Olympic Effort

Athletics and Social Constructions

The community of sport is a powerful site for the construction of identities (Meân & Kassing, 2008). Sport represents a significant global, economic, and cultural force (Dunning, 1999; Meân & Kassing, 2008; Sklair, 1991) that is linked to ideologies and identities and can act as a key site for the reinforcement or resistance to normative social constructions such as masculinity and heterosexuality (Dworkin & Messer, 1999; M. A. Hall, 1988; Meân & Kassing, 2008; Messer, 1988). Oates and Durham (2004) remind readers that humans have been studying athletic bodies for many centuries. In many cases, feats of strength, speed, and ability have historically been used to construct identities that stretch beyond a single individual. Examples include early athletic competitions hosted in the United States, such as those arranged that follow the Louisiana Purchase. The Anthropology Games of August 1904 challenged young men of various ethnic backgrounds within the expanding United States to athletic competition. A major focus of the event was to gather “scientific” information related to human performance and presumed racial hierarchies. Dr. W. J. McGee, head of the Exposition’s Department of Anthropology and renowned anthropologist, concluded that the Games “demonstrated what anthropologists have long known, that the White man leads the races of the world, both physically and mentally . . . in all-round development no primitive people can rank in the same class with the Missouri boy” (McGee, 1904). The influence of historians and scientists certainly contributes to the use of sport to legitimate cultural identities and carries over into the coverage and influence on contemporary athletics.

Contemporary athletics, though often in less blatant terms, still operate as sites of racial, gender, and ability construction that empower one type of person over another. The growth of organized sport around the world, in terms of participation, coverage, and popularity makes sport one of the most prominent, pervasive, and important cultural institutions (McGarry, 2010). Advertising endorsements and multimedia platforms amplify the athlete even outside the sporting arena that provides normative markers well beyond athletics (Mocarski & Billings, 2014). Therefore, with an ever-expanding emphasis on athletics within society, athletes become role models for cultural norms (Lavelle, 2010).

The Olympic Games, one of the best known organizations of this historical obsession, provides excellent opportunities for a multitude of critical examinations. First, the diversity of athletes in categories such as background, religion, race, ethnicity, bodies, country of origin, and gender provides intersecting identities that enrich the narrative of the Games. The use of the athlete’s Olympic village, where all the competitors live during the Games; the opening ceremony, which includes the parade of performers from each country; and the Games themselves, as well as the coverage of the Games, emphasize the diversity of the athletes and point out the longevity of cultural curiosity with the athletic body. As Billings and Angelini (2007) explain, “even non-sports fans crave the Olympic experience” (p. 95). The Olympic Games are a uniquely worldwide event (S. Butler & Bissell, 2013). Participation in and viewership of the Olympic Games engage individuals across the globe. Worldwide, Nielsen Media Research reported that more than 219.4 million viewers watched the 2012 LSOG over the course of its coverage, and NBC’s prime-time broadcasts counted more than 31.1 million viewers, which made it the most watched non-U.S. Olympics in 36 years (“London Olympics 2012 Ratings,” 2012). The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games had previously been the most watched event in television history, with a little more than 211 million viewers that tuned in over the 16 days of the Games (Fitzgerald, 2008).

Sport offers an excellent entry point for critical scholars on a number of issues. As Mocarski and Billings (2014) assert, “sport is a cultural discourse accessible to all with the ability to reify existing normative narratives by reinforcing the governing rules of these discourses through invisible means. However, well-hidden discourse comes into conflict with groups that the discourse marginalizes” (p. 3). The narratives and discourse within sport, particularly those that disenfranchise, are an excellent focus for critical scholarship. However, Anderson (2009), Birrell and McDonald (2000), and M. A. Hall (1988) assert that, up until fairly recently, sports scholarship lacked a critical theoretical edge. Research on sports from the 1960s to the late 1980s, including scholarship that raised issues of normative roles and discourse, did not provide critical theoretical understandings surrounding issues of gender, race, and ability. However, it provided ample reasons for critical communication scholarship to delve into the sports world by those with a propensity to use critical race, gender, disability, and queer theories.

