Blood, Sweat and Tears: Women, Sport and Hollywood

Abstract

The sports film genre is one in which girls and women are notoriously underrepresented. However, there has been a notable increase in female sports films over the last 20 years,¹ coinciding with the increased visibility of female athletes in the media landscape more generally² and with the emergence of postfeminist discourses, both within the media and within the context of academic debate. Within the contradictory context of, on the one hand, the transgressive and empowering potential of female athleticism, and, on the other, the sexualization and objectification of the athletic female body within the larger media context, this chapter explores the ways in which these films might challenge and/or reinforce heteronormative understanding of femininity and female sexuality. The discussion is also situated in relation to debates surrounding the increasing commodification of the sport/fitness context and around the contradictory significance of girls and women as consumers of sport- and fitness-related products that are posited as an integral part of an ‘empowering’ ‘lifestyle’. As such, this chapter attempts to map the ways in which the intertwining of neo-liberal and postfeminist discourses³ is variously inscribed on and embodied by the figure of the female athlete. It therefore draws on an understanding of postfeminism as a ‘sensibility’⁴ where notions of female empowerment are increasingly asserted through an emphasis on individualism, choice, consumption and (bodily) self-discipline.