Background/Purpose In the USA and the UK, young ethnic minority women are often identified as a cohort of girls “at risk” for being physically inactive and unhealthy (Nazroo, 2003). Given that youths' embodiments inform their choices in physical activity (Kirk, 1991), the purpose of this research was to explore the ways girls negotiated and embodied gendered discourses of physical activity in the school context.
Method Researchers employed a qualitative visual ethnographic method to enable participants to express their body experiences and to explore how such embodiments shaped their physicalities. The participants were 16 female secondary students in a single-sex urban school in the UK. Data was collected from multiple sources: field notes, interviews, and visual diaries that participants constructed using digital cameras. A discourse analysis of all the data with regard to participants' body experiences was conducted.
Analysis/Results While PE emerged as a relevant site for girls' embodiment of “active” physicalities, a hidden gendered curriculum operated in the context of PE. Findings revealed how the most popular sport in this context (i.e., soccer) played a marginal role in the lives of many girls, as it was often disconnected from girls' sense of self and cultural upbringing. Moreover, while some of the participants envisioned themselves as “sporty”, for lack of educational and socio-economic resources, sport remained a site of exclusion for girls.
Conclusions Critical questions about the ways the gendered hidden curriculum persists in the local context of school, shaping and constraining young girls' physicalities, are discussed.