‘If you miss the ball, you look like a total muppet!’ Boys investing in their bodies in physical education and sport

Abstract

Connections have been drawn between masculinity, muscularity and physical or social status in sport. Not only are sporting bodies often related to masculinity but also to whiteness, leading to the devaluing of Asian boys' bodies and sporting experiences. This paper draws on three British Asian teenage boys' visual and verbal narratives to enquire how they negotiate these connections in their physical education and recreational sport experiences. Bourdieu's notion of capital is used to make sense of boys' ways of investing in their bodies to manage their status in school. Drawing from focus-group interviews which used participant-driven photography and photo elicitation techniques, the research indicates how three boys invested in their bodies by doing particular types of physical activity that would enable them to develop muscularity, fitness and/or motor competence, to attain or retain physical and social capital in school. Along the way, they add pertinent comments on the intersections of masculinity and ethnicity in constructing and performing a sporting body.

Keywords:

• Embodiment
• Masculinity
• Ethnicity
• Capital
• Physical Education

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‘If you miss the ball, you look like a total muppet!’ Boys investing in their bodies in physical education and sport

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the three boys whose data are used in this paper and their classmates, teachers and school. I am grateful to David Purdue for assistance with an earlier draft, and the valuable comments of the anonymous reviewers.