University of British Columbia Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies PHYSICAL CULTURE, POWER, AND THE BODY

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Producing Girls: Empire and Women’s Sport Advocacy

Leslie Heywood

Abstract: Producing Girls: Empire and Women’s Sport Advocacy Women's sport advocacy discourse in the U.S. participates in what Anita Harris in Future Girl calls the "can do/at risk" paradigm for girls that unwittingly serves the interests of "the new economy," producing women as the ideal self-made, flexible consumer subjects who are self-monitoring and adaptable to change.  Women's sport advocacy discourse weds the discourse of liberal feminism with that of neo-liberalism, constructing sport as a space where girls learn to take responsibility for their own lives and become the ideal subjects of Empire, a new global economy that relies on individuals with flexibility who are trained blame their inevitable "failures" on themselves rather than the system their lives are structured within.