"Forging the future of fitness" : 'consuming' children, late-capitalism, and CrossFit kids magazine
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Date
2015
Authors
Couture, Jesse
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science
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Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Kinesiology and Physical Education
Abstract
In this thesis, I engage with historical ideas about children and young bodies and place them in conversation with dominant contemporary narratives as a means of establishing some of the ways that young people are understood and talked about with respect to sport and physical activity. Specifically, I undertake a discourse analysis of CrossFit Kids Magazine (CFKM) to uncover some of the narratives reproduced therein about children. I propose that CFKM destabilizes certain gendered stereotypes with respect to the representation of sporting bodies but that its reliance upon (hetero)sexist ideas about gender works to negate any discursive resistance. Furthermore, I propose that CFKM routinely blurs the conceptual category of the child by paradoxically co-constructing young people as autonomous future citizens ‘in-training’, chiefly responsible their own health, and, at once, as vulnerable subjects in need of proactive protection.
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Keywords
children , CrossFit , exercise , gender , risk