Samantha King

Pink Ribbons Inc: breast cancer activism and the politics of philanthropy

This essay explores the cultural reconfiguration of breast cancer in the United States since the 1970s. It traces how breast cancer has been transformed in public discourse from a stigmatized disease best dealt with privately and in isolation, to a neglected epidemic worthy of public debate and political organizing, to an enriching and affirming experience during which women with the disease are rarely ‘patients’ and mostly ‘survivors.’ In the latter of these configurations, survivors emerge as symbols of hope who through their courage and vitality have elicited an outpouring of philanthropy, a continued supply of which will apparently ensure that the fight against breast cancer remains an unqualified success. By examining three key sites in this shift—federal policy, breast cancer marketing and the Susan G. Komen Foundations Race for the Cure—the essay seeks to understand how, and with what effects, this transformation has occurred.This essay explores the cultural reconfiguration of breast cancer in the United States since the 1970s. It traces how breast cancer has been transformed in public discourse from a stigmatized disease best dealt with privately and in isolation, to a neglected epidemic worthy of public debate and political organizing, to an enriching and affirming experience during which women with the disease are rarely ‘patients’ and mostly ‘survivors.’ In the latter of these configurations, survivors emerge as symbols of hope who through their courage and vitality have elicited an outpouring of philanthropy, a continued supply of which will apparently ensure that the fight against breast cancer remains an unqualified success. By examining three key sites in this shift—federal policy, breast cancer marketing and the Susan G. Komen Foundations Race for the Cure—the essay seeks to understand how, and with what effects, this transformation has occurred.

Offensive Lines: Sport-State Synergy in an Era of Perpetual War:

Although relationships between professional sport and the United States military are not new, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a system emerged in which sport culture moved beyond its customary role as an ideological support to the state. In this new configuration, organizations like the National Football League (NFL) integrated Bush administration policy into their business strategy, and the Bush administration built an audience for its military ventures through an association with a brand that attracts more fans each week than a presidential election draws voters once every 4 years. Drawing on discourse surrounding the use of military metaphors in sports commentary, Pat Tillmans death, and NFL Kickoff celebrations, I argue that there is an intensified depth and mutuality to the sport-war nexus, a shift that is indicative of the militarization of everyday life and, simultaneously, of the sportification of political life, in the contemporary United States.

Homonormativity and the Politics of Race: Reading Sheryl Swoopes

This article analyzes print media coverage of Sheryl Swoopes’ October 2005 announcement that she is a lesbian. An examination of five key themes that emerged in the mainstream, lesbian and gay, and Black press reveals that homonormative and White racial discourses were pervasive. Specifically, the erasure of Swoopes’ racial identity was enabled by narratives about the coming out process and the lesbian and gay market. Although there were some disruptions to dominant discourses, the coverage overall served to rearticulate Whiteness and economic individualism as queer norms.

Pink Diplomacy: On the Uses and Abuses of Breast Cancer Awareness

The photograph features seven women. They are seated on rectangular pink cushions placed atop a semicircular white bench. In the middle of the group is Laura Bush. She is dressed in a cropped beige pantsuit, wears a broad but practiced smile on her face, and clasps her hands and feet tightly together. Evenly placed on either side of her are six women, of whom all but one—whose face is framed by a pale pink headscarf—are dressed in black from head to toe. These women seem more relaxed than the then-First Lady: Their bodies are less rigid; they look at one another, apparently in conversation; one stares steadfastly into the camera. Three women have their faces fully exposed, two reveal only their eyes, and one woman’s face is completely covered by her burqa. Behind the group hangs a floor-to-ceiling silky pink curtain adorned with two columns of pink ribbons—the ubiquitous sign of breast cancer awareness in the United States and, increasingly, the world.1 I have been studying the social dimensions of breast cancer for over a decade now and thought I had lost my capacity to be surprised by the kinds of political, economic, and cultural agendas to which it gets harnessed, but this image, and the story that accompanied it, struck me as a defining moment in the recent history of the disease. I had drawn a number of loose symbolic associations between U.S. militarism and the American public’s apparently insatiable appetite for consumeroriented breast cancer fundraising in earlier work (King, 2006). But the occasion for this photograph—the October 2007 visit by Bush to the Middle East with the dual purpose of promoting breast cancer education and improving the image of the United States in the region—revealed a more direct and concrete set of connections at work. In what follows, I offer one version of how it is that breast cancer, until just 20 or 30 years ago a highly stigmatized disease kept largely out of the public eye, came to be seen as a desirable vehicle through which to advance U.S. interests in the Middle East. I also offer my perspective on why this particular trajectory in the story of the breast cancer movement represents not cause for celebration, as its promoters would have us believe, but a new and troubling set of concerns that reach far beyond the realm of breast cancer politics narrowly defined.

