Hanging in the balance: gendered identity in elite sport

ABSTRACT

Elite experience and careers in judged female sports complicate the binary categories of retirement while they are especially exposed to cultures of abuse, pressure and subjectivity. This thesis is comprised of multiple voices and experiences from the elite female athletic perspective, including my autoethnographic narrative. Highlighted and discussed are the topics of sexual assault and abuse, family pressure on children to do and excel at sport, the National Team experience representing the United States and subjected bodies and judging. It is an aim of this thesis to culminate all of those factors in the final chapter and hold that the experience and the cultures of athletic identity within synchronized swimming, gymnastics and figure skating not only cannot be explained by current research on athletic identity through retirement but have the capability to retire undeveloped young women by overdeveloped athletic identities. Through a sampling of voices and experiences across different female judged sports, over three decades, the reader will observe similarities that cause these sports to have a culture of solidarity through the aspects they hold in common with each other. The narrative highlights pivotal moments in the lives of the elite female athlete within these sports, which add to the calculation of their athletic identities and the lack of their personal identities. Through reflection and analyses of not only my story, but the interviewees from my original research and that of Joan Ryan’s as well, I aim to voice a mutual experience of elite athletes. Consisting of multiple factors throughout many years we will see through my autoethnography, paralleling with other voices and experiences, how it all intersects and contributes to this: Who am I now and where do I go from here?