5

From Second-Wave to Poststructuralist Feminism

Evolving Frameworks for Viewing Representations of Women's Sports

Marie Hardin and Erin Whiteside

When Sports Illustrated presented skier Lindsey Vonn on the cover of its 2010 Olympics preview issue, some feminists roundly critiqued the picture. The photo, which depicted Vonn dressed in ski apparel but sans helmet, hair cascading down around her smiling face as she mimicked a ski crouch, was judged as the latest example of a problematic and ongoing trend of media outlets sexualizing and hyperfeminizing female athletes. Judging Vonn's image as a step backward for women's sports reflected the position of many influential sports feminists, most of whom work from a radical feminist standpoint. Radical sports feminists argue that the projection of femininity, including emphasis on a “hetero-sexy” image (Griffin, 1998, p. 75), in depictions of female athletes reinforces traditional gender roles. In doing so, it delegitimizes women's sports and preserves sporting spaces as male spaces.

At the same time, however, others suggested that the cover represented a step forward for women's sports, and, therefore, something that should be celebrated. Sports Illustrated almost exclusively puts men on its covers (Bishop, 2003), and by featuring Vonn, the magazine framed women's skiing – and to a degree, women's sports in general – as the focus of one of the biggest sporting showcases in existence. Vonn appeared in the magazine's famous annual “swimsuit edition” a week later, which was also touted as positive for her, for the sport, for her Olympic team, and even for girls who aspired to follow Vonn (Russo, 2010). Vonn's teammate, Kaylin Richardson, told a reporter, “‘For little girls, there's something to see–a beautiful, athletic, strong, powerful, female body among all these real thin models in the magazine’” (Russo, 2010, para. 2).

The debate over the photos of Vonn is indicative of the quandary in which women's sports advocates find themselves when considering depictions of female athletes in the sports/media complex.¹ Radical feminists, who are firmly entrenched in the movement's “second wave,” read Vonn's representation as oppressive – reinforcing traditional gender ideology that preserves a stifling status quo and reflects a dangerous practice in postfeminist discourse (Carty, 2005; Duncan, 1990). Ultimately the disconnect between radical/second-wave feminists who work on behalf of women's sports and the high-profile female athletes who insist that feminized/sexualized images are empowering has been a vexing issue for women's sports advocates.

We suggest that an alternative lens for considering depictions of female athletes in the sports/media complex, however, lies in third-wave/poststructuralist² feminism. At the heart of the difference between traditional second-wave feminism and third-wave feminism, in short, is the way each approach conceptualizes power – its definition, its use, and its effect. Second-wave feminism, especially radical critiques (including our own), rely on a Gramscian lens, which explains the communication of ideology as purposive in that it naturalizes a power structure that is beneficial to certain groups and destructive to others (Altheide, 1984). Those in power often have unequal access to resources that facilitate the communication of dominant ideology. In sports media, that group is considered media companies, sports journalists, and editors, who serve as gatekeepers and thus play a critical role in deciding not only how much coverage to dedicate to women, but also how to present that coverage to the sports audience. Such a perspective on power has been both useful and limiting in explaining why women are so often marginalized from sports media and depicted in problematic ways. Those limitations have invited self-reflection on our part, as we have considered the prescriptions for change offered in our own work.³ That introspection has brought us to consider the potential of third-wave/poststructuralist feminism as a theoretical lens for our own critical inquiry into depictions of women's sports. We trace the trajectory of our work by first reviewing second-wave feminist critiques of representations of women in sport and the solutions stemming from those critiques. We then consider the development of our own research and the possibilities of a poststructuralist lens in that work, assessing how such a perspective might offer useful alternatives to standard, Gramscian-oriented critiques of the coverage of women's sports.

Hegemonic Masculinity and the Sports/Media Complex

In 1972, the US government passed Title IX of the Education Amendments, which afforded women equal opportunity and funding in sports at institutions receiving federal money. The law has been credited as the impetus behind an astounding growth in sports participation among women (Suggs, 2005). In 1968, for instance, roughly 16,000 women competed in varsity sports at the collegiate level. By 2010 that number had exploded to more than 180,000 (Carpenter & Acosta, 2010).

Given the huge participation numbers, second-wave feminists have critiqued the relative paucity of coverage in mainstream sports media and have also urged gatekeepers to make choices in media coverage that reflect an undeniable interest in women's sports. Yet, as the Vonn picture illustrates, advocating only for women's inclusion in sports media texts has its limits, and radical feminist scholars have advocated giving renewed attention not only to the amount of coverage female athletes receive, but also to the type; many images appeal to the sexual desires of men and, in doing so, trivialize the accomplishments of female athletes and stunt the growth of women's sports (Bernstein, 2002).

