‘An San’s hair is short, therefore she is a feminist:’ Women athletes’ hair, feminist movements, and nationalism

Abstract

At the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, South Korean archer An San received national attention for her short hair, when anti-feminists accused An of being a feminist. The anti-feminists’ online assaults made national headlines and evoked a strong feminist countermovement. In this paper, we ground this incident in the context of Korean nationalism and its relation to sport, and South Korean feminist movements. Using social media and news sources as our data, we analyze the meanings of women athletes’ hair length and styles, revealed in the case of An San. We explore meanings of hair in Korean women’s elite sport, and within the context of the tal-corset feminist movement. We argue that the An incident sheds light on the complex interplay between nationalism, feminist movements, and physical cultures of hair, and see the An incident as one that drew increasing public attention and support for the feminist movement in South Korea.

Keywords:

• Nationalism
• feminism
• feminist movements
• archery
• South Korea
• women’s sport

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge our supervisors, Mary Louise Adams and Samantha King, as well as mentors, Jennifer McClearen and Christopher Knoester from the Junior Scholars of Color Mentoring Program of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, and Kyoung-yim Kim, for their guidance. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers from the Barbara Brown Outstanding Student Paper Award by the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport for their feedback. This work has previously been presented in earlier forms at the 2021 Conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in Montreal in April 2022, and at the Queen’s University School of Kinesiology and Health Studies Graduate Student Research Day in May 2022, and we would like to thank the participants at these talks for their feedback.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 This paper follows South Korean naming convention; the last name is written first, followed by the given name.