Nevertheless, even as critical scholars wade into sports as an arena for scholarship, they should also keep in mind that organized sport in America, and around the world, holds additional and unique barriers to critique. Most communication scholars have practice dealing with the complicating factors of media and the fragmentation that occurs when events are mediated. However, as Oates and Durham (2004) remind us, “strategies of measurement and quantification of the human body for the purposes of ranking and classification have long been deployed to maintain various social hierarchies.” Enumeration in sports, or the propensity to keep and champion numerical records as indicators, can easily mask underlying social issues, including the justification of racial, gender, and physical stereotypes.

Winning and losing, the binary that drives sport, also act as a social shield from criticism. Thus, winning in sports is everything and can justify significant cultural disenfranchisement. As a contemporary example (though there are many throughout the mid- to late 20th century), take the coming out of John Amaechi, a gay National Basketball Association (NBA) player, whose sexuality moved him back into conversations within sports circles after his retirement. As Hardin, Kuehn, Jones, Genovese, and Balaji (2009) explain, few commentators would condemn Amaechi for being gay. Instead, his record as a basketball player was routinely and roundly attacked, whereas other more positive markers, such longevity in the league and experience on Olympic teams, were ignored. Thus, discrediting his ability to win reduced the need to critically examine Amaechi as a figure within a power structure that regularly worked to disenfranchise him (Hardin et al., 2009). Using the parameters of sport, as with wins and losses, to enforce social constructions of what is normal or abnormal highlights situations of hegemony.

When the discourse surrounding sport empowers or disenfranchises individuals, cultures, or communities, scholars can use critical theory to deconstruct the discourse to confront particular hegemonic forms, functions, and patterns. Scholarship deconstructing hegemony is often based in cultural fields attuned to the distribution of power. Often overlapping, these fields study articulation, enforcement, and maintenance of power structures. Disability studies act as one such field of study that provides a lens to approach deconstructions of hegemonic forms. In the following section, the field of disability studies will be outlined, links will be drawn between social constructions of sport and disability, and a critical theoretical entry point for the deconstruction of hegemonic forms through specific bodies acting in resistance will be identified.

Disability Studies

As with critical race and gender studies, analytical studies of disability focus on social constructions that establish hierarchies of social ordering or hegemony (Garland-Thomson, 2005). The field of disability studies asserts that specific physical forms are heralded as normal, correct, natural, and ideal (Lunsford, 2005). Promoting these specific forms is known as an ablest mind-set, as it elevates a specific type of bodily form as able and deviations from that form as disabled. Although the able-bodied/disabled binary is often justified through links with specific physical impairments or medical diagnosis, the disability studies field recognizes that social discourse is a contributing factor in who gets stuck with a label, as well as the ramifications of those labels. As Lindblom and Dunn (2003) state, the major assertion of disability studies is that “people’s views of people with disability are disabled. Disability Studies has taken ‘disability’ out of the category of ‘physical defect’ and put it into the category of ‘socially constructed unfairness’” (p. 169). Essentially, the social construction of disability, and the discourse that props up those social constructions, is skewed. The field of disability studies aims to re-center discourse around the power that stems from those social constructions. Who is labeled disabled, and why, is more important, for example, than associating “disability” with a physical impairment. Identifying the distinction between the labelers and the labeled helps highlight the boundaries inherent in social constructions such as disability.

All bodies are fluid forms. They differ from person to person, over time, and within different contexts. Individual bodies change drastically over time in form, appearance, and capabilities. But hegemonic constructions create, through discourse, the arbitrary binaries of normal and abnormal or able and disabled. As these constructed labels are based on abstractions, they are often justified, policed, and articulated within social discourse. Able-bodiedness, like other hegemonic forces, police transgressions from normative boundaries by centering on the construction of bodies around normalcy, thus subjugating deviations from those norms. As Lunsford (2005) asserts,

There are collective labels: the disabled, the deaf, and the blind. Insults: crip, retard. Euphemisms: differently abled, handicapable. Pejorative terms: handicapped, wheelchair-bound, victims of paralysis. Plato’s terms: deformed, lunatic. (p. 330)

Each of the labels, as Lunsford (2005) notes, acts to differentiate specific bodies from the norm. They elevate the hegemonic construction of able-bodiedness above those saddled with non-normative bodily forms. In Plato’s terms, they highlight the detrimental nature of demeaning labels.