Hegemonic Masculinity

Implicit in these second-wave critiques is a conceptualization of power that is locatable in the hands of men and the institutions they control and expressed through the structures and practices of sports. Scholars have widely drawn from Gramsci's theory of hegemony to explain the ways male power functions in sports. Simply, hegemony is a process that reinforces certain norms and ideas to the benefit of society's most powerful groups. These “commonsense” assumptions thus normalize certain behavior or groups while making others seem unnatural or wrong (Altheide, 1984; Condit, 1994). Ultimately, hegemonic institutions such as education, government, religion, and media build a stratified society that most benefits the dominant group. Power, then, is held in the hands of a relative few and used to coerce the wider populace, including disenfranchised groups such as racial minorities, individuals with disabilities, and women, into compliance (Artz & Murphy, 2000).

As radical feminists have long argued, sport is one of many cultural institutions structured and maintained to benefit a powerful group – men. Thus, even seemingly innocent displays should be interrogated as ideological practices with political and social implications. Creedon (1994, p. 5) offers an apt example:

Ultimately, prevailing value systems in sports privilege behavior and traits associated with mainstream notions of masculinity such as physicality and unrestrained competition, thus making women's participation appear unnatural (Duncan, 2006; Hargreaves, 1994). The consistent message reflects an ideology or set of beliefs, that sports belong to men and should be protected as a space for celebrating masculinity.

Because sports traditionally have symbolized hegemonic masculinity, they have been positioned as incompatible with hegemonic femininity. Competitive sports are the purview of men; women who seek to participate in sports, then, are suspect (Griffin, 1998). Women's inclusion challenges the link between sports and masculinity, and when women do tread on so-called “male terrain,” they face cultural penalties in the form of stigmatization for failing to conform to traditional gender roles (Kane & Parks, 1992).

The sports/media complex is a key site for reinforcing masculine hegemony in a highly visible, culturally powerful way. Mediated depictions of sport have been indicted as “bearers of masculine hegemony, an ideology or set of beliefs about the world that privileges men and disadvantages women” (Duncan, 2006, p. 231). For example, in sports talk radio, sexist discourse is used as a mechanism for male bonding and status building (Nylund, 2007). Positive and desired cultural values, such as hard work, persistence, leadership, and even heroism, are expressed as representations of masculinity in descriptions of male athletes (Denham & Duke, 2010). Other research has showed the ways mediated discourse trivializes women's sporting accomplishments, from overt sexual references to subtle comments that infantilize women and, by extension, their achievements (Duncan, 2006).

Sports Feminism

Hargreaves (1994) calls the collective effort to eradicate gender discrimination in sports “sports feminism,” a movement that has gained momentum alongside the growth of second-wave feminism. Despite the growing number of women's sports advocates, “sports feminism” is not a unified theoretical perspective. Rather, Hargreaves (1994) characterizes it as loosely organized around the belief that women are subordinated through sporting practices and that male power must be contested in order to change these oppressive practices.

In assessing media practices, scholars have largely justified their critiques using liberal and/or radical feminist arguments. These feminist critiques are all part of what has been called feminism's “second wave,” which can be understood in chronological terms as the women's rights movement that emerged after World War II and recognized women connected through oppression grounded in a common material reality (Lotz, 2003). Liberal and radical feminists differ in their prescriptions for change, but both, however, conceptualize power as held in the hands of men, exerted from the top down, and thus something that must be challenged (Hargreaves, 1994). According to second-wave feminists, that power has resulted in two persistent problems in sports media: (1) a general lack of women's sports coverage; and (2) a general lack of quality women's sports coverage.

Sports feminists have prioritized these issues differently. Feminists with a more liberal orientation, which advocates “equality” as an unproblematic concept, generally advocate for increased coverage of female athletes and use coverage of male athletes as the benchmark. On the other hand, radical feminists, who are concerned with how dominant ideology in sports marginalizes women, suggest that calling solely for increased coverage is inadequate. Instead, radical feminists advocate for challenging structural systems that invite problematic representations, such as presenting female athletes as sexualized objects for male consumption.

Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminist ideology characterizes the justification for Title IX (Hargreaves, 1994). The law, which mandates equal opportunity and funding for women, represents fundamental US values of equality and social justice, the cornerstones of liberalism. In advocating for fairness in access, the liberal feminist movement leaves the ideological terrain of sports untouched. Instead, liberal feminists take the value systems of sports as a given and advocate for women's inclusion within them.

In a similar way, women's sports advocates have called for fairness in sports representations (Messner, Duncan, & Cooky, 2003). The Women's Sports Foundation (WSF) has been a leader in the liberal feminist movement, pointing out oftentimes gross inadequacies in coverage and pressuring sports media producers to include women's sports in their coverage. The WSF's efforts are a response to consistent trends in academic research that show women's low status in sports pages and broadcasts.

