Faye Linda Wachs

“Getting your Body Back”: Postindustrial Fit Motherhood in Shape Fit Pregnancy Magazine

This investigation explores how contemporary (corporeal) motherhood is constituted in postindustrial consumer culture through a content and textual analysis of Shape Fit Pregnancy. Using all available issues of the magazine from its inception in 1997 to 2003, the authors first underscore a key tension surrounding pregnant women’s bodies within health and fitness discourse: That the pregnant form is presented as maternally successful yet aesthetically problematic. Second, the authors reveal how contemporary mothers are defined as newly responsible for a second shift of household labor and child care and a new third shift of bodily labor and fitness practices. The analysis examines the way in which the second and third shift are constituted as mutually dependent and reinforcing. Last, the discussion analyzes how this particular fitness text draws on empowerment discourse derived from feminist gains of access to the public sphere while paradoxically (re)inscribing women to the privatized realm of bodily practices, domesticity, and family values.

Leveling the Playing Field: Negotiating Gendered Rules in Coed Softball

At the turn of the millennium, gender relations are in a state of flux. Increasingly, separate gendered spheres and roles are being challenged and negotiated in many areas of social life. At the same time, many gendered ideologies are also reproduced, continuing longstanding inequities. Recreational sporting subworlds provide a context to explore how gendered rule structures contribute to and redress such inequities. Coed softball provides an example of a sport in which equal participation by gender is a legislated goal. However, such rules must be critically evaluated. Given the history of gender inequity in sports, one must ask how, through the rules and their enforcement, is gender equality conceptualized by participants, umpires, and rule makers? Through participant observation and analysis of the text of the rules, this article explores the providing of equality by defining and legislating difference that simultaneously challenges and reifies gender difference and ultimately gender inequity.

“THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A GAY HERO” Sexual Identity and Media Framing of HIV-Positive Athletes

In comparing print media coverage of the Greg Louganis and Magic Johnson HIV-positive / AIDS announcements, there is strikingly different treatment of the two men. Specifically, the authors determined whether the athlete is framed as a hero, victim, or carrier with regard to his HIV-positive status. Johnson is unequivocally framed as a hero in the vast majority of articles. By contrast, Louganis almost never is framed solely as a hero and often is framed as being a carrier. The authors use the model of the confessional as developed by Foucault, combined with sin and redemption models presented by Payne and Mercuri and by Messner and Solomon, to analyze how media framings differ specifically by the sexual identities of the athletes. They argue that the dominant and accepted norms of sexuality are enforced and (re)produced by the media in this way.

Stereotype Threat Among Girls: Differences by Gender Identity and Math Education Context

Effects of stereotype threat on math performance have been well-documented among college women; however, the prevalence among adolescent girls is less well-known. Further, the moderating role of gender identity and effects of stereotype threat on high achieving girls in math is unknown. This study tested the effects of a stereotype threat condition (vs. control group) among middle school girls in standard and honors math classes and examined gender identity as a moderator. Students (N = 498) completed pre- and post-questionnaires and a math test as part of a stereotype threat experiment. Gender identity moderated effects of stereotype threat on math discounting, disengagement, attitudes, and performance, but whether gender identity was a protective or risk factor differed by math education context (honors math and standard math classes). Gender identity was protective for girls in honors math for attitudes, discounting, and disengagement but was a risk factor for math performance. Gender identity was a risk factor for disengagement and math attitudes among girls in standard math classes, but was a buffer for math performance. Results suggest the need to examine protective and risk properties of gender identity importance for adolescent girls and the need to examine stereotype threat within educational contexts. Stereotype threat can be reduced through interventions; thus, educators and practitioners can collaborate with social scientists to implement widespread interventions in K–12 schools. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684317711412. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQs website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index

The relevance of honor in the contemporary world: honor and power

Tournaments of Power: honor and revenge in the contemporary world TOR AASE (Ed.), 2002 Burlington: Ashgate 202 pp., hardback, ISBN 0 7546 3181 8, US

Disciplining the body: HIV-positive male athletes, media surveillance, and the policing of sexuality.

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