Beach body work: Australian women’s experiences

Abstract

This article examines Australian women’s complex relationship with the beach through a focus on affect and on what bodies do. Interviews with ten participants of diverse backgrounds and of different ages reveal that women understand the beach as a mediated and surveilled space where their bodies are foregrounded. In this environment, there is an intersection of women’s knowledge of the popular constructions of the archetypal Australian beach body, real women’s bodies, and interviewees’ experiences of the beach as a place of shame and pride. As a means of managing this affective landscape participants detail a range of bodily strategies enacted prior to going to the beach and once at the beach. This bodily labour demonstrates that for Australian women the beach is a dynamic and complicated site of both leisure and labour.

Keywords:

• bodies
• body work
• pride
• shame
• suburban beach
• women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Candice Field

Candice Field is a PhD candidate at Griffith University, focusing on the gendered aging body at leisure. Her first class honours project was on the relationship between the beach and women’s bodies. She has presented her research at the Australian Women and Gender Studies conference and at the 10^th Somatechnics Conference. Aside from her studies, Candice works at Griffith assisting first year students of Sociology and is passionate about exploring the taken-for-granted, lived and embodied experiences of Australian women.

Adele Pavlidis

Adele Pavlidis is an interdisciplinary sociologist working at the nexus of women and sport. Drawing on feminist perspectives of organisations, affect and emotion, and identity, Dr Pavlidis has published her work in internationally reputable journals in the fields of sport and leisure. Dr Pavlidis is the author of (with Simone Fullagar), Sport, Gender & Power (Routlege) and is currently working on her second monograph, Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery (Palgrave). Dr Pavlidis is currently working on a project that examines the changing nature of sport competition as women’s participation in diverse contexts becomes more visible through mainstream, alternative and social media.

Barbara Pini

Barbara Pini is a Professor of Sociology in the School of Humanities at Griffith University, Australia. Her research work has largely focused on gender and rurality.