In general, although women's sports participation has exploded since the passage of Title IX, women are often marginalized or excluded from coverage. As gatekeepers, media producers have “continued to allot a disproportionally high amount of coverage to men's sports,” a trend that research has shown to be consistent over time and medium (Messner et al., 2003, p. 48). Countless studies examining women's sports coverage have confirmed what is obvious from a casual glance through the sports pages: female athletes are routinely marginalized from coverage. The marginalization spans the spectrum of media outlets from children's magazines (Cuneen & Sidwell, 1998; Duncan & Sayaovong, 1990; Lynn, Walsdorf, Hardin, & Hardin, 2002), daily newspapers (Eastman & Billings, 2000; George, Hartley, & Paris, 2001; Pedersen, 2003), sports magazines (Bishop, 2003; Lumpkin & Williams, 1991), and programming on ESPN and CNN (Eastman & Billings, 2000; Messner et al., 2003).

The late 2000s success of several female athletes and teams, including the University of Connecticut women's basketball program, has spurred a renewed debate about the lack of coverage given to female athletes. After the Huskies' first undefeated national championship season in 2009 – in which they won every game by at least 10 points but received little attention beyond the immediate Connecticut media market – one writer suggested that “one can only imagine the press coverage a men's player or team would receive in similar circumstances” (Trinkle, 2009). This comparison to men exemplifies the liberal feminist approach to equality and fairness.

Symbolic Marginalization

Scholars have historically used the term “symbolic annihilation” to describe women's lack of representation in media, a term first coined by Tuchman (1978). The concept has been applied to the similar observation in sports media; as a recent content analysis showed, women's sports receive just 1.6% of the overall airtime on local and national sports television programming, down from 6.3% in 2004 (Messner & Cooky 2010). Scholars argue that the exclusion of women represents a failure to acknowledge their accomplishments and denies women's sports and female athletes full legitimacy in the sporting landscape (Adams & Tuggle, 2004; Duncan, 2006; Eastman & Billings, 2000; George et al., 2001; Pedersen, 2003). This denial of coverage can be seen in Gramscian terms as a denial of power for female athletes; they are constructed as generally insignificant by their failure to secure visibility (Wright & Clarke, 1999).

From a liberal feminist perspective, various examples suggest fissures in the power structure. Since 2003, ESPN has aired all 63 games of the NCAA women's basketball tournament; in addition, the 2004 championship game was the second most-viewed basketball game – men or women, college or professional – in the network's history until that point (Rodgers, 2004). Various companies regularly use female athletes for advertising campaigns, and in 2003 Serena Williams signed a $60 million contract with Nike (Carty, 2005). Regional sports networks such as the Big Ten Network (BTN) provide live coverage of a variety of women's sports. In the spring of 2010, BTN aired 22 live softball games, streamed another 29 online, and also broadcast the women's golf, rowing, tennis, and outdoor track conference championships (“Big Ten Network boosts,” 2010; “Big Ten Network to televise,” 2010).

These gains represent a move toward equity advocated by liberal feminists and reflect an advancement of women's sports from the complete “annihilation” in sports media described by scholars little more than 10 years ago (see, e.g., Duncan & Messner, 1998; Fink & Kensicki, 2002). Thus, it may be more useful to refer to women's representation in sports media as “symbolic marginalization.” The term accounts for the very real gains made by women's sports in securing (albeit limited) space in sports media discourse while also describing the cultural effect of the still low amount of coverage received by female athletes and teams.

Radical Feminism

The work of radical feminists has illustrated the limitations of advocating only for quantity in terms of women's sports coverage. When female athletes receive mediated attention, they are often depicted in ways that de-emphasize and trivialize their athletic accomplishments. For instance, scholars have described how in analyzing the exploits of female athletes, TV commentators compare them to male athletes; failure to make analogous assessments in reverse implies a male-as-universal-standard (Eastman & Billings, 2000; Kian, Vincent, & Mondello, 2008). Messner and colleagues (2003) found that televised in-depth features on women often include subtle sexual jokes and humorous commentary that invite viewers “to engage in sexual voyeurism” (p. 42). Other research has noted the ways women are infantilized in commentary and texts, such as through references to them as girls, by their first names, or monikers like “America's Sweetheart” (Duncan, 2006).

Women featured in sporting images often represent individual sports such as tennis or skiing rather than team sports such as basketball or softball. As Hardin, Lynn, and Walsdorf's (2005) analysis of women's sports and fitness magazines showed, the most popular titles showcased women running or cycling. Further, they found that women were rarely featured in strength sports such as basketball or football. De-emphasizing team competition where physical contact is usually a defining element suggests women are weak, inferior, or incapable of playing such sports (Duncan & Hasbrook, 2002). Scholars have also pointed to the consistent practice by journalists of presenting female athletes in passive poses, away from their sport and adorned with feminine markers. This practice was documented by Fink and Kensicki (2002), who found that 56% of the photographs featuring female athletes in Sports Illustrated depicted them in passive poses. The Vonn case, presented in the introduction to this chapter, is illustrative. Although featured on the magazine's cover (a rarity, as only 4% of SI covers feature women), Vonn's representation was indicative of Sports Illustrated's consistent type of feminized and sexualized coverage of female athletes (Bishop, 2003; Fink & Kensicki, 2002).