There are those deemed “appropriate”: people with disabilities, people who use wheelchairs. And then there are no words for those who do not talk about disabilities. There is only silence. (p. 330)

Lunsford asserts that even well-meaning labels or even the lack of discourse can have significant ramifications. Society’s discourse or lack of it constructs and regulates which bodies are idealized and which ones are demonized often in rhetoric that may pass as innocuous or justified through science. Just as opportunities for critical discourse of power within sport may be hidden within the enumeration of records, notions of the normal body may be authenticated through the adoption of legitimate scientific justifications.

Disability Studies Link to Sport

Critical studies of disability and sport each depend on hegemonic forms attempting to maintain themselves through socially accepted and legitimated cultural discourse over time. As discussed above, sport often justifies outcomes and identities of participants, and repeats the process to ensure legitimacy. Much like sport, scholars like Garland-Thomson (2011) assert that the ablest social constructions of disability manifest in a number of ways, but depend on the repetition of discourse. “Like queer studies and feminist studies before it, studies of able-bodiedness focus on communication trends that establish hierarchies of social ordering” (p. 14). Social ordering is the construction of hegemonic power structures, in which those with power negotiate, through the promotion of discourse, the maintenance of those power structures. Huang and Brittain (2006) assert “claiming identities for ourselves and attributing particular identities to others is essentially a matter of power” (p. 353). Crucial to the promotion and justification of this discourse, be it in sport or disability, is the dependence of those with social credibility reifying the hegemonic constructions. Just as anthropologists and sports commentators lend credibility to assertions of the dominance of Whiteness or the condemnation of gayness, the social construction of disability maintains hegemonic power structures through reliance on elements of social authentification.

According to Garland-Thomson (2011), one significant element of able-bodiedness is the link between a disabled person and injury or diagnosis. These constructions are based in a medical model, in which the opinions of medical practitioners seep into social constructions of ability. Essentially, those deemed medical experts have cultural legitimacy that crosses the bounds of their profession, and their judgments can be tenaciously entrenched in a culture. Brittain (2004) asserts that the medical model is a persistent and negative construction of disability. Speaking directly to the medical model in the United Kingdom, Brittain (2004) writes,

the power of the medical profession to define the discourse for disability, the legitimization of this discourse by other groups and institutions within society, economic arguments, fear of difference and lack of understanding, and the use of societal norms combined with a marginalization by members of society of any person or group that does not conform to those norms. (p. 435)

For Brittain, the medical profession has the cultural legitimacy to center discourse surrounding the body and its capabilities to diagnosis, impairment, and injury. The use of these scientific, and thus rarely questioned, labels steers social understandings of the body toward the harmful binaries that reify hegemonic power structures. Brittain (2004) continues:

Some or all of these factors may interact to inform individuals’ perceptions of people with disabilities and, as such, may form the basis for how they act toward a person with a disability and what they might say when discussing people with disabilities. (p. 435)

Relying on scientific methods to justify socially constructed binaries shields the normative binaries from critique in the same way that normative narratives in sport are shielded by the reliance on statistics, records, and measurements. Critical disabilities lenses attempt to critique the reliance, perpetuation, and negotiation of these normative constructions, particularly in the face of scientific pretense.

The most prevalent example of the influence of the medical model comes within the mediated discourse surrounding disability and sport. Just as sports broadcasters relay social constructions of gender, race, and sexuality to audiences, mediated sport broadcasts of disability reify hegemonic constructions of disability that stem from the medical model. Examining coverage of the 1996 Paralympic Games, Schell and Duncan (1999) found that though commentators critiqued some social constructions of disabled athletes, descriptions of athletes as broken were still present. In most cases, mediated representations tended to highlight human frailty through a medical expert lens that disassociated the disabled body from forms of normative constructions of bodies, even when those bodies challenge those ideologies through competition (Corrigan, Paton, Holt, & Hardin, 2003). Because mediated representations of the impaired athletes were typically shown only in isolation from the public or those athletes deemed able-bodied (S. Butler & Bissell, 2013), it became easier to see the disabled athletes as broken, different, or deviating from the normative standard of what exemplifies an athlete.

