of social structures that are built to enable rather than disable the growth of female self-worth. Perhaps we can think of Artemis as symbolically fulfilling these conditions. In this way, the nurturing figure of Artemis is crucial to the vision that I have of Atalanta.

Who or what acts as Artemis for girls who are not goddesses, but mortals fashioned of muscles, bones, and blood? How do girls become physically capable, able to hold their own in sports and games, confident in the ways that they move their bodies? These are the questions I would like to address in this response. I argue that there are people and experiences in a girl's life that, at crucial junctures in her development, can help her become physically strong and autonomous. This strength may also enable other types of female power and autonomy. Conversely, the presence of naysayers at critical moments of a girl's development can diminish that potential.

The social construction of femininity

Let me begin by briefly reviewing what we know about the social construction of femininity. In our society, the most salient fact about the birth of an infant, apart from whether it's healthy, is its gender.[1] The first question posed to the new parents often is, Is it a girl or a boy? Once the gender of the child is established, friends and family members know whether to buy a dainty pink layette or a sturdy toy dump truck.[2] Parents impute different traits to their infants long before any real physiological differences assert themselves.[3] A girl may be described as quiet and delicate-featured; a boy may be deemed noisy and robust. These stereotypes often mean that children are treated differently by their parents. Caregivers may play with girls gently, while they engage in rough and tumble play with boys.[4]

In a similar fashion, family members, teachers, peers, and other significant figures in a child's life communicate different expectations for girls and boys, even if they genuinely wish to rear a child in a gender-neutral way.[5] Since a key part of children's self-worth depends on their feeling that they are competent actors in the world, they quickly learn their gendered roles and to behave in ways that are thought to be "sex-appropriate." In turn, when children "perform" gender, their behaviors influence the ways adults treat them. Socialization is a two-way street![6] Adults and peers usually reward girls for being demure, ladylike, and polite, while the same behavior in boys will elicit teasing, ridicule, or punishment.[7] In our culture, gender is constructed as oppositional so that femininity and masculinity are not only different, but are actually opposed to one another.[8]

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.

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.

The radical response

Many scholars in the field of pedagogy believe that the girls themselves should set the agenda for physical education. That is, a PE class should address adolescent girls' most pressing concerns, which center on their own bodies and their lived experience of physical activity.[71] Here the aim is to teach girls "to resist devaluation," to borrow Dr. Stimpson's phrase. British and American pedagogists argue that girls should be taught critical thinking and media literacy skills (what they call "critical literacy"[72]) and to resist the blandishments of advertisers and the female body ideal.[73] But I would emphasize that it is not only girls at whom this instruction should be targeted. Boys also need to hear these messages in order to understand the effects of the objectification of the female body. Since both girls and boys are complicit in producing and reproducing the behaviors that support the current gender order, both need to acquire critical literacy skills.

In this context, Oliver and Lalik provide a curriculum strand for girls' physical education centering on the body, while Garrett outlines a rationale for such a strand.[74] Although a detailed accounting of their ideas is beyond the scope of this paper, I draw on their work by mentioning a few strategies for helping girls in analyzing discourses that shape female body practices. Parents, educators, and coaches can all contribute to changing the nature of the PE curriculum so that it is built to enable rather than disable the growth of female strength and self-sufficiency. The overarching purpose is to challenge the patriarchal discourses that currently obtain in physical education and to consider discourses more culturally relevant for girls, ones that affect their embodied subjectivity. In particular, girls need guidance and instruction - again the province of Artemis - about the female body: how girls who are physically active feel about their bodies, how girls who play sports are depicted in our culture, whether girls' physical competence can positively affect their sense of self-esteem and self-worth. Girls (and boys) also need to understand how the beauty, fashion, and diet industries exploit women's bodies for commercial purposes.

