Girlfight and Bend it Like Beckham: Screening Women, Sport, and Sexuality

Abstract

In this article, sport film is taken as a social and cultural space where women's bodies are made publicly in/visible. Two films—Girlfight and Bend it Like Beckham—provide the focus for critical discussion. Moreover, a queer-feminist analysis explores the links between participation in boxing and football, and women's sexuality as represented in the films. Lesbian sexualities are considered in a critique of the erasure of the lesbian sport [film] star. Sexual subjectivity is also discussed in relation to the heterosexual heroic and to patriarchy. In this way I interrogate heterosexuality. I also consider links between ethnicity, women's bodies, and sexuality. In the final instance, I show that the films work to reproduce heterosexual hegemony and depict heteronormative assimilation.