Disciplining the Female Body through Fitness: "Women Participating in CrossFit and Perceptions of the Body"

Noemi Dimuzio, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Women’s self-surveillance has been shaped through nutrition, technologies, social media and fitness. Women are constantly struggling with disciplining their bodies to produce a particular body image. The use of technologies has produced images of ideal bodies of beauty, perfection and constant awareness of body parts. The body can be shaped and molded in a variety places, most notably the gym. Fitness allows for the construction of the perfect body. Fitness creates a constant urge to develop and change the body and produces self-surveillance and discipline. There has been a shift from the Western thin ideal image to a new fitness image of a lean body with sculpted muscles. This image, while perhaps more empowering for some women, is still creating a self-awareness and self-surveillance of women’s bodies, by exploring how women experience and discipline their bodies through fitness and nutrition in relation to CrossFit participation. This paper utilizes Foucauldian theory to explore disciplining the body through fitness employing concepts of self-surveillance, biopedagogy, nutrition and body talk. The concepts explore women using fitness to create a particular body image in ways that deal with weight, food and fitness.

Subject Area

Sociology|Gender studies

Recommended Citation

Dimuzio, Noemi, "Disciplining the Female Body through Fitness: "Women Participating in CrossFit and Perceptions of the Body"" (2019). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI27665481.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI27665481

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