Through the methodology of textual analysis, this study discusses how women's fitness magazine texts equate physical health with beauty and how this equation is achieved. Michel Foucault's ideas on power and discipline and Herbert Marcuse's ideas on co-optation are employed to inform the research. The study discusses how texts often use empowerment, or feminist, ideology to convey to readers that exercise and fitness pursuits, when used to achieve physical change that improve a reader's physical attractiveness, are ways to empower themselves in all aspects of life. By co-opting feminist ideals, fitness texts encourage readers to concentrate on their physical selves, specifically physical beauty, not health, at the expense of achieving true physical health and gains in the social arena.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Barthes, R.
(1977). Image, music, text. New York: Hill and Wang.
2.
Bartky, S. L.
(1988). Foucault, femininity, and the modernization of patriarchal power. In I. Diamond & L. Quinby (Eds.), Feminism & Foucault: Reflections on resistance (pp. 61-86). Boston: Northeastern University Press.
3.
Betterton, R.
(1987). Introduction: Feminism, femininity, and representation. In R. Betterton (Ed.), Looking on: Images of femininity in the visual arts and media (pp. 1-18). London: New York.
4.
Bordo, S. R.
(1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press.
5.
Chapman, G. E.
(in press). Making weight: Light-weight rowing, technologies of power, and technologies of the self. Sociology of Sport Journal.
6.
Cole, C.
, & Hribar, A. (1995). Celebrity feminism: Nike style. Post-Fordism, transcendence, and consumer power. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 347-369.
7.
Coward, R.
(1985). Female desires: How they are bought, sold, and packaged. New York: Grove.
8.
Davis, C.
, & Cowles, M. (1991). Body image and exercise: A study of relationships and comparisons between physically active men and women. Sex Roles, 25, 33-43.
9.
Dellinger, K.
, & Williams, C. (1997). Makeup at work: Negotiating appearance rules in the workplace. Gender and Society, 11, 151-177.
10.
Duncan, M.
(1990). Sports photographs and sexual difference: Images of women and men in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7, 22-43.
11.
Duncan, M.
(1993). Beyond analyses of sport media texts: An argument for formal analyses of institutional structures. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 353-372.
12.
Duncan, M.
(1994). The politics of women's body images and practices: Foucault, the panopticon, and Shape magazine. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 18, 48-65.
13.
Duquin, M. E.
(1989). Fashion and fitness: Images in women's magazine advertisements. Arena Review, 13(2), 97-109.
14.
Fairclough, N.
(1989). Language and power. New York: Longman.
15.
Fairclough, N.
(1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.
16.
Faludi, S.
(1991). Backlash: The undeclared war against American women. New York: Crown.
17.
Foucault, M.
(1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Random House/Vintage.
18.
Freedman, R.
(1986). Beauty bound. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
19.
Gill, R.
(1995). Relativism, reflexivity, and politics: Interrogating discourse analysis from a feminist perspective. In S. Wilkinson & C. Kitzinger (Eds.), Feminism and discourse: Psychological perspectives (pp. 165-186). London: Sage Ltd.
20.
Hargreaves, J.
(1994). Sporting females: Critical issues in the history and sociology of women's sports. London: Routledge.
21.
Heilbroner, R.
(1985). The nature and logic of capitalism. New York: Norton.
22.
Hot lines
. (1996, November). Shape, 16, 20.
23.
Kuhn, A.
(1985). The power of the image: Essays on representation and sexuality. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
24.
Leath, V. M.
, & Lumpkin, A. (1992). An analysis of sportswomen on the covers and in the feature articles of Women's Sports and Fitness Magazine, 1975-1989. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 16, 121-126.
25.
Marcuse, H.
(1964). One dimensional man. Boston: Beacon.
26.
Markula, P.
(1995). Firm but shapely, fit but sexy, strong but thin. The Postmodern aerobicizing female bodies. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 424-453.
27.
Park, R. J.
(1994). A decade of the body: Researching and writing about the history of health, fitness, exercise and sport, 1983-1993. Journal of Sport History, 21, 59-82.
28.
Smith, D. E.
(1990). Texts, facts, and femininity: Exploring the relations of ruling. London: Routledge.
29.
Sontag, S.
(1977). On photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
30.
Spitzack, C.
(1990). Confessing excess: The politics of women's body reduction. Albany: State University of New York Press.
31.
Thompson, J. B.
(1981). Critical hermeneutics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
32.
Thompson, J. B.
(1987). Language and ideology: A framework for analysis. Sociological Review, 35, 516-536.
33.
Thompson, J. B.
(1988). Mass communication and modern culture: Contribution to a critical theory of ideology. Sociology, 22, 359-383.
34.
White, P. G.
, & Gillett, J. (1994). Reading the muscular body: A critical decoding of advertisements in Flex magazine. Sociology of Sport Journal, 11, 18-39.
35.
Young, I.
(1990). Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment, motility, and spatiality. In I. Young (Ed.), Throwing like a girl and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory (pp. 141-158). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
