Abstract
This chapter explores femininity and masculinity as embodied experiences involving identity work and change for young women and men as they make the transition into adulthood. In Western neoliberal contexts, the bodies of girls and young women are commonly encoded as a “problem.” Policy documents and government initiatives in the UK, USA, and Australia over the last decade have focused on twin themes: the premature sexualization of girls and the reduction of teenage pregnancy. For young men, sexuality appears more muted at the level of policy; however, school-based policies on bullying and sexual harassment, for example, may be underscored by concerns with the dominant and sometimes violent character of male peer group cultures. A broader societal concern is articulated in terms of “crisis,” as young men lose their place in the labor market and the domestic sphere. Following up these themes in an analysis of empirical examples drawn from school-based research, the chapter considers the embodiment of young women and men as contextually specific gender performances. Developing insights based on the perspective of young women and men themselves, a central feature of the chapter explores the knowingness of youthful subjects as they prepare for the next stage in the life course. Within the context of shifting gender relations and late modern social change, the performance of femininity and masculinity can be seen as a living-in-the-skin expression of sex-gender identity and a developmental marker enacted for the self and others. Focusing on corporeality as a signifier of difference as expressed by young women and men themselves can be seen as a “conversation” with discourses that position girls as sexually innocent and boys as “in crisis.” For both groups, the body incites celebratory performance, embracing bodily change and particularly celebrating the presence of the body in an institutional context where the significance of corporeality is commonly under-acknowledged and underplayed.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aapola, S., Gonick, M., & Harris, A. (2005). Young femininity, girlhood, power and social change. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Bell, D., & Jayne, M. (Eds.). (2004). City of quarters: Urban villages in the contemporary city. Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter. London: Routledge.
Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1976). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1) (trans: Hurley, R.). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Frank, A. (1991). For a sociology of the body. In M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth, & B. S. Turner (Eds.), The Body, social process and cultural theory. London: Sage.
Giddens, A. (1993). The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Guillaumin, C. (1993). The constructed body. In C. B. Burroughs & J. D. Ehrenreich (Eds.), Reading the social body. Iowa: University of Iowa Press.
Kehily, M. J. (2004). Girls on girls: Tensions and anxieties in research with girls. Feminism and Psychology, 14(3), 366–370.
Kehily, M. J. (2012). Contextualising the sexualisation of girls debate: Innocence, experience and young female sexuality. Gender and Education, 24(3), 255–268.
Kehily, M. J., & Nayak, A. (1997). Lads and laughter: Humour and the production of heterosexual hierarchies. Gender and Education, 9(1), 69–87.
Kehily, M. J., Mac an Ghaill, M., Epstein, D., & Redman, P. (2002). Private girls and public worlds: Producing femininities in the primary school. Discourse, special issue on friendship, 23(2), 167–178.
Kehily, M. J. (2002). Sexuality, Gender and Schooling: shifting agendas in social learning. London: Routledge.
Laws, S. (1991). Issues of blood: The politics of menstruation. London: Macmillan.
Martin, E. (1987). The woman in the body, a cultural analysis of reproduction. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Nayak, A., & Kehily, M. J. (2013). Gender, youth and culture, global masculinities and femininities. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Oinas, E. (2001). Making sense of the teenage body, sociological perspectives on girls, changing bodies and knowledge. Abo: Abo Akademi University Press.
Papadopoulos, L. (2010). Sexualisation of young people review. London: Home Office.
Prendergast, S. (1995). The spaces of childhood: Psyche, soma and social existence. Menstruation and embodiment at adolescence. In M. Blair & J. Holland (Eds.), Debates and issues in feminist research and pedagogy. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Redman, P., Epstein, D., Kehily, M. J., & Mac an Ghaill, M. (2002). Boys bonding: Same-sex friendship, the unconscious and heterosexual masculinities. Discourse, special issue on friendship, 23(2), 179–192.
Shilling, C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage.
Thomson, R. (1999). ‘It was the way we were watching it’: Young men negotiate pornography. In J. Hearn & S. Roseneil (Eds.), Consuming cultures: Power and resistance (pp. 178–198). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play, girls and boys in school. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Turner, B. S. (1991). Recent developments in the theory of the body. In M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth, & B. S. Turner (Eds.), The Body, social process and cultural theory. London: Sage.
Willmott, P. (1966). Adolescent boys of East London. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this entry
Cite this entry
Kehily, M.J. (2015). Bodies In and Out of Place: Schooling and the Production of Gender Identities Through Embodied Experience. In: Wyn, J., Cahill, H. (eds) Handbook of Children and Youth Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4451-15-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4451-15-4_5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-4451-14-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-4451-15-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law