Sexualized and Disempowered

Critics have compared these “hetero-sexy” images of female athletes to soft-core pornography, characterizing the depictions as disempowering for the individual women who replicate women's subordinate role in society through images in which they offer their bodies to men. Indeed, the popular Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue features female athletes alongside traditional models; Vonn's appearance in the magazine includes a picture of her looking directly at the camera while hooking her thumb under her bikini bottom – as if to suggest she is ready to remove it. Teammate Hannah Teeter appears topless with a ski hat and boots. Other pictures of the skiers reflect similar themes. Tennis stars Serena Williams and Anna Kournikova, softball standout Jennie Finch, former WNBA Most Valuable Player Lauren Jackson, and Olympic gold medal swimmer Amanda Beard have all appeared in the magazine. Further, prior to the 2000 Olympics, Sports Illustrated printed a story on five-time gold medal-winning swimmer Jenny Thompson. Although the story focused on her ability in the pool, the opening full-page photograph featured Thompson topless, wearing clingy shorts and red boots while covering her breasts with her hands. Yet, it is problematic to call these women victims. Sports Illustrated later said it had no intention of asking her to pose topless when the photo shoot began, and that it was in fact the swimmer's own idea. Asked about the photograph, Thompson told a reporter, “I'm an athlete and athleticism is about physicality. I'm proud of my body and the work it's taken to get it where it is” (McCallum, 2000). Other sportswomen have willingly capitalized on their sexual attractiveness. Although Kournikova is far from the most successful athlete on the women's tennis tour, she received a glut of attention after posing in magazines and other media products aimed at men. “She clearly poses for many of the photographs and in general does not shy away from the ‘tennis Madonna’ label. As a result, she has made millions from endorsements” (Bernstein, 2002, p. 425).

Radical feminists have strongly critiqued these images and related commentary arguing that such images do not attract fans to women's sports (Bernstein, 2002; Duncan, 1990; Kane & Maxwell, 2011; Krane, 2001; Messner et al., 2003). Further, they see images and representations that showcase women's passivity or sexual attractiveness as reifying women's “otherness” and “difference” in the context of sports and have characterized those kinds of images as nothing short of toxic for the future of women's sports. Duncan (1990, p. 40) writes, “Focusing on female difference is a political strategy that places women in a position of weakness. Sports photographs that emphasize the otherness of women enable patriarchal ends.”

Radical feminists further note the way such images and discourse buttress compulsory heterosexuality. They see these media representations of female athletes as an “attempt to impose traditional images of femininity and sexuality on sportswomen” (Kane & Lenskyj, 1998, p. 188). Lesbian sportswomen, conversely, are erased from public view in favor of women that meet heteronormative standards.

Thus, as radical feminists have articulated, calling for more coverage does not necessarily mean that coverage will be liberating for women. In assessing the type of coverage female athletes receive, many scholars hedge at accepting it as a bona fide “step forward” because of the sexualized and trivialized nature of representations (Bernstein, 2002; Messner et al., 2003). As Bernstein (2002, p. 426) cautions: “[T]he appearance and attractiveness of female athletes – from a male perspective – are an important factor in explaining the type of media coverage they get. In this respect it is much too early for a victory lap.”

In light of the exponential growth in women's sports participation, sports feminists have strongly critiqued media gatekeepers for making decisions that reinforce ideology that naturalizes sports as a male preserve, thus stunting the future growth of women's sports (Duncan, 2006; Eastman & Billings, 2000; Hardin & Shain, 2005; Kane & Lenskyj, 1998; Messner et al., 2003). As Messner and colleagues argue, how can audiences appreciate the talents of female athletes if the only stories viewers see are ones that poke fun at women, showcase their sexuality, and are “peppered with locker room humor” (2003, p. 49)?

Challenging Dominant Practices

Because hegemony considers power as centralized, and thus locatable, it is possible to prescribe ways for challenging dominant ideology with the goal of liberating marginalized groups (Lull, 1995). From a Gramscian perspective, then, although the problematic framing of female athletes is justified by dominant gender ideology, these commonsense beliefs can be undermined through alternative narratives. Such discourse is often called “counterhegemonic” because its expression could destabilize the very power structures kept in place by the institutional communication of dominant ideology (Hall, 1985). Examples of counterhegemony are not limited to mass communication texts; rather, resistance to dominant ideology can also be practiced by individuals who reappropriate dominant messages in ways that differ – or blatantly challenge – the creators' intent (Lull, 1995). Thus, sports media practices should not be considered static, but rather sites of possible resistance, a point that is especially attractive to feminists who are concerned with change and may appreciate the roadmap to change that a hegemonic perspective on power offers (Pringle, 2005).