An article by Oliver and Lalik describes a girl-centered curriculum based on their research with teenage girls. When the authors allowed the girls' interests to drive the course, girls picked topics relating to "fashion, fitness, shoes, cute boys, hairstyles, food, beauty, body products, articles [girls] read and people [they] admired."[75] Oliver discovered that images were powerful ways of helping girls understand media messages, often more powerful than written texts.[76] Girls enjoyed looking at teen magazines and talking about the pictures they saw. They chose to express their ideas about these images using artistic portrayals and journal entries. They also talked about the images in small groups, composed photo essays, and examined school events such as a "beauty walk," a type of beauty contest. Often their discussion spun into other areas such as teen pregnancy, sex, STDs, race issues, and more generally, things that made girls feel bad about themselves.[77]

A truly radical approach would call for the revision of the entire educational endeavor. Like most of our social institutions, the institution of public education favors boys over girls.[78] All teachers - not just physical educators - would challenge inequitable practices that empower boys and men but disadvantage girls and women. Whether on a limited scale or a grand scale, this plan would require time for critical reflection about why certain activities may be empowering for one gender and disempowering for another. Although the task of teaching kids to think critically about the gender order seems daunting, even small steps in this direction would help.

Conclusion: The promise of Artemis

The promise of Artemis is the empowerment of girls. A major source of empowerment is the familiarity with one's body, understanding its pleasures, its potential, and its limits. One of the major benefits of physical competence is self-knowledge. Boys learn this early on, girls, often not at all. I invoke Artemis, therefore, to support the development of girls' self-knowledge as it enables self-sufficiency, strength, and independence.

Another source of empowerment is role models and mentors who can enact the values and behaviors that lead to success. Boys customarily have coaches, brothers, and fathers who perform this role. In addition, the media routinely publicize the achievements of men, especially male athletes. Girls have far fewer role models to choose from, since socialization into "female-appropriate" roles requires women to give up athletic pleasures or suffer homophobic assaults. Women for whom abandoning sport is unthinkable may be treated with contempt or ignored completely. Sports media silence the voices of female athletes by providing relatively little and poor-quality coverage of girls' and women's sports.[79] I invoke Artemis, therefore, to serve as both mentor and role model for girls, nurturing the expression of female physicality.

Yet another source of empowerment is social structures created to enable rather than disable the growth of self-worth. Boys learn their value through the social institutions that privilege them as a group, although they are also taught to believe in a meritocracy and not to recognize their unearned advantages.[80] In sports, in school, in the workplace, church, synagogue, or mosque, men and boys dominate. Women and girls, on the other hand, learn that their worth is based on something they cannot really control: their looks, their bodies, their youth. Social institutions like the educational system (with its "hidden curriculum") and the media (with its insistence on a dangerously unhealthy body ideal) are more likely to disable than enable girls. I invoke Artemis, therefore, to create and provide alternatives to our current social arrangements.

Sport is the field on which gender battles are fought. The stakes at the material level may seem trivial, but the stakes at the symbolic level are not. These symbolic stakes include the empowerment of women and girls, the cessation of assaults on female subjectivity, and the end of the assumption of female inferiority and male superiority. Such symbolic stakes render the outcomes all the more consequential. Thank you, Dr. Stimpson, for providing the mythic context for an important present-day intervention.

Endnotes

1. J. Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). [Return to text]

2. C. A. Hasbrook, "Young Children's Social Constructions of Physicality and Gender," in Inside Sports, ed. J. Coakley and P. Donnelly (London: Routledge, 1999), 7-16; M. A. Messner, Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); B. Thorne, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995). [Return to text]

3. Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender; Messner, Taking the Field. [Return to text]

4. Hasbrook, "Young Children's Social Constructions"; Thorne, Gender Play. [Return to text]

5. Messner, Taking the Field. [Return to text]

6. J. Coakley, Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004); Messner, Taking the Field; Thorne, Gender Play. [Return to text]

7. D. S. Eitzen and G. H. Sage, Sociology of North American Sport, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003). [Return to text]