Virtually Normal Mark Bingham, the War on Terror, and the Sexual Politics of Sport

This essay explores media narratives about Mark Bingham, the gay, rugby-playing Republican and successful businessman, who is believed to have played a key role in the struggle with the hijackers of United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. The analysis reveals that, with few exceptions, both lesbian and gay and mainstream publications mobilized Binghams story in ways that lent tacit support to the intensified militarism and imperialism that have characterized the post-9/11 period. By focusing on the deployment of narratives about Binghams athletic abilities, the argument points to the ways in which antihomophobic and gay-positive discourses about sport participation and prowess can operate in ways that bolster regressive political agendas and reproduce, rather than challenge, exclusionary norms of subjectivity.

Beyond the War on Drugs? Notes on Prescription Opioids and the NFL

The recent problematization of opioid use among National Football League players presents an opportunity for scholars to rethink conventional approaches to drugs in sport, and to incorporate into their analyses a consideration of medically authorized substances. Such an undertaking may help illuminate the social dimensions of painkilling and the contextual complexity that fades from view in seemingly compassionate media portrayals of the struggles of former players who are living in pain and dependent on drugs. It may also offer new insights into more established traditions of research on cultures of drug use in sport.

A different contender? Barack Obama, the 2008 presidential campaign and the racial politics of sport

Abstract This paper explores popular representations of Barack Obamas relationship to sport during the 2008 US presidential campaign. It delineates how white normativity framed the candidates passion for basketball and his participation in a highly publicized bowling game. We argue that Obamas athletic activities became key vehicles for reading his body and by extension his identity and his politics. The question that could only be asked in a white supremacist context – is Obama too black or not black enough to be President? – mirrored long-standing tensions in Americas affective relation to black male athletes. Representations of Obama bowling further illuminate the complicated ways in which whiteness operates. The essay concludes with a brief discussion suggesting the importance of analyses of sport for ethnic and racial studies.

Consuming Compassion AIDS, Figure Skating, and Canadian Identity

This article explores media coverage of male figure skaters who have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and the implication of the “AIDS crisis in figure skating” in ongoing struggles over HIV/AIDS policy in Canada. Although the Canadian media and public framed their responses to the crisis in terms of tolerance and compassion, the author shows how these responses reinforced a heteronormative logic of Canadian citizenship. Moreover, the author suggests that the performances of compassion and tolerance that emerged in the figure skating story are less evidence of the superior moral nature of Canada, as public discourse frequently suggests, than illustrations of the ways in which the struggle to define a distinct Canadian identity relies on narratives that imagine Canada as more compassionate and tolerant than the United States.

Feminist Cultural Studies

This chapter locates and explores the development of the author’s own scholarly practice within a larger history of feminist cultural studies associated with the University of Birmingham, UK. The chapter begins with a discussion of the history of the Birmingham School and the particular place of feminism within that history. It then moves to a review of three defining features of a feminist cultural studies approach—intersectionality, contextualization and politicization—illustrated with examples from past and present work in sport, leisure and physical education. The chapter concludes with some tentative observations about the place of cultural studies in these fields today.