‘Write when it hurts. Then write till it doesn’t’: athlete voice and the lived realities of one female professional athlete

ABSTRACT

Digital media has played a central role in promoting women’s sport, where female athletes are increasingly using online platforms to control their own representations and challenge male dominated sporting institutions. Alternatively, some commentators claim that female athletes’ use of digital media contributes to patriarchal practices in sport, where through self-promotion and image building they do little to advance representations of women’s sport. This paper interrogates these ideas, adopting a postfeminist sensibility and collaborative research approach to examine the online self-representations of a female athlete and blogger. The athlete in question is Meghan MacLaren, a professional golfer on the Ladies’ European Tour who documents her life as a professional athlete through her online blog. Primarily, the authors present a critical analysis of MacLaren’s blog posts over a period of three years, from MacLaren turning professional to the present day. This initial analysis prompted a series of questions around MacLaren’s blogging and self-representations, which the authors then posed directly to her, and Meghan was invited to respond in her own voice. Using a collaborative approach with MacLaren as co-author, this paper seeks to draw attention to the diverging realities of a female professional athlete fulfilling dichotomous identities as a simultaneously trusting and doubting golf performer on the course and a self-appointed athlete activist online, all the while operating in, and influenced by the patriarchal and capitalist cultural environment of golf.

KEYWORDS:

• Blogging
• golf
• media representations
• post-feminism
• professional athlete

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Niamh Kitching

Dr. Niamh Kitching is a Lecturer in Physical Education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Her research interests include the sociology of sport and physical education, and sports pedagogy and coaching. Her published research focuses on qualitative investigations into gender equality and sport, with a particular emphasis on female athletes and coaches, and their participation and presentation in sport and sports media.

Ali Bowes

Dr. Ali Bowes is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Sport at Nottingham Trent University. Having completed her PhD at Loughborough University, her published work focuses primarily on qualitative investigations on elite and/or professional female athletes and elite women’s sport cultures, including their self and mediatised presentations, and considerations of national level representation.

Meghan Maclaren

Meghan Maclaren is a professional golfer on the Ladies European Tour (LET), and a graduate of Florida International University. She became a professional golfer at the end of the 2016 season and has 2 career wins on the LET.  She is author of the blog megmaclaren.com.