Gal: Power and Resistance as Seen Through Female Athletes

Gal discusses the ideas of power and domination in her work “Language, Gender, and Power: An Anthropological Review”. She links gender to the idea of power and domination. She says that “The control of representations of reality occur in social, verbal interaction, located in institutions. Control of such representations, and control of the means by which they are communicated and reproduced, are equally sources of social power.” (Gal 319).  Basically gender is socially reproduced through power dynamics, social idealizations, and communication. Society has defined the gender roles for both males and females through things like advertisements that reinforce how a woman or man should look and dress.

I am going to apply Gal’s Idea of power and domination, and the way that gender normal are reproduced in society through female athletes. Female athletes today face a dilemma; they are expected to succeed in their sport while maintaining hegemonic femininity.

Female athletes go against societies assertions about the body and how females should look, act, and dress. Stereotypical females use their bodies as a symbol for femininity with revealing clothing, long hair, emphasis on sex organs, and make up. Female athletes, on the other hand, have their bodies seen as a symbol for masculinity with large muscles, no emphasis on sex organs, hair pulled back, and covering their bodies through the use of uniforms. Athletics have been primarily male dominated, and are characterized by aggression, strength, and competition. Due to the intense training that professional female athletes must undergo, their bodies transform to large and heavily muscled. The construction of the female athlete bodies and their dress opposes the societal definition of the female gender, and as Gal would say they showing resistance. Resistance can be defined one of two ways by Gal, but this particular type of resistance is practice because the women “embody alternate models of the social world” (Gal 319). The resistance is seen through their ritual. Female soccer players begin to embody the male gender through many different avenues: they work out, pull their hair back or even cut their hair short as a way to keep it out of their eyes, and they eat high calorie foods; all of which are stereotypical seen as male rituals. The rituals are then incorporated onto their bodies, and the masculine features are apparent—large muscles.  

These women show resistance to the gender norms in place by society they are considered masculine. They are no longer defined by the female gender.  The rigid gender roles imposed onto society has led to a dichotomy for female athletes. The dichotomy of the masculinization on the field and the sexualization off the field. Female athletes allow themselves to be oversexualized through things like photo shoots, because they are forced, by society, to be a part of their gender. Gal would consider the women allowing themselves to be oversexualized as a type of complacence.

We see symbolic domination of gender norms is seen linguistically as well. When a person sees an extremely buff male athlete they may comment “He looks so strong”. When a person sees an extremely buff female athlete they usually respond with “that is unnatural” or “She looks so masculine”.  Gal concludes by saying “The notions of domination and resistance alert us to the idea that the strongest form of power may well be the ability to define social reality, to impose visions of the world” (Gal 320). The true power lies in the ability to define the genders, and how people believe most people should look and act. The only way to change things like the masculization and sexualization of female athletes is to gain the power to redefine gender norms.