Happy international women’s day

March 8, 2014  |  ibrainmapadmin

In an interesting article in The Conversation, Simone Fullagar and Jessica Francombe-Webb discuss the complexities of women and sport, and body image. Well worth a read.

http://theconversation.com/choosing-sport-is-not-easy-for-women-in-a-society-obsessed-with-body-image-24040?

I’d like to add another perspective from some research I did several years ago about gender differences in physical activity, body image and wellbeing in an adolescent population.

In my literature review what became strikingly clear was that many woman approached physical activity in a more practical and flexible way than organized sport allows. In most of the research literature I read, women’s engagement in physical activity was often invisible because physical activity was usually defined too narrowly to include the range of activities woman engaged in.

Research that asked question from this sport perspective, of organized, public, competitive sport often showed women and girls as having very low rates of engagement. But when asked more open questions that invited women and girls to describe the types of physical activity they engaged in, it became apparent that women and girls often approached activity differently, and this literature showed very different outcomes. For instance woman often walked with a friend, but would not report this activity. Other common activities included gardening, cycling, bushwalking and family activities.

An interesting “uncovery” in my thesis was the different orientation adolescent males and females had towards their body. The study investigated body image, physical and activity and wellbeing in an adolescent population of 120 participants, young people aged 15 to 17.

Boys usually reported that they experienced their body from the inside in a kinesthetic way, “I can throw hard, run fast,” a more direct internal experience of their body, even when they compared themselves to other boys.

The girls on the other hand generally oriented to their body more from outside-in, imagining how others might see them, “how do I look when I run or walk,” rather than the direct experience of “my body as I run or walk.”

It struck me at the time, and again as I read the article in The Conversation, that this different orientation to the way young males and females in the study reported their experience of their body, may be at the heart of some of the body image issues for girls and women in our culture.

Yes women-girls, sport-activity and body image as distinct from body experience are complex and require deeper investigation. In the meantime it’s likely that mindfulness could be an effective antidote to this outside-in orientation to body image while acknowledging and inviting a broader range or physical activity.