Pink Gloves still give Black Eyes: Exploring ‘Alternative’ Femininity in Women’s Combat Sports

Alex Channon, Catherine Phipps

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article considers the gendered significance of women’s participation in combat sports, with a specific focus on the performances of femininity by female combat athletes. Against lines of argument which posit that women’s enactment of femininity is the result of restrictive, coercive, and ultimately conservative cultural pressures, respondents in two separate studies suggested that a purposeful, selective enactment of femininity, when understood in combination with their fighting ability, signified an important challenge to orthodox understandings of gender. As such, our data suggests that manoeuvring within normative cultural parameters of gender may, ironically, help to stimulate change in its structure of meanings, given that the feminine performances of these fighters ultimately posed symbolic challenges to cultural constructions of (‘normal’) women as inevitably weaker and inferior athletes compared to men. We therefore advocate that scholars with an interest in exploring the subversion of gender remain mindful of the possibility that such subversive impulses might occur via the appropriation, and re-signification, of some of its more orthodox norms.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)24-37
Number of pages14
JournalMartial Arts Studies
Volume3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16 Jan 2017

Bibliographical note

© 2017 Alex Channon, Catherine Phipps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords

  • combat sports
  • femininity
  • gender
  • martial arts
  • women

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