Speaking Pictures, Silent Voices: Female Athletes and the Negotiation of Selfhood

Hannah Intezar

doi:10.1007/s12124-020-09577-6

Abstract

Combining Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1990) theoretical position on Architectonics and Erving Goffman’s (1979) writings on visual content analysis, the aim of this paper is to explore how female athletes are caught in a complex matrix of power, post – feminist neoliberalism, and self – presentation. The visual images they choose to portray are, therefore, perfect for determining how this cohort of women negotiates social discourses around identity and femininity. Appropriating the Bakhtinian notion of architectonic unity, not only provides an alternative theoretical lens for enquiries concerning the body, identity, and selfhood, but also initiates some thought provoking questions around neoliberal feminism and ‘new femininity.’ This paper advances on previous research by exemplifying how Serena Williams (considered the greatest female tennis player of all time) combines both her femininity and strong physicality to self – shape a myth – like persona, setting her apart from traditional stereotypes of femininity and ‘femaleness.’

Highlights

This paper explores the grey area occupied by female athletes, in terms of media self – representation and their display of romanticised physical strength in visual form
Small pockets of sports media audiences, for instance, may be comfortable with viewing aesthetically strong female athletes, pushing the boundaries of ideological restrictions surrounding ‘femininity.’ This progressive attitude, is limited and outweighed by derogatory and body shaming rhetoric widely used on social media (Ingle 2014; Carter-Francique and Richardson 2016)
I draw on female athletes, Serena Williams, as a case study because they are the most visible cohort of women who challenge traditional modes of feminineness by displaying prowess

Summary

Introduction

This paper explores the grey area occupied by female athletes, in terms of media self – representation and their display of romanticised physical strength in visual form. It argues for the ontological dangers of such self – marketing. When such forms of self – shaping lead to a lack of selfhood coherence, a ‘sense of the [Architectonic] whole’ is missing. Joseph Williams’s, terms coherence is: ‘seeing what all the sentences in a piece of writing add up to, the way all the pieces in a puzzle add up to the picture on the box’ (Williams and Colomb 2010: 71). I draw on female athletes, Serena Williams (female tennis player), as a case study because they are the most visible cohort of women who challenge traditional modes of feminineness by displaying prowess

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