Scholars have also documented various counterhegemonic narratives, suggesting that continued pressure on those in power may result in shifts that could be beneficial to women. For instance, Hardin, Lynn, and Walsdorf (2005) pointed to Real Sports Magazine as one example of counterhegemony in practice; the magazine frequently featured female athletes in team sports and exerting strength, images that directly contradict traditional gender roles. Other research has shown that female athletes may be receiving the most ethical coverage from students via campus media; as one study showed, college newspapers often lack the sexualized and passive images of female athletes that so often dominate other sports media (Huffman, Tuggle, & Rosengard, 2004). The authors suggest that the improvement in coverage may help the public understand the scope and success of women's sports – and thus lead to shifts in how women's sports are valued.

Although these differing depictions represent possible gains for women, feminists suggest that such challenges are but one small step forward and argue that continued pressure on those in power is still needed; these feminists have offered various prescriptions for change, including pressuring those in gatekeeping positions to rethink how dominant ideology may shape the messages they disseminate. For instance, troubled by the coverage produced by the NCAA, an organization dedicated to the promotion of women's sports, Shifflett and Revelle (1994) have called for those working in sports organizations to develop a “conscious effort” to “get beyond stereotypes and to highlight the athletic element in female athletics” (p. 149). Others have sought to challenge dominant ideology within sports organizations and practices, such as advocating for the recasting of sporting values outside capitalistic frameworks. Doing so would undermine the logic that values sports – particularly football and men's basketball in a collegiate setting – because of their ability to make money (Suggs, 2005).

Feminism and Our Research on the Sports/Media Complex

In the previous review, we have aimed to summarize the ways radical feminists, and, to a lesser degree, feminists with a more liberal orientation, have framed the problem relating to coverage of women's sports. Scholars and advocates using these critiques have been instrumental in furthering the prospects for female athletes. Title IX, which has undoubtedly been the most influential development in relationship to women's sports in the modern era (if not ever) is a liberal feminist initiative, and, as we have also suggested, radical theory has guided critique of the sports/media complex by most well-known feminists in the field, such as Kane, Duncan, and Messner, among others.

Although liberal and radical feminists conceptualize the role of sports institutions differently – liberal feminists generally stress similarities between women and men and do not interrogate masculine ideology in sports institutions, as do radical feminists – they situate power similarly, as a top-down force exercised by the few over the many. It logically follows, then, that their prescriptions for improved representations of women's sports would share similarities, including an agenda for activism in which women share a common understanding of the oppressive nature of traditional gender roles and of their shared exploitation vis-à-vis media representations where they are marginalized or depicted in hyperfeminine ways. Simply put, the sports-feminist agenda for change has generally relied on universal agreement that women as a collective have been wronged, and on a singular understanding that the evidence of that oppression can be found in mediated representations of sports.

Our own research over the years has been a blend of liberal and radical theory and has generally assumed the same Gramscian orientation, integrating the idea of cultural hegemony to position women and female athletes as oppressed. We – along with the majority of sports feminists – have asserted that until masculine values are no longer privileged in the sports/media complex, women's inclusion in sports media will be perceived as illogical or unnecessary by both sports media producers and consumers. We have asserted that deconstructing ideology that makes women's acceptance seem unnatural would open the door for women's general inclusion in sports media texts and for their acceptance as “legitimate” athletes and sports media professionals as well (see, for instance, Hardin & Shain, 2005; Whiteside & Hardin, 2008).

We have made this argument through research that has examined media texts such as newspaper sports sections and magazines (Hardin et al., 2005; Hardin, Lynn, Walsdorf, & Hardin, 2002); probed the experience, values, attitudes, and beliefs of women and men who produce the mediated texts (Hardin, 2005; Hardin & Shain, 2005, 2006; Hardin & Whiteside, 2009a, 2009b), and explored the values and motivations of sports fans who consumed these texts (Hardin & Whiteside, 2008; Hardin & Whiteside, 2009c). Perceptions and the framing of Title IX have been of special interest to us, as we see this law as essential to the rights of girls and women to participate in sports, and we recognized media framing of the law as influential on its public support. We have analyzed media texts that have questioned the logic of Title IX and have situated the comments of male and female consumers and athletes who have also questioned its logic within the framework of masculine hegemony (see Hardin, Simpson, Whiteside, & Garris, 2007; Hardin & Whiteside, 2008, 2009c; Whiteside & Hardin, 2008). In doing so, we have asserted that an ideology that privileges men and boys has become so “commonsense” that it could ultimately threaten protection of the law. In doing so, we assume a singular interest for women: the preservation of Title IX. A Gramscian lens for this research was logical and, we believe, consistent with the goals of the law itself.

Representations of Female Athletes

We have also, as have other sports feminists, considered the vexing issue involving the nature of (hyperfeminized and sexualized) depictions of female athletes. We have done so through analysis of texts, discussions with media gatekeepers, and conversations with athletes themselves. Here – faced with the contradictions we outlined earlier – we have begun to reconsider our feminist orientation as we have grasped for ways to reconcile arguments that certain images of athletes are ultimately oppressive with the opposition to these arguments from athletes and from others who identify themselves as women's sports advocates.

