"It Can Kill You...": Developing and Demonstrating the Gendered Capacity to (Re)act in Extreme Fitness Programs

• In Event: If/When We Have Fun: Gender Subjectivities in Leisure

Abstract

Scholarship has called for a continual re-examination of the shifting relationships amongst masculinities and femininities, encouraging us to pay attention to the sites that give rise to gender alternatives. Following from observations about the potential for “new sports” to generate space for gender alternatives, we explore the rise of extreme fitness programs as a national (and in some cases, global) phenomenon that is also entwined with changing discourses of “ideal” workplace identity. Specifically, we link the extreme fitness program of CrossFit to neoliberal discourses that promote the need to be “self made” or “enterprising.” We discuss two main implications—the promotion of the literal self-made man and female masculinity/muscularity. Ultimately, we conclude that extreme fitness provides one site from which to articulate female masculinity and muscularity in relationship to neoliberal discourses of self-hood. While we situate our conversation in the world of extreme fitness, we theorize broader implications to understandings of gender in everyday life.

Authors

• Eric Preston James, Metropolitan State University of Denver

• Rebecca Gill, Massey U