Feminists against fad, fizz ed: a poetic commentary exploring the notion of Joe Wicks as physical education

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Even though advocacy for poststructural feminist lenses to change/challenge physical education (PE) has grown over the years, there is an evident gap in qualitative research using poetic forms of representation in PE.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use a poststructural feminist framework to challenge a particular kind of hegemonic reproduction of PE, particularly to explore the notion of ‘Joe Wicks as PE’.

Participants and settings: Collaborative autoethnography framed this study and participants included three queer leaning female-identified early/mid-career PE teacher educators.

Data collection/analysis: Over the course of eight weeks, we collected and generated a variety of texts individually and collectively. To capture our reactions, we decided to collect data around two ‘prompts’, namely the recorded podcast titled ‘Is Joe Wicks the face of PE?’ of an Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP) hosted chat, and our participation in a 9 am ‘PE with Joe’ session. We presented the data gathered in this project poetically.

Findings: We divided the findings into two parts corresponding with our responses (collaborative autoethnographies) to the two themes, namely ‘We can’t fix this/that’ (aka ‘Banging our heads against a brick wall’) and ‘Joe Wicks as PE’ (aka ‘Feminist killjoys’).

Implications: We believe that a poetic representation, in addition to nurturing and amplifying the emotional and lyrical data collected, presented an opportunity to contribute to, and extends this kind of representational style in PE. In addition to this, collaborative autoethnography allowed us as a community to advance scholarship and provides a space for collective empowerment.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• PETE
• collaborative autoethnography
• poetic representation
• Joe Wicks
• covid-19
• poststructural feminist theory

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge our two reviewers for their jaw dropping comments which have been duly framed. Much thanks also to the Editors for their support of our work. Most especially we thank all the women who have gone before us, gave us theoretical and methodological tools and the guts to use them. Bravo all!

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Metaphor substitutes a concept with another, and a metonymy selects a related term. So, if metaphor is for substitution, metonymy is for association.

2 Joe Wicks otherwise known as ‘The Body Coach’, is a British fitness coach, TV presenter and author. His fitness method uses short intense High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT or, colloquially, 'HIT') workouts.

3 AIESEP ‘is an international, non-governmental, non-profit, professional association which aims to promote high quality research worldwide in the areas of physical education, physical activity and sport pedagogy across the lifespan’ (AIESEP 2019 para. 1). It’s important to acknowledge that such promotion by a large organization could be interpreted by members and/or observers in various ways.

4 Probing questions: What’s going on for you? Why? Where is that coming from? What’s the problem? Harm? Challenge? What works?

5 Quotes in ‘italics’ like this come from the transcript of ‘The Podcast’

6 Are numbered here according to their appearance in ‘The Podcast’ and are anonymised.

7 Carla attended the online discussion, but she didn’t say anything. She felt paralysed and uncomfortable with what was discussed.