Although mediated representations of sport and disability share a dependence on cultural authentification to justify social constructions, the combination of contexts also creates unique opportunities to critique these hegemonic structures. Direct athletic competition can challenge the abstractness of normative constructions of able-bodiedness because constructions of disability, either in the media or within social discourse, are representative of relationships between the body and its environment (Garland-Thomson, 2011). Longmore (2003) reminds readers that context of ability and disability significantly alters the presentations of individuals. In regard to context, sporting events place discussions of ability at the forefront, making them ripe for theoretical, as well as practical, discourse on disability. As media representations of disability within sporting are carefully constructed environments, emphasizing the situational relationship between the body, ability, and the scene can readily reinforce normative constructions (Nelson, 2000). Maas and Hasbrook (2001) explore disability discourse within the Professional Golf Association tour and found that ability, access, and the identity of the athlete were significant in how mediated formats negotiate social constructions based on contextual performance measures. Isolating the body and the mediated version of that body as a resistive force, as it navigates the environment, provides needed discursive space for analysis. Identifying instances of resistive bodies within competition with normative bodies creates opportunities for comparisons to be drawn and better highlights differences in the discourse that surrounds the bodies of athletes.

Bodies as Resistance

As athletes compete for Olympic glory, viewers around the world are bombarded with images of those professed to have the most admirable bodies. The bodies of Olympic athletes are measured, tested, weighed, and timed, as well as ogled. Strength, speed, weight, and power are measured in splits, stones, and meters, while the elite are celebrated with medal disks around their necks. As the pinnacle embodiment of athleticism, the Olympic bodies are pivotal in maintaining normative constructions of ability, gender, masculinity, and race. The international attention to these athletes fuels individuals to strive for these same bodies. As Judith Butler (2004) reminds readers, “Embodiment is not thinkable without a relation to a norm or set of norms” (p. 28). The hegemonic construction of able-bodiedness is strengthened through the promotion of particular Olympic bodies.

Michelle Foucault (1980) asserts that utterances are formed by the underlying rules of discourse, actions are proscribed and authorized by relations of power, and conceptions of self are dictated by technologies of subjectivity. All of social construction is bound by a web of control, such as the idea of the Panopticon, which influences knowledge, beliefs, and conceptions of self, culture, and community. As Phillips (2002) reminds readers about Foucault, power establishes relations that enable social understanding. This social understanding is based in the naming and organizing of subjects. Huang and Brittain (2006) assert “claiming identities for ourselves and attributing particular identities to others is essentially a matter of power” (p. 353). Therefore, the relations of power influence not only how we think, act, feel, and react but also the manner in which persons perform these tasks while the power that empowers some while oppressing others can come from the smallest examples of discourse. The omnipresent conceptualization of this microphysics of power led many to criticize Foucault of crypto-normativism, or that normative structures of power were so powerful that they could not be challenged. As Habermas asserts, these microphysics of power are so compelling and complete that Foucault leaves no room, conceptually or practically, for resistance. Foucault counters these arguments by asserting that power is only recognizable by the friction that resistance causes (Phillips, 2002). As a precursor to power, resistance is nearly everywhere that power exists, and it is the push and pull between them that illustrate power in action. Otherwise, humans are acting as objects of obedience.

Continuing along these lines, scholars such as Judith Butler (1993) and Susan Bordo (2003) assert that bodily identities are inextricable from discourse. As bodies represent interpretations, performances, and negotiations between strictly policed social constructions through discourse, they represent possibilities for resistance arising from that discourse (Oates & Durham, 2004). Understanding the body as a possible site of resistance creates opportunities to deconstruct, examine, and critique elements of hegemonic forces. As Oates and Durham (2004) explain,

Butler and Bordo expand Foucault’s argument while applying it to feminist concerns. For all three, bodily discursions are occasions for the exercise of power. If, following Bordo, Butler and Foucault, we conceive of the body as a product of discursive practices, we can identify a distinct trend in that discourse: one that “scientizes” and “statisticizes” the body in ways that are intended to mark it, make it productive and otherwise colonize it. (p. 305)

Within the process of adopting the scientific qualities, such as enumeration through measurement, statistics, and predictions, bodies of athletes become a site resistance. That is, the construction and ability of the bodies operate as avenues through which to examine the social pressures that come along with normative constructions.

When athletes with bodies that resist normative constructions participate in competitions, their bodies become a contextualized focal point. Therefore, the resistance of the body becomes discourse that highlights the negotiation of the normative construction, typically through mediated accounts.