8. M. J. Kane, "Resistance/Transformation of the Oppositional Binary: Exposing Sport as a Continuum," Journal of Sport and Social Issues 19 (1995): 191-218; Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender. [Return to text]

9. Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender; I. M. Young, Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990). [Return to text]

10. Eitzen and Sage, Sociology of North American Sport; Hasbrook, "Young Children's Social Constructions." [Return to text]

11. Eitzen and Sage, Sociology of North American Sport. [Return to text]

12. Young, Throwing Like a Girl. [Return to text]

13. Ibid. [Return to text]

14. Hasbrook, "Young Children's Social Constructions." [Return to text]

15. Eitzen and Sage, Sociology of North American Sport. [Return to text]

16. Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender. [Return to text]

17. Ibid. [Return to text]

18. L. R. Davis and L. C. Delano, "Fixing the Boundaries of Physical Gender: Side Effects of Anti-Drug Campaigns in Athletics," Sociology of Sport Journal 9 (1992): 1-19; Kane, "Resistance/Transformation." [Return to text]

19. M. C. Duncan, "Gender Warriors in Sport: Women and the Media," in Handbook of Sports and Media, ed. A. A. Raney and Bryant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, forthcoming). [Return to text]

20. M. C. Duncan, "Title IX: Past, Present, and Future," in Changing the Game: Exploring Sport in Society, ed. S. S. Prettyman and B. Lampman (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming). [Return to text]

21. R. W. Connell, Gender and Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); Hasbrook, "Young Children's Social Constructions"; Messner, Taking the Field; Young, Throwing Like a Girl. [Return to text]

22. Connell, Gender and Power; T. Gorely, R. Holroyd, and D. Kirk, "Muscularity, the Habitus and the Social Construction of Gender: Toward a Gender-Relevant Physical Education," British Journal of Sociology of Education 24 (2003): 429-448.[Return to text]

23. M. A. Messner, "Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain," Sociology of Sport Journal 5 (1988): 197-211. [Return to text]

24. P. Adler and P. Adler, Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998). [Return to text]

25. S. Shakib, "Female Basketball Participation: Negotiating the Conflation of Peer Status and Gender Status from Childhood through Puberty," American Behavioral Scientist 46 (2003): 1405-1422. [Return to text]

26. Hasbrook, "Young Children's Social Constructions." [Return to text]

27. Messner, "Sports and Male Domination." [Return to text]

28. N. Theberge, Higher Goals: Women's Ice Hockey and the Politics of Gender (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000). [Return to text]

29. Connell, Gender and Power. [Return to text]

30. Adler and Adler, Peer Power. [Return to text]

31. Shakib, "Female Basketball Participation." [Return to text]

32. Ibid. [Return to text]

33. S. K. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women's Sport (NY: The Free Press, 1994); P. Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1998); Hasbrook, "Young Children's Social Constructions." [Return to text]

34. Shakib, "Female Basketball Participation." [Return to text]

35. M. C. Duncan, "Sociological Dimensions," in The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Report: Physical Activity and Sport in the Lives of Girls: Physical and Health Directions from an Interdisciplinary Approach, project directors M. J. Kane and D. S. Larkin (Minneapolis: The Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport, University of Minnesota, 1997), 37-47). [Return to text]

36. J. Curtis, W. McTeer, and P. White, "Exploring Effects of School Sport Experiences on Sport Participation in Later Life," Sociology of Sport Journal 16 (1999): 348-365. [Return to text]

37. R. Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity: Girls, Bodies and Physical Education," Sport, Education and Society 9 (2004): 223-237; Gorely et al., "Muscularity"; J. Wright, D. MacDonald, and L. Groom, "Physical Activity and Young People: Beyond Participation," Sport, Education and Society 8 (2003): 17-33. [Return to text]

