My Life at the Gym
Feminist Perspectives on Community through the Body
Published on 16. December 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
174 pages
978-1-4384-2944-1 (ISBN)
Description
Personal accounts celebrating the place of exercise in women's lives-and as the site of women's community.
"Very often, my workouts are the best part of my day," notes feminist writer Jo Malin. My Life at the Gym celebrates women's experiences of exercise and the found spaces for this activity as places of community with other women. Neither elite athletes nor dancers, the contributors to this volume are well aware of the negative cultural messages about women's bodies that may influence body work. Yet, like many women, they have found comfortable and healthful spaces that allow them to enjoy exercise and take care of the physical needs of their bodies. Through diverse essays, personal accounts, and poems, contributors portray everyday lives in which meaning comes from movement and from the companions they move with in a variety of activities from running, walking, swimming, and skiing to boxing, Morris dancing, and yoga, among others. A unique, positive, and largely unremarked view of exercise and its place in women's lives, this book will resonate with and inspire many readers.
"Very often, my workouts are the best part of my day," notes feminist writer Jo Malin. My Life at the Gym celebrates women's experiences of exercise and the found spaces for this activity as places of community with other women. Neither elite athletes nor dancers, the contributors to this volume are well aware of the negative cultural messages about women's bodies that may influence body work. Yet, like many women, they have found comfortable and healthful spaces that allow them to enjoy exercise and take care of the physical needs of their bodies. Through diverse essays, personal accounts, and poems, contributors portray everyday lives in which meaning comes from movement and from the companions they move with in a variety of activities from running, walking, swimming, and skiing to boxing, Morris dancing, and yoga, among others. A unique, positive, and largely unremarked view of exercise and its place in women's lives, this book will resonate with and inspire many readers.
Reviews / Votes
"My Life at the Gym brings together essays, poems, and personal narratives of women's experiences in gyms, dance studios, and outdoors. This diverse collection points to an important part of women's everyday experience-exercise and fitness-often ignored by feminists within a number of disciplines. These narratives, thus, will serve as an inspiration for further feminist interdisciplinary insights into women's physical activity." - Pirkko Markula, editor of Feminist Sport Studies: Sharing Experiences of Joy and PainMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Albany, NY
United States
Target group
College/higher education
US School Grade: From College Freshman to College Graduate Student
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
6 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 221 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
249 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4384-2944-1 (9781438429441)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
02/2012
1st Edition
State University of New York Press
from
€81.99
Available for download
Person
Jo Malin is a Project Director and Grants Specialist in the School of Education and Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Binghamton University, State University of New York. She is the author of The Voice of the Mother: Embedded Maternal Narratives in Twentieth-Century Women's Autobiographies and the coeditor (with Victoria Boynton) of Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography and Herspace: Women, Writing, and Solitude.
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Jo Malin
PART 1 THE DANCE
1. An Elegy for Dancing
Christina Pugh
2. Kaleidoscope Dances
Anne Mamary
3. From Ballet to Boxing: The Evolution of a Female Athlete
Susan Young
4. The Women's Dance
Virginia Corrie-Cozart
PART 2 THE GYM, WEIGHT ROOM, STUDIO, AND POOL
5. You Spin Me Right Round, Baby: Resistance, Potential, and Feminist Pedagogy in Indoor Cycling
Kristine Newhall
6. Beyond the Lone Images of the Superhuman Strongwoman and Well-Built Bombshell toward a New Communal Vision of Muscular Women
Jacqueline Brady
7. Enduring Images
Catherine Houser
8. The Gymnastics Group
Marcia Woodard
9. Gym Interrupted
Myrl Coulter
10. Naked Truth
Lynn Z. Bloom
11. Women's Yoga: A Multigenre Meditation on Language and the Body
Victoria Boynton
PART 3 ON THE ROAD, THE SLOPES, AND THE LAKE
12. "Messing about in Boats": Rowing as l'Ecriture Feminine
Shannon Smith
13. Women Who Ski with Dogs
Grace D'Alo
14. If These Roads Could Talk: Life as a Woman on the Run
Wendy Walter-Bailey
15. Walking Is an Exercise in Friendship
Marlene Jensen
16. Marathon
Beth Widmaier Capo
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Jo Malin
PART 1 THE DANCE
1. An Elegy for Dancing
Christina Pugh
2. Kaleidoscope Dances
Anne Mamary
3. From Ballet to Boxing: The Evolution of a Female Athlete
Susan Young
4. The Women's Dance
Virginia Corrie-Cozart
PART 2 THE GYM, WEIGHT ROOM, STUDIO, AND POOL
5. You Spin Me Right Round, Baby: Resistance, Potential, and Feminist Pedagogy in Indoor Cycling
Kristine Newhall
6. Beyond the Lone Images of the Superhuman Strongwoman and Well-Built Bombshell toward a New Communal Vision of Muscular Women
Jacqueline Brady
7. Enduring Images
Catherine Houser
8. The Gymnastics Group
Marcia Woodard
9. Gym Interrupted
Myrl Coulter
10. Naked Truth
Lynn Z. Bloom
11. Women's Yoga: A Multigenre Meditation on Language and the Body
Victoria Boynton
PART 3 ON THE ROAD, THE SLOPES, AND THE LAKE
12. "Messing about in Boats": Rowing as l'Ecriture Feminine
Shannon Smith
13. Women Who Ski with Dogs
Grace D'Alo
14. If These Roads Could Talk: Life as a Woman on the Run
Wendy Walter-Bailey
15. Walking Is an Exercise in Friendship
Marlene Jensen
16. Marathon
Beth Widmaier Capo
List of Contributors
Index