Female fitness picture: what does it mean to control the body
2022-03-08
The Winter Olympics have just passed. Perhaps no one thought that she could become a hot spot with "sports girl" Gu ailing, as well as her body - some say she weighs 130 pounds, others say she weighs 105 pounds. Gu ailing may not care about it. In front of the camera, she is tight and generous to express her fitness concept: "beauty is not thin, beauty is powerful." Many Chinese girls trapped in body templates such as "vest line", "comic leg" and "swan neck" are encouraged and have said that the first step to become a Gu ailing style sports girl is "no longer tangled about weight". Over the past two years, Professor Xiong Huan of Shanghai Institute of physical education and her team interviewed nearly 100 fitness women to explore the impact of sports on women's life planning, self-identity and aesthetics. The study was recorded in the book "the creation of the body: a narrative of Chinese women's fitness" published last year. The author selects the fitness stories of 12 Chinese women, including obese people who "overeat vomiting", college students studying abroad, divorced middle-aged professional women, as well as "working girls" entering the city, pregnant elderly women and so on. In order to restore the subjectivity of body narration of fitness participants, the author chooses the form of oral story to show readers a real and vivid picture of women's fitness. Most of our bodies are out of control Have you calculated how long it takes you to dress up when you go out every day? Women may take longer to answer this question than men. According to the creation of the body, most women spend more time than men to manage and restrict their bodies, including but not limited to diet, makeup and clothing. In the view of feminism, this makes women pay more attention to self modification, pay less attention to society, and naturally exit in the social competition with men. Xiong Huan believes that consumer culture and media discourse construct a so-called "ideal body", which emphasizes youth, slim and health. The purpose is to make people feel appearance anxiety and body anxiety, and then can't wait to join the consumption of fitness, beauty and even plastic surgery. Although women's fitness fever is related to the deepening of women's Liberation Movement and the needs of women's self-development, Xiong Huan found that in specific sports practice, "on the one hand, women have been liberated, but they are also obeying and strengthening the inherent female body image." The case s girl in the book began to learn boxing under the influence of the publicity of "Weimi" model style aesthetics on the Internet. She admitted that she was not fat, but because she liked taking pictures, "some angles still don't look good. I think I should practice better and take pictures again." At first, s thought boxing was a powerful and effective way of shaping, but later, the competitive characteristics and fierce rhythm of the sport brought her a physical burden and even affected her normal work and life. "I really don't like boxing." Xiong Huan believes that women need to pay attention to their feelings in sports. "You must find the way to make you feel most comfortable and pleasant, so as to continue and form the relationship between yourself and body. Otherwise, you will always have resistance and feel disciplined." Later, s came into contact with yoga on the recommendation of his boxing coach and found that he preferred this kind of soothing exercise. Although she was very concerned about her figure when the yoga instructor checked her figure, "I didn't expect her to say that my hips were slightly sagging! I thought, didn't I practice in vain this year before, and I was a little skeptical about life." In Xiong Huan's view, "reaching the ideal body shape" is a global consumerism trap, which has even caused many problems of anorexia, bulimia and depression. The first story in the book is a self reflection on the process of fitness and weight loss of a 24-year-old "obese" girl. When she was a child, she was injected with hormone drugs because of doctors' misdiagnosis. Then she began to get fat uncontrollably, followed by discrimination and ridicule from people around her. In the process of growing up, she tried various ways to lose weight - dieting, taking diet pills, exercising a lot, overeating and vomiting, resulting in dizziness, acne, chronic gastritis, hair loss, loose teeth and other problems. In the cycle of "lose weight - regain weight - lose weight again", she gradually lost her sense of self-control - "endless self-examination and self punishment, I am no longer the 'master' of my life, but just practicing the requirements of this society for me." Obese people often experience a moral binding of "fitness is virtue", and most of the discrimination they suffer comes from this. People tend to associate well-trained body traces with certain qualities. Exercise means a person's control over his body, while obesity means weak willpower. Xiong Huan believes that simply blaming obesity on individual self-discipline masks the responsibility of public governance. In the urban life filled with 996 overtime and high calorie diet, most of our bodies are out of control. Many scholars believe that obesity is a modern urban disease. It is not only a personal problem, but also a structural problem of social stratification and unequal distribution of social public resources. At the same time, the holders of the "ideal body" are not only themselves. Xiong Huan said: "Pop stars are a kind of cultural product. Their appearance, image and even behavior are shaped. They have their own makeup artists, nutritionists, dietitians, health engineers and so on. These departments are shaping their bodies. We were originally consuming this' product ', but if some people want to become such a' product ', it will be very painful." "Dancing