The genesis for our self-examination was in our analysis of transcripts of interviews with female college athletes and with bloggers who cover women's sports, in separate, ongoing projects, about the portrayal of sportswomen (for the most recent published work from these projects, see Hardin, 2011). We also grappled with alternatives to Gramscian-oriented understandings of power in interviews with women who work in college sports public relations. In all three of these projects, we found it difficult to situate the ways these women described themselves and their attitudes, values, and beliefs within the framework we had used before. We were confronted – in ways we had not been previously (or, perhaps more likely, had failed to see) – with understandings of agency, empowerment, and difference among those we interviewed; the contradictions could not be satisfactorily explained within the framework of hegemony, and traditional second-wave approaches that generally assume monolithic interests in relationship to women and the sports/media complex simply lacked the analytical power we needed to understand and explain those contradictions. Thus, we turned to a Foucauldian, poststructuralist (third-wave) perspective, driven by a different understanding of power and resting on alternative assumptions about difference and agency.

Foucault and Feminism

The work of philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984), especially his suggestions about how power works on a cultural level, has been influential in a number of fields, including inquiry about sports and the way sports are mediated. Foucault's ideas about power provide a contrast to Gramscian notions about hegemony. A growing number of scholars have found Foucault a useful impetus to “ask new questions, think differently and allow for the creation of new understandings and possibilities,” as scholar Richard Pringle has asserted (2005, p. 273). Sports sociologist David Rowe has also argued that Gramscian approaches in sport theory have (rightly) been challenged in recent years by Foucauldian-driven poststructuralism (Rowe, 2004). Yet, as we will explain, sports feminists, especially those assessing mediated representations of female athletes, have been slow to integrate poststructuralist ideas into their work.

Key Concepts

Foucault argued in his voluminous work that the nature of power had evolved from a top-down, pastoral model to one where power is expressed relationally and through discursive frameworks. In other words, Foucault rejected the idea that a handful of groups or a class of individuals wield power over another (powerless) group or class (Foucault, 2003). Instead, Foucault saw power as constantly deployed among individuals at all levels of society through discourse. Discourse circulates those ideas we understand as “truth” (knowledge); thus, power and knowledge are constantly at work. The daily discourse between people produces social realities, and the effects of that discourse can be dominations such as sexism or racism (Markula, 2003).

Foucault (1995) uses the prison panopticon to illustrate the way individuals collectively participate in expressions of power. The panopticon is a literal prison structure that includes one central watch tower in the middle of a series of prison cells; prisoners can see the watch tower at all times, which creates a sense that the gaze is alert and everywhere. The effect is the belief of inmates that they are under watch for certain behaviors understood as morally acceptable (or not). Foucault argues that good discipline is a figurative panopticon and a discursive focus on the deviant subject produces discourses that define the “legitimate” and “normal” subject – in short, the normalization of bodies. Language then becomes less about personal expression and more of a means through which identity is constituted and meaning is made. This process is what Foucault (1990) calls the power struggle against subjectification and that which ties an individual to him/herself and becomes known to others. Foucault is thus able to reject binary/essentialist judgments – clear categorizations of the “liberatory” and “repressive” (which necessarily must be dispensed when power is not seen as wielded like a hammer). Thus, a Foucauldian perspective requires careful consideration of the cultural conditions of given practices because a discourse/practice designed in one context to be liberating can – and often is – repressive in another, and vice versa (for more on this, see Markula, 2003; Thorpe, 2008). Even those social movements designed to fight oppression – the feminist movement, for instance – amass power and then, in turn, can become guilty of their own forms of repression by their insistence on certain forms of knowledge as “truth.” Foucault, then, was far more interested in individual ethical development and its expression through discourse (a concept he called “technologies of the self,” which we will discuss later) than in the formation of mass movements based on monolithic definitions of groups and attempts at context-free assertions of “truth” (Foucault, 2003).

(Second-Wave) Feminist Resistance to Foucault

Foucault's assertion that all exercise power, his refusal to recognize an oppressor/oppressed binary or the need for organized social movements to fight institutions deemed repressive, and his resistance to recognizing essential identities (such as “woman”) have made him controversial among second-wave feminists (Hardin, 2011). Further, a roadmap for change with a specific locus of power at which to direct attention is absent, making poststructuralism seem problematic for feminists (McWhorter, 1999). To summarize the book-length critiques of Foucault written by feminists over the years, his work is seen as a threat to the vision of (second-wave) feminists of the movement as being one with unified goals and a moral imperative to lift women from underneath oppressive ideologies and cultural norms.

