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Pink gloves still give black eyes: exploring 'alternative' femininity in women's combat sports

Channon, Alex and Phipps, Catherine 2017. Pink gloves still give black eyes: exploring 'alternative' femininity in women's combat sports. Martial Arts Studies 3 , pp. 24-37. 10.18573/j.2017.10093

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Abstract

This article considers the gendered significance of women’s participation in combat sports, with a specific focus on the performances of femininity by female combat athletes. Against lines of argument which posit that women’s enactment of femininity is the result of restrictive, coercive, and ultimately conservative cultural pressures, respondents in two separate studies suggested that a purposeful, selective enactment of femininity, when understood in combination with their fighting ability, signified an important challenge to orthodox understandings of gender. As such, our data suggests that manoeuvring within normative cultural parameters of gender may, ironically, help to stimulate change in its structure of meanings, given that the feminine performances of these fighters ultimately posed symbolic challenges to cultural constructions of (‘normal’) women as inevitably weaker and inferior athletes compared to men. We therefore advocate that scholars with an interest in exploring the subversion of gender remain mindful of the possibility that such subversive impulses might occur via the appropriation, and re-signification, of some of its more orthodox norms.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure
Uncontrolled Keywords: combat sports; femininity; gender; martial arts; women
Publisher: Cardiff University Press
ISSN: 2057-5696
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 26 January 2017
Date of Acceptance: 1 December 2016
Last Modified: 04 May 2023 13:54
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/97782

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