Justification

This methodological approach was chosen for a few key reasons. First, this approach allows for a depth of analysis of specific artifacts that inform understandings of a pivotal discursive moment—the LSOG—within larger contexts of social, historical, and ideological constructions. For traditional rhetorical scholars, the context is immediate and helps ground the text for the audiences present at the time of the utterance. This hyper-valorization is drastically different for the cultural studies approach that attempts to connect the text in the flow of history. Condit has famously critiqued this approach as historicization—The span of history is reduced when text is situated among social flows and movements instead of by events or persons. CCR approaches to contextual meaning attempt to provide a balance between movements versus persons by the use of context to describe an immediate situation and ground that situation in the flow of history.

Second, a CCR methodology allows for overlapping critical theoretical lenses that become essential in understanding issues of identity and access for athletes whose bodies resist normative constructions. CCR analysis relies on discourse as a tool to understand how cultures construct reality and how that reality affects individuals, communities, and cultures. CCR analysis relies on a definition of rhetoric as a public expression that reifies, constructs, or challenges social constructions of reality. CCR analysis, as a postmodern approach, studies the forces that shape these discourses by offering an interpretation of the artifact within a context to illustrate a process of knowledge and social truth. Contemporary CCR analysis focuses on topics such as race, gender, class, power, hegemony, and culture and explores situations in which they reveal themselves or are constructed and resisted. As a theoretical approach, CCR scholarship provides a frame through which to view the world, individuals, culture, and the forces that affect them.

Third, CCR approaches artifacts of resistance and power as fluid, shifting, and not necessarily oppositional forces. By using this methodology, the result is a clearer engagement in the interpretation of texts that would be impractical to measure within other approaches. For example, while scholars have theorized bodies as performative spaces of conformity and resistance, measuring such instances in quantitative methods, under the veil of impartiality, might also solidify the same hegemonic and scientific authentification methods that researchers hope to highlight. Within a CCR investigation, the analysis applies interpretation to the text that creates space to expand and encourage discourse rather than define text.

A final aspect of a text within the CCR methodology involves the role of power and resistance as fluid and overlapping. Although neo-Aristotelian rhetorical scholars believed in a closed text from which a careful scholar could glean only one interpretation, most contemporary rhetorical scholars now believe that texts are open for multiple meanings, much like their cultural studies counterparts. However, the underlying assumptions of these positions are still relevant and inform a CCR approach. Just as with athletes, rhetorical scholars assert that different readings are in competition—They vie to replace each other as the dominant view. Cultural scholars see the different readings happening in a far less confrontational way. Depending on the circumstances, they add elements that might work together or be at odds. A CCR approach allows for the possibility of a dominant reading while searching for ways that such a reading participates in the hegemonic elements of power and resistance. For this analysis, the employment of a disability lens through which the identities of athletic bodies act as sites of resistance to a multitude of hegemonic forces—gender and sex binaries, masculinity, and weight bias—calls for a methodology that recognizes the positives and negatives of privileging one theoretical interpretation over another.

Employing CCR Analysis

Campbell (1972) describes rhetorical methods of criticism as biased critiques of fluid texts. However, Campbell argues that such biases are not a bad thing, as they illustrate unique perspectives on situations of rhetoric that allow for rich and contextualized understandings. Furthermore, these understandings should be shared to continue the construction of social reality and cultural truths. Rhetorical methods of analysis allow for more depth of description, contextual examination, and interpretative freedom. Hart and Daughton (2005) assert that these three elements provide a depth of analysis that is unique to a particular instance of discourse. By dealing in specific instances of discourse, rhetorical methods allow for the opportunity to offer insight as to how a rhetorical artifact is situated in the flow of history, identified from other, similar instances, and how it can strike an audience member. In many cases, rhetorical methods of analysis are opportunities to search out unique instances of discourse instead of categorizing patterns. Therefore, rhetorical analysis can be a methodological approach to theory and scholarship, as it is not bound to the status quo or replicability. As a scholar, it offers the opportunity to examine small spaces of resistance, which are often marginalized by structural power.

This monograph utilizes a CCR style of analysis in which three case studies explore the 2012 London Olympic Games qualification phase and the actual competitions, as well as media reports and commercials aired during and after the Games. The first case study investigates the public discourse that surrounded the gender identification challenges of South African track star Caster Semenya and U.S. hammer thrower Keelin Godsey as each attempted to qualify for the 2012 LSOG as female athletes. The second case study examines an in-depth video biography of double amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius that aired between his quarterfinal and semifinal 400-meter race. The final case study examines prominent Nike advertisements aired after the Games that dealt with athletic bodies that resisted normative constructions.

