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New Sporting Femininities pp 179–203Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Footballing Femininities: The Lived Experiences of Young Females Negotiating “The Beautiful Game”

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Abstract

This chapter looks to advance research focused on the tensions of the postfeminist era and young women’s sports participation, health and wellbeing. Guided by a feminist physical cultural studies approach, we explore girls’ lived experiences of football and the ways their footballing femininities are located within a broader social context whereby sport becomes situated as one competing context within the materiality of the girls’ everyday lives. We demonstrate that football offers a particularly illustrative research setting to explore new modes of female sporting subjectivities in postfeminist times whereby young women, in positions of privilege, articulate sporting choices yet negotiate these alongside their fear of failure and reluctance to risk their ‘Future Girl’ status (Harris, 2004a).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Here we are referring to Association Football, also known as soccer.

  2. 2.

    Annual fees for boarding at the time of writing were £29985.00.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Jessica Francombe-Webb

  2. Poole, UK

    Laura Palmer

Authors
  1. Jessica Francombe-Webb
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  2. Laura Palmer
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Correspondence to Jessica Francombe-Webb .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, VIC, Australia

    Kim Toffoletti

  2. Faculty of Health, Sport and Human Performance, University of Waikato, Waikato, New Zealand

    Holly Thorpe

  3. Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom

    Jessica Francombe-Webb

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Francombe-Webb, J., Palmer, L. (2018). Footballing Femininities: The Lived Experiences of Young Females Negotiating “The Beautiful Game”. In: Toffoletti, K., Thorpe, H., Francombe-Webb, J. (eds) New Sporting Femininities. New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72481-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72481-2_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72480-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72481-2

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