Sportswomen and Social Media: Bringing Third-Wave Feminism, Postfeminism, and Neoliberal Feminism Into Conversation

In this article, we take seriously the challenges of making sense of a sporting (and media) context that increasingly engages female athletes as active, visible, and autonomous, while inequalities pertaining to gender, sexuality, race, and class remain stubbornly persistent across sport institutions...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of sport and social issues Vol. 41; no. 5; pp. 359 - 383
Main Authors Thorpe, Holly, Toffoletti, Kim, Bruce, Toni
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.10.2017
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Athletes
Females
Feminism
Gender relations
Mass media images
Neoliberalism
Postfeminism
Race
Sexuality
Social media
Social networks
Sports
Women
neoliberal feminism
postfeminism
third-wave feminism
social media
sportswomen
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Summary:In this article, we take seriously the challenges of making sense of a sporting (and media) context that increasingly engages female athletes as active, visible, and autonomous, while inequalities pertaining to gender, sexuality, race, and class remain stubbornly persistent across sport institutions and practices. We do so by engaging with three recent feminist critiques that have sought to respond to the changing operations of gender relations and the articulation of gendered subjectivities, namely, third-wave feminism, postfeminism, and neoliberal feminism, and applying each to the same concrete setting—the social media self-representation of Hawaiian professional surfer Alana Blanchard. In aiming to conceptually illustrate the utility of these three feminist critiques, we are not advocating for any single approach. Rather, we critically demonstrate what each offers for explaining how current discourses are being internalized, embodied, and practiced by young (sports)women, as they make meaning of, and respond to, the conditions of their lives.
ISSN:0193-7235
1552-7638
DOI:10.1177/0193723517730808