Badass Athena triathletes: Athletic performativity and embodiment

ABSTRACT

Embodied subjectivity and athletic performativity require both mind and body to work together to achieve athletic goals and move beyond cultural barriers. This is perhaps best demonstrated by Athena triathletes, the category of women racers who compete at a weight of at least 165 lb. The experiences of Athena triathletes remind us of the very real structural barriers that mainstream culture produces to constrain, limit, and reduce women’s bodily capacities, rendering women’s bodies as objects. Athena interviewees in this study demonstrated a strong sense of self-empowerment and attributed it to their experience as members of active triathlon and multisport communities. Profiling this empowerment is a focal point of this study. A secondary focus describes Athena racers’ athletic performativity in terms of their embodied experience while training and racing. The author also explores how competing as Athena category racers makes them feel and how triathlon has influenced what they say or think about their bodies. Finally, the author discusses the structural barriers faced by Athena racers inside the sport of triathlon and within the context of U.S. culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Women & sports
• fat studies
• body image
• triathlon
• women athletes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ironman triathlete Chris McCormack has discussed his own experience of being told that at 170 lb he was too big to win the Ironman World Championships held in Kona, Hawai’i (McCormack and Vandehey 2011).

2. See Saguy (2013) for a full discussion of barriers to physical activity including gear, equipment, and pacing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wendy Burns-Ardolino

Wendy Burns-Ardolino serves as director of the Professional Master of Arts in Social Innovation Program and is a professor in the Liberal Studies Department at Grand Valley State University where she teaches interdisciplinary courses in media, gender, and cultural studies. Her current ethnographic work brings together research in the fields of body studies, women and sports, and feminist theory with the lived experiences of women triathletes. She has authored two books, TV Female Foursomes and their Fans and Jiggle: (Re)shaping American Women, and has published articles and book chapters in journals and edited collections including: Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Cultural Matters: A Journal of Cultural Studies, The Fat Studies Reader, and Co-opting Culture: Culture and Power in Sociology and Cultural Studies. Dr. Burns-Ardolino is nationally recognized as a scholar in the fields of feminist media studies, body studies, and American popular culture.