Fighting Sports, Gender, and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines

Fighting Sports, Gender and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines offers a glimpse into the cultural terrain of women's boxing as it manifests in everyday gyms for novice boxers. Taking an ethnographic approach, Victoria Collins examines broad understandings of gender, violence, self-defense, commodification, and health and fitness from the point of view of women who engage in the sport. Collins unpacks dominant assumptions about gender and the sport through the eyes of the women's understandings of gender norms, social assumptions about physicality, sexuality, as well as challenges to masculine and feminine performativity. Central to this study is the appropriation and marketing of the boxers' work out in cardio-boxing gym spaces (i.e. fitness boxing), where the sport has increasingly been packaged, commodified, and sold to predominantly middle class, white female consumers as a means to not only improve their health and fitness, but also as a means to defend themselves against a would-be attacker. The body project for women in the sport of boxing, therefore, should not only be framed as a form of resistance, but one of physical feminism.

1138734948
Fighting Sports, Gender, and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines

Fighting Sports, Gender and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines offers a glimpse into the cultural terrain of women's boxing as it manifests in everyday gyms for novice boxers. Taking an ethnographic approach, Victoria Collins examines broad understandings of gender, violence, self-defense, commodification, and health and fitness from the point of view of women who engage in the sport. Collins unpacks dominant assumptions about gender and the sport through the eyes of the women's understandings of gender norms, social assumptions about physicality, sexuality, as well as challenges to masculine and feminine performativity. Central to this study is the appropriation and marketing of the boxers' work out in cardio-boxing gym spaces (i.e. fitness boxing), where the sport has increasingly been packaged, commodified, and sold to predominantly middle class, white female consumers as a means to not only improve their health and fitness, but also as a means to defend themselves against a would-be attacker. The body project for women in the sport of boxing, therefore, should not only be framed as a form of resistance, but one of physical feminism.

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Fighting Sports, Gender, and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines

Fighting Sports, Gender, and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines

by Victoria E. Collins
Fighting Sports, Gender, and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines

Fighting Sports, Gender, and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines

by Victoria E. Collins

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Overview

Fighting Sports, Gender and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines offers a glimpse into the cultural terrain of women's boxing as it manifests in everyday gyms for novice boxers. Taking an ethnographic approach, Victoria Collins examines broad understandings of gender, violence, self-defense, commodification, and health and fitness from the point of view of women who engage in the sport. Collins unpacks dominant assumptions about gender and the sport through the eyes of the women's understandings of gender norms, social assumptions about physicality, sexuality, as well as challenges to masculine and feminine performativity. Central to this study is the appropriation and marketing of the boxers' work out in cardio-boxing gym spaces (i.e. fitness boxing), where the sport has increasingly been packaged, commodified, and sold to predominantly middle class, white female consumers as a means to not only improve their health and fitness, but also as a means to defend themselves against a would-be attacker. The body project for women in the sport of boxing, therefore, should not only be framed as a form of resistance, but one of physical feminism.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781793600646
Publisher: Lexington Books
Publication date: 04/07/2021
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 214
File size: 6 MB

About the Author

Victoria E. Collins is associate professor and graduate program coordinator in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Finding Boxing in a Strip-Mall

Chapter Two: From Amazonians to Cardio Classes: Women, Consumerism, and Combat

Sports

Chapter Three: Commodifying and the Woman Boxer: Popular Culture, Media, and the

Sexualized Fighter

Chapter Four: Fighting Tough…but Not Too Tough

Chapter Five: There are Only Three Rules of Fight Club, “No Spectators, No Social Media

and No Boob Shots!”

Chapter Six: Sparring Like Men? Gender Maneuvering and the Emotional Work of Getting in

the Ring

Chapter Seven: Violence, Safety, and Self-defense: Unpacking the Narrative that Boxing is

Self-Defense

Chapter Eight: The Female Fight: Sport and the spectacle

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