Women Athletes: Re-signifying the Female Body?

Abstract

How does women’s participation in sport contribute to the re-signification of women’s corporality? Considering Susan Brownmiller’s notion that femininity, in modern society, can be understood as an “aesthetic of limitation”, I also work with notions of gender and corporality taken from recent work by Susan Bordo and Judith Butler, in an attempt to identify changes in women’s practices and representations of the female body propitiated by sporting activity. I analyze the testimonies of Brazilian women athletes, most of whom can be considered professionals, from two sporting fields: on the one hand, equestriennes engaged in the elite sport of showjumping, and on the other, women involved in the popular sport of volleyball. I also look at cultural images of women athletes as currently produced in mass media. he evidence that I obtain through field work leads me to identify conflicting tendencies of “deconstruction” of certain aspects of the above-mentioned aesthetics of limitation and persistent cultural concern for women’s “masculinization” through sport.