in the rain feels really high" Nevertheless, pursuing the ideal body is not the sports choice of all women. This is the case of a case from the countryside in the creation of the body. Mumu is 26 years old and has two children and a daughter. She liked dancing since she was a child, but she didn't have time after she got married. Until the children went to school, Mumu and her husband went to work on the construction site in the county. She happened to see someone dancing in the small square of the county, "like finding a place to breathe", and immediately joined in. After work every day, she will ride a motorcycle for 20 minutes to dance, which is a rare romantic moment in her life. "I want to dance every night, even when it rains. It feels really high to dance in the rain." Square dance has become a way for Mu Mu to enjoy life, not just for his body. This is the meaning of "subjectivity" always emphasized in the book "the creation of the human body". In any case, the main purpose of their participation in sports activities is "for themselves", not "what others think". Xiong Huan's team found that in rural life, self entertainment is the greatest satisfaction brought by fitness to women. Xiong Huan attributed this difference to the fact that rural women have fewer opportunities to feel themselves than urban women, so they are more likely to find identity and satisfaction in sports activities. On weekdays, Mumu will also pay attention to her body, but she doesn't pursue extreme thin, and doesn't like the slim waist and hip shape of "fitness net red". Her requirement for her appearance is "just look comfortable and dance with light body". Mumu found that rural women "rarely deliberately shape, and few people have the awareness of controlling diet and exercise". Although she can dance and keep fit herself, she is "embarrassed to go to work on the construction site with makeup" - her working environment is almost anti decorated. Rural women's fitness is not very utilitarian, probably because the result itself is not their "benefit". In contrast, the result of bodybuilding brings different connotation to urban women. Xiong Huan once studied the stratification of Chinese urban women's sports participation. She found that the appearance of middle-class women is often closely related to their "social positioning, career success, achievement of economic goals and other factors". They hope to establish their social status through sports participation. Therefore, the way of their sports participation has a strong "consumption, purpose and cultural appeal". For example, taking shaping as the purpose of fitness, they reflect their yearning and pursuit for high-quality life by purchasing expensive sportswear. Lack of subjectivity as the driving force of fitness, on the one hand, will cause the economic consumption of "getting a card but not going much", but more importantly, whether you can really enjoy the exercise itself. Why can fitness "empower" women Up to now, the sports atmosphere in Chinese society is still not strong. Xiong Huan summed up the impact of two aspects: "one is the problem of educational bias. Chinese educational tradition pays more attention to the cultivation of intelligence. Physical education is often occupied. Many children can't experience the fun of sports and don't know how to use physical exercise for entertainment when they grow up. On the other hand, the society doesn't provide us with enough time and conditions to enjoy sports." The final result is that people squeeze out time to exercise in order to be healthy and maintain their competitiveness in marriage and labor market, rather than really enjoying it. This is a "Chinese style physical problem". Xiong Huan believes that "whether workers enhance their physique, work for the country, athletes strive for honor through hard training, or lose weight and shape to make themselves slimmer, they actually take the body as a tool and a way." The body should be the subject, not the object. In order to realize physical liberation and individual development in sports practice, we should first understand and control our own body. "Otherwise, you will fight your body with the wrong means and feel very tired." Xiong Huan said. The case "Qingfeng" in the book is to gradually understand the strengths and weaknesses of your body through exercise and become a "Hercules" in life. When the house was renovated, she could easily help the workers carry the machine. "The worker said, 'oh my God, how can you be so powerful.' at that time, I didn't realize that I didn't think it was heavy. In fact, it was because my body already knew how to work." Accurate judgment and control of the body make Qingfeng feel that even if she lives alone after divorce, she can cope with all difficulties instead of "pinning her hopes on men". Xiong Huan believes that "this not only means a strong physical function, but also the improvement of women's independence and self-confidence." As a kind of "embodied experience", sports is an effective way to awaken women's subject consciousness. Xiong Huan believes that reflexive thinking brought about by physical perception is difficult to obtain through other non physical activities. From the 12 cases in the creation of the body, we can see that the process of fitness can "empower" women. It can let women understand their body, correctly maintain and use their body, and then give women the energy to develop themselves and even change their situation. As for whether fitness can "empower" women and break the boundaries of women's gender image, "I don't think it's what this book wants to emphasize or what it can reflect, because the social norms of gender image are still there. The most important link in this process we want to emphasize is always self reflection." Xiong Huan said. (outlook new era)
Edit：Yuanqi Tang Responsible editor：Xiao Yu
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