The truth, however, is that feminism has never been a singular movement – and, for that matter, neither has sports feminism. We have pointed to basic differences between two theoretical branches of sports feminism (liberal and radical); there are many more (Birrell, 2000). Sports feminists have relied on assumptions about what women want from the sports experience, for instance, and how those experiences impact their lives. We include ourselves here: those who study the sports/media complex have often assumed certain (liberatory or oppressive) motives and outcomes based on a theoretical foundation (Gramscian) that has encouraged such conclusions. From this viewpoint, women are always positioned as oppressed, even when they might protest that they are not. As noted feminist scholar bell hooks (1984) asserts, shared victimization is a destructive foundation for feminists because, at least in part, it fails to resonate with the mainstream experiences of many women. Further, hooks suggested that a far more appealing and powerful identity for women to share is built “on the basis of shared strengths and resources” (p. 46). This seems to mesh with poststructuralist/Foucauldian notions of power, which would encourage feminists to abandon the notion of universal unity and instead use difference as a resource. Poststructuralism resists universal explanations and a binary model (e.g., dominance/oppression, powerful/powerless) and gears judgments to specific contexts. Thus, it allows for the inevitable contradiction that arises from the fact that all women (and men) are not the same, and that their desires, understandings, and experiences are not the same. From that perspective, it becomes a workable theoretical tool for examining issues such as the representation of female athletes in ways that are not palatable to some women's sports advocates while perfectly acceptable – indeed, empowering – to others. We point to the work of Thorpe (2008) as an example of a critique of representations from the poststructuralist viewpoint.

Thorpe (2008) is not the only scholar who has moved away from traditional feminisms in assessing the sports/media complex, as we discuss below. Such an approach, however, is still met with resistance by sports feminists. In an article published in a leading journal in the field, two scholars (Edwards & Jones, 2009) argue passionately that poststructuralism poses a threat to the work of feminists and critical scholars because of its lack of an ethical foundation (failure to assert universal moral imperatives). At the same time, however, they acknowledge that poststructuralist feminists ultimately do use moral judgments in their work – from the choices they make about their objects of study to their choices about what artifacts to ignore or magnify in their analyses. It is not that poststructuralist sports feminists fail to make judgments; it is that they do so with a greater emphasis on context and a different understanding of power and agency in those judgments. In the context of studying mediated depictions of sportswomen, sweeping generalizations are not possible.

Foucault and Our Feminist Analysis of the Sports/Media Complex

Increasingly, women's sports activists are recognizing the limitations of second-wave feminisms, which tend toward Gramscian understandings of power and resistance, in grappling with the complex issues involving depictions of female athletes. Increasingly, influential sports feminists are incorporating Foucault, finding value in his ideas about the role of the body in discourse and power relations. For Foucault, the body is central in the mechanisms of discourse and power, and this focus has evoked attention. Cole (1993), for instance, responding to the struggle commonly articulated by feminists over control of women's bodies (such as the common critique of the sexualization of female athletes), has urged sports feminists to resist assumptions that situate the body outside of cultural practices. Instead, she advocates working toward demystifying how the gendered docile body is constituted. One manifestation of this call is Duncan's (1994) work on the production of the feminine body. In analyzing Shape magazine, she showed how the discourse of personal motivation disguises normative messages about complying with a feminine ideal. Thus, when women are told in the magazine to make a “solemn promise to yourself” to get fit and look like the (photoshopped) cover models, they begin a process in self-monitoring and self-surveillance to meet a normative standard. The focus on how discourse obscures how bodies are normalized has been a common trope in poststructuralist analyses. Similar to Duncan, Schultz (2004) examined media coverage stemming from Brandi Chastain's famous “sports bra moment” following the 1999 women's soccer World Cup and argued that through discourse that situates the sports bra as a symbol of agency and empowerment, women are invited to engage in body management that results in a specifically feminine docile body. Others, such as Caudwell (1999), have considered how power is expressed through everyday discursive frameworks in which we are all implicated. Using questionnaires and interviews with female footballers in the United Kingdom, Caudwell discussed how engaging in an activity marked as “male, affects a player's subjectivity, in particular, their gender identity” (1999, p. 400). Cole (1993, p. 86) calls this process an effect of the “technologies of sport” or an “ensemble of knowledges and practices that disciplines, conditions, reshapes and inscribes the body.”

In his later work, Foucault began focusing on how individuals may use what he called technologies of the self to engage with normalizing power relations. In short, technologies of the self refer to the method Foucault suggested for the ways individuals might “practice freedom,” as he called it, and challenge or change dominant discourses. The practice involves ethical self-care, critical and reflexive thinking, and the writing process (“self writing,” he called it) in the transformation of everyday practices. What is critical, and is explained by Markula (2003), is that this process cannot be judged from the outside. In other words, how freedom is practiced by one individual in one context would be different from that practiced by someone else in another context. For instance (getting back to the “vexing issue” we introduced at the beginning of this chapter), it is perfectly legitimate for a female athlete to argue that posing in a way that accentuates her sexual attractiveness is a practice of freedom for her; it is also legitimate for women's sports advocates to decide to reject these depictions as their own technologies of the self. The central issue is not the act but the motive: for instance, if a female athlete poses because she feels she needs to conform to “hetero-sexy” standards, she is most decidedly not free, and nothing is gained. To allow technologies of the self to serve us, we must be willing to ask questions, accept the answers, and accept difference. We must also abandon a one-size-fits-all approach to activism, as this advocates a one-step-at-a-time, multiple-answers-are-right understanding. In doing so, we must also recognize that liberation is not marked by a clear path led by individuals who “know” better.

