Minimizing the Maxim Model? Interpreting the Sexual Body Rhetoric of Teenage Moms through Physical Education

Abstract

This ethnographic story comes from teenage mothers’ participation in a high school physical education program designed specifically for adolescent mothers and incorporating the principals of culturally relevant education (Ladson-Billings, 1994) as a means to engage young women in meaningful and relevant physical activities. An articulation of culturally relevant teacher practices, a decision to add physical education to the school curriculum was based, in part, on student feedback regarding the need for physical activity in their lives.

Sara, a high school student, was asked by her guidance counselor if she thought their school for adolescent parents needed to offer physical education classes. Sara’s immediate response was “Yes,” and then á propos of her latest visit to a strip bar, she expressed, in the vernacular of the local neighborhood discourse: “Who wants to sit and look at a fat chick with stretch marks?”