38. Gorely et al, "Muscularity"; A. Laker, J. C. Laker, and S. Lea, "School Experience and the Issue of Gender," Sport, Education and Society 8 (2003): 73-89; K. L. Oliver, "Images of the Body from Popular Culture: Engaging Adolescent Girls in Critical Inquiry," Sport, Education and Society 6 (2001): 143-164; B. Santina et al., "Patriachal Consciousness, Middle School Students' and Teachers' Perspectives of Motivational Practices," Sport, Education and Society 3 (1998): 181-201; Shakib, "Female Basketball Participation"; Wright et al., "Physical Activity and Young People." [Return to text]

39. C. D. Ennis, "Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum for Disengaged Girls," Sport, Education and Society 4 (1999): 31-49. [Return to text]

40. Ibid. [Return to text]

41. Ibid.; Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity"; P. A. Vertinsky, "Gender and the Physical Education Curriculum: The Dynamics of Difference, in Gender in/forms curriculum, ed. J. Gaskell and J. Willinsky (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995), 230-245. [Return to text]

42. Ennis, "Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum"; Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity." [Return to text]

43. Ennis, "Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum"; Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity." [Return to text]

44. Gorely et al., "Muscularity"; Laker, Laker, and Lea, "School Experience and the Issue of Gender"; Messner, "Sports and Male Domination"; Oliver, "Images of the Body"; Santina et al., "Patriachal Consciousness"; Shakib, "Female Basketball Participation"; Wright et al., "Physical Activity and Young People." [Return to text]

45. Theberge, Higher Goals. [Return to text]

46. Ennis, "Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum," 33. [Return to text]

47. Taylor et al., "Physical Activity among African American and Latino Middle School Girls: Consistent Beliefs, Expectations and Experiences across Two Sites," Women and Health 30 (1999): 74. [Return to text]

48. Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity," 230. [Return to text]

49. Santina et al., "Patriachal Consciousness," 181. [Return to text]

50. M. C. Duncan, "The Politics of Women's Body Images and Practices: Foucault, the Panopticon, and Shape Magazine," Journal of Sport and Social Issues 18 (1994): 48-65. [Return to text]

51. P. Bunyan, E. Kelly and C. Letts, "An Investigation into the Perceptions of Body Image in Adolescent Girls and its Impact on Physical Education," European Journal of Physical Education 3 (1998): 105; B. Guinn and T. Semper, "Body Image Perceptions in Mexican American Adolescents," Journal of School Health 67 (1997): 112-120; Oliver, "Images of the Body"; K. L. Oliver and R. Lalik, "Critical Inquiry on the Body in Girls' Physical Education Classes: A Critical Poststructural Perspective," Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 23 (2004): 162-195. [Return to text]

52. M. C. Duncan and T. T. Robinson, "Obesity and Body Ideals in the Media: Health and Fitness Practices of Young African American Women," Quest 56 (2004): 77-104. [Return to text]

53. Duncan, "The Politics of Women's Body Images"; T. Eskes, M. C. Duncan, and E. Miller, "The Discourse of Empowerment: Foucault, Marcuse, and Women's Fitness Texts," Journal of Sport and Social Issues 22 (1998): 317-344; P. Markula, "Firm but Shapely, Fit but Sexy, Strong but Thin: The Postmodern Aerobicizing Female Bodies," Sociology of Sport Journal 12 (1995): 424-453; T. Poulton, No Fat Chicks: How Big Business Profits by Making Women Hate Their BodiesÑand How to Fight Back (Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press, 1997). [Return to text]

54. Duncan, "The Politics of Women's Body Images"; Eskes, Duncan, and Miller, "The Discourse of Empowerment"; Markula, "Firm but Shapely"; C. Spitzack, Confessing Excess: Women and the Politics of Body Reduction (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990). [Return to text]

55. Duncan, "The Politics of Women's Body Images"; Markula, "Firm but Shapely"; C. Spitzack, Confessing Excess. [Return to text]