Thorpe (2008) offers an apt application of these ideas in her work addressing how technologies of the self are employed by female snowboarders. While first illustrating how female snowboarders are essentially objects of power relations – produced through discourse similar to the arguments offered by Duncan (1994) and Schultz (2004) – she then situates the women as subjects, active in engaging in the process of “what seems ‘natural’ and inevitable in their identity” (Thorpe, 2008, p. 210). In talking with the interview participants about the sexualization of female snowboarders in media, Thorpe noted how many of them enjoyed the sexualized gaze of men. Further, many did so from a critical perspective, thoughtfully weighing competing versions of femininity to imagine new ways of “being.” As Thorpe writes, “In so doing, these women are able to effectively negotiate discursive constructions of femininity that might otherwise limit their subjectivity” (p. 215).

Our interviews with bloggers who cover women's sports – a lonely avocation in a blogosphere dominated by discourse that belittles female athletes – are a case study in how technologies of the self could be applied to an analysis. Using Thorpe's (2008) work as a model, we sought to understand how members of a blogging collective about women's sports, whom we situated as advocates by virtue of their willingness to publicly declare their fandom, understood hyperfeminized images of female athletes. We used a recent artifact – ESPN the Magazine's “Body Issue” (published in fall 2009 as an alternative to SI's swimsuit issue) – to initiate conversation, as a number of the bloggers we interviewed had written about the magazine.

Some had criticized the images of scantily clad female athletes, while others had praised them. In our interviews, we asked bloggers to tell us about their beliefs and motives, helping us to understand why they chose to promote or condemn the images. What we found was that while some bloggers had not engaged in reflexive thought aimed at ethical self-care, most had done so – no matter where they publicly came down on the issue. Furthermore, they appreciated the different points of view expressed in the collective, seeing all as valid. By applying this Foucauldian concept, then, we were far better able to get at the (contextual) truth about this collective. We saw power at work, and we situated our participants neither as victims of false ideology nor as failing to meet a universal standard for women's sports advocacy (Hardin, 2011). Ultimately, we recognized the power in this blogging collective to advocate for women's sports in diverse ways, with the potential to reach out and connect across a spectrum of subjectivities and drive discourse forward in new and previously unrealized ways.

Conclusion

In this overview of theoretical perspectives and our evolving work on women and the sports/media complex, we do not mean to suggest that research and activism grounded in second-wave feminisms or in Gramscian notions about power is without value; quite the contrary. The notion of masculine hegemony in understanding and explaining the nature of sport and its mediated representations is essential for sports feminists – and, in fact, for any scholar who is serious about critically studying the relationship between sports and culture. Furthermore, we believe – and have suggested – that our research on the relationship between media gatekeepers, texts, and sports fans relating to Title IX has been well served by a Gramscian perspective.

We suggest, however, that emerging feminist scholars thoughtfully consider the assumptions about the relationship between sport, gender, and power in their research and consider how a poststructuralist approach may ultimately be more satisfying and useful in reconciling the contradictions they will inevitably encounter. As with any theoretical approach, a poststructuralist framework will draw critique. However, we strongly assert that such critique should not be on the grounds that such an approach is a threat to the moral judgment inherent in feminism; again: quite the contrary. Instead, we have felt a greater moral weight on ourselves, as researchers, to carefully consider all perspectives, to contextualize our understandings, and to examine our assumptions and assertions as researchers. The words of leading Foucauldian feminist Pirkko Markula (2003, p. 105) are our guide: “As players in the sporting truth game, we need to reflect on the limits of our own identities [. . .] Only then can we use our knowledge and our power positions ethically.”

NOTES

1 Jhally (1989, p. 70) coined this term to capture the symbiotic relationship between sports industries and the mediation of those sports industries. The relationship is highly interdependent and mutually reflective.

2 We use the term “poststructuralist” in the same sense as “postmodern.” The terms are often used to mean the same general approach to power, agency, and identity. Sometimes they are used interchangeably, such as by Hall (1996) and Mann and Huffman (2005). For an explication of the features of postmodern critiques of sport, see Edwards and Jones (2009); their explanation of postmodern critique is parallel to descriptions of Foucauldian/poststructuralist theory as found in Markula (2003), Macleod (2006), and other texts.

3 Examples of our work that draws from a Gramscian perspective include Hardin, Simpson, Whiteside, and Garris (2007); Hardin and Shain (2005, 2006); Whiteside and Hardin (2008); Hardin, Lynn, and Walsdorf (2005).

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