Context

Leading up to the 2012 Summer Games in London, two storylines emerged in which athletes’ sex classification became a central part of their mediated narrative. Castor Semenya, a South African sprinter, and Keelin Godsey, an American hammer thrower, each became the object of speculation and discussion involving the bodily makeup of an Olympic female athlete.

At the 2009 track and field world championship in Berlin, Semenya competed in her first senior championship event and won the women’s 800-meter sprint race. However, immediately afterward, the International Association of Athletics Federations, the sport’s governing body, confirmed that because of her “ambiguity,” Semenya would be tested to clarify her gender. The results of the tests were never made public, which added to the controversy, conjecture, and speculation. Consequently, to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, Semenya’s body and the gender it represented faced scientific and social scrutiny.

Keelin Godsey competed in the hammer throw for the Lewiston Maine’s Bates College women’s track and field team for 4 years from 2002 until 2006. In the process, Godsey became a four-time Division III All-American and two-time national champion. Between the 2005 and 2006 season, Godsey came out to teammates, the school, and fans as transgendered and changed his name from Kelly to Keelin. To stay eligible to compete in the women’s hammer throw, Godsey postponed hormone and surgical gender alignment options, choosing to identify socially as a male but remain “biologically female.” Godsey participated in the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Qualification in Oregon before the 2012 Summer Olympics Games, and though throwing a personal best, Godsey failed to qualify in the women’s hammer throw. Despite missing the Olympics, Godsey’s identity and accompanying Olympic narrative, particularly in attempting to qualify for the Games, positioned his body as a space of resistance to normative constructions.

Disability Lens Queered

The makeup of these athletic bodies, and the subsequent levels of acceptable athletic performance, provides a theoretical entry point for disability studies and athletic competition. Queer theorist and disabilities scholars such as West (2010) and McRuer and Mollow (2012) call attention to clear practical and theoretical links that exist between the politics of gender and disability. Lindemann (2010) urges scholars to recognize disability and sexuality as critical in assessing the benefits of sports, not only in being therapeutic but also in shaping cultural attitudes and social constructions around ability, masculinity, and sexuality (Lindemann, 2010). In the cases of Semenya and Godsey, the perception of athletes as being intersex and transgender limits their access and curtails their ability to identify.

The attention to and speculation about the bodies, gender, and the appropriate capabilities of Semenya and Godsey reflect theoretical links between disabilities studies and queer theory. As Wilkerson (2012) describes, “Like members of the disability rights movement, intersex and transgender activity have illuminated the hierarchal social construction of personhood” (p. 183). The pressures to classify and order bodies, and therefore offer access, be it literal or symbolic, to some and not to others, highlight the struggles between social constructions and self-determination. These struggles are the central concern of disability scholarship and activism (Wilkerson, 2012). Experiences that result from bodies that differ from normative expectations highlight the theoretical linkage between the disabled and transgender and intersex persons, particularly within issues of access and identity. As West (2010) explains, “[o]ne of the most exciting and productive sites for queer coalitional politics may be, ironically enough, the linkage between the everyday concerns of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans people (LGBTQ+), and people with disabilities” (p. 156). These everyday issues highlight spaces in which normative constructions collide with individual (and sometimes community) concerns of access and identity.

Access is a core issue in disability theory and activism as well as that of the intersex and trans community. Although access can be measured as the tangible accessibility to a place, like the Olympics, it also represents the sense of belonging that is negotiated with hegemonic normality. Legal battles, rule changes, and sex testing not only provide tangible access hurdles for athletes but also create an environment in which normalcy is policed. As a result, those seeking access must either pass as neither disabled nor queer or feel the repercussions of having their physical and symbolic access challenged.

Identity acts as another key issue that provides theoretical and practical linkage between disability and intersex and transgender persons. As historian Paul Longmore (2003) explains, one of the most important developments from disability activism and theory is the production of the politics of identity. The disability identity was brought into sharp focus because of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 and the interpretation of the ADA by U.S. courts. In 94% of federal ADA Title One decisions, employers won, mostly due to