Abstract
Feminist and gaze researchers have conducted ongoing discussions surrounding issues relating to the gaze and its impact on female experience. Women have the ‘to-be-looked-atness’ characteristic, with the gaze being directed at the female body, commonly by a male. To date, the focus of feminist research surrounding men looking at women and the analysis how women make sense of looks between women remains limited and scattered. Drawing upon ethnographic data obtained from a PhD research project, this paper delves into the embodied experiences of female exercisers within a UK ‘working-class’ gym. By exploring the women’s own accounts of their living, breathing and sensing bodies as they exercise, I attempt to understand how they make sense of this physical culture, their embodied selves as well as broader constructions of the gendered body. Utilising a feminist phenomenological approach, I explore the social-structural position of women in a patriarchal system of gender relations, whilst simultaneously acknowledging and analysing the structural, cultural and historical forces and location, upon individual lived body experiences and gendered embodiment. Discussion is provided on how women make sense and interpret specific ‘gazes’ encountered within the gym culture from both men and women.
Highlights
To date, the focus of feminist research surrounding men looking at women, with the analysis of how women interpret looks between women, remains partial and scattered
The gaze has been studied in a variety of ways, for example—how female bodybuilders become erotically constructed by the gaze [6], the embodiment of ‘gym bodies’ that are put on display in gay spaces in attempt to attract the male gaze [7,8]; and the application of beauty and bodywork encouraged through hyper feminine forms of consumption [9]
Feminist phenomenology is employed as a lens to focus on the females lived experiences; alternative theoretical positions which emerged and supported a suitable approach to analyse the corporeal aspects of the lived body, are detailed and analysed further where relevant
Summary
The focus of feminist research surrounding men looking at women, with the analysis of how women interpret looks between women, remains partial and scattered. Within the context of gyms or fitness centres, individuals can regenerate and improve their body without complying with the requirements of competition or imposed goals and even manage to have fun [16] Due this this, the gym can be viewed as a site that promotes the construction of the body and an important space to explore issues surrounding embodiment and the gendered self. Modern fitness facilities started to spring up in the 1950s and 1990s, to the range of larger chains that proliferate today This recent development of physical cultural studies presents the gym as “dedicated to the contextually based understanding of the corporeal practices, discourses and subjectivities through which active bodies become organized, represented and experienced in relation to the operations of social power” [23] By exploring the notion of multiple gazes found in the gym culture, this can help to identify the mechanisms through (and spaces within) which women’s bodies are policed by other bodies (both men and women) and by doing so, develop a liberation of embodied consciousness where women (and, men) question the limits of current thinking about the moving body
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