Feminist Figure Girl by Lianne McTavish

Author:Lianne McTavish [McTavish, Lianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Sports & Recreation, Bodybuilding & Weight Training
ISBN: 9781438454764
Google: 7awtBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2015-01-08T05:44:11+00:00

Conclusions

The two photographs that launched this discussion contain as many similarities as differences, for both show feminists enacting scripted roles within visible public spaces. Their order should nevertheless be reversed: the photograph of me posing on stage during my competition in 2011 allowed me to see the image of me shouting into a bull horn in 2007 in critical terms, as displaying more than a feminist activist delivering prochoice messages to the masses. My sideways position, relaxed posture, and loose clothing suggest a lack of interest in appearance, denying my pursuit of public spectacle, and bolstering my identity as a serious feminist activist. Comparing these photos, and confusing their “before and after” narrative, is enriching. All the same, the two images remain distinctive, depicting individual acts that occurred within particular times and places. As representations of feminist identity, the two photos are quite limited, offering mere fragments of possible forms of body politics.

In the end, the question remains: What does it feel like to be a feminist? This query is of course impossible to answer without resorting to essentialism. No feminist will have the same embodied experiences of political engagement, a point emphasized by feminist scholarship on how multiple identities are formed in relation to class, race, gender, sexuality, ability, and ethnicity, among other factors.55 I can speak only for myself on this point, offering my account of embodied experience so that others may use it to think with, considering how theirs overlaps with or differs from mine. For me, feeling like a feminist has meant forming connections with women that are based on shared physicality, broadly understood and not biologically determined. As both a prochoice activist and a figure girl, I have learned that although women are far from similar in beliefs, bodies, goals, and cultural background, we can strive together within frameworks that do not condone this striving. This shared struggle to push against, and thus expand or destroy such frameworks, often involves reshaping bodies and experiences of embodiment, drawing on creative practices that will themselves vary according to the contingencies of place.

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