56. Duncan, "The Politics of Women's Body Images." [Return to text]

57. D. A. Abood and M. A. Mason, "Exploring Racial Differences in Body Disatisfaction and Eating Attitudes and Behaviors," American Journal of Health Studies 13 (1997): 119-28; S. Grogan, Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children (London: Routledge, 1999). [Return to text]

58. S. Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995); Milkie, M.A., "Social Comparisons, Reflected Appraisals, and Mass Media: The Impact of Pervasive Beauty Images on African American and White Girls' Self-Concepts," Social Psychology Quarterly 62 (1999): 190-210; Perkins, K.R., "The Influence of Television Images on African American Females' Self-Perceptions of Physical Attractiveness," Journal of African American Psychology 22 (1996): 453-69. [Return to text]

59. Taylor et al., "Physical Activity." [Return to text]

60. Duncan, "The Politics of Women's Body Images." [Return to text]

61. Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity"; Gorely et al., "Muscularity"; K. James, "You Can Feel Them Looking at You: The Experiences of Adolescent Girls at Swimming Pools," Journal of Leisure Research 32 (2000): 262-275; Oliver and Lalik, "Critical Inquiry"; L. Webb, N. McCaughtry, and D. MacDonald, "Surveillance as a Technique of Power in Physical Education," Sport, Education and Society 9 (2004): 207-222. [Return to text]

62. Webb et al., "Surveillance as a Technique of Power." [Return to text]

63. James, "You Can Feel Them Looking at You." [Return to text]

64. P. H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000). [Return to text]

65. Duncan, "Title IX." [Return to text]

66. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and President's Council of Physical Fitness and Sports, "Physical Activity and Fitness," in Healthy People 2010 Information Access Project, http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/
html/volume2/22physical.htm. [Return to text]

67. Women's Sports Foundation, "How the Foundation 'works': Advocating for Gender Equality in Sport: The Experience of the Women's Sports Foundations in the United States," http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/
cgi-bin/iowa/issues/history/article.html?record=908. [Return to text]

68. Ennis, "Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum." [Return to text]

69. D. Siedentop, Sport Education (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1994). [Return to text]

70. Ennis, "Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum." [Return to text]

71. K. M. Armour, "The Case for a Body-Focus in Education and Physical Education," Sport, Education and Society 4 (1999): 5-15; Bunyan et al., "An Investigation into the Perceptions of Body Image"; Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity"; Gorely et al., "Muscularity"; A. M. Lee, K. Fredenburg, D. Belcher, and N. Cleveland, "Gender Differences in Children's Conceptions of Competence and Motivation in Physical Education," Sport, Education and Society 4 (1999): 161-174; Oliver, "Images of the Body." [Return to text]

72. Wright, cited in Oliver and Lalik, "Critical Inquiry," 163. [Return to text]

73. Bunyan et al., "An Investigation into the Perceptions of Body Image"; Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity"; Gorely et al., "Muscularity"; Lee et al, "Gender Differences." [Return to text]

74. Oliver, "Images of the Body"; Oliver and Lalik, "Critical Inquiry"; Garrett, "Negotiating a Physical Identity." [Return to text]

75. Oliver and Lalik, "Critical Inquiry," 173. [Return to text]

76. Oliver, "Images of the Body." [Return to text]

77. Oliver and Lalik, "Critical Inquiry." [Return to text]

78. American Association of University Women, How Schools Shortchange Girls: A Study of Major Findings on Girls and Education (New York: Marlowe and Company, 1995); P. Orenstein, Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap (Boston: Anchor, 1995); M. Sadker and D. Sadker, Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls (New York: Scribner, 1995). [Return to text]

79. M. C. Duncan, M. A. Messner, and N. Willms, Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlight Shows, 1989-2004, Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, 2005, http://www.aafla.org/9arr/ResearchReports/tv2004.pdf. [Return to text]

80. P. McIntosh, "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies," Working Paper 189 (Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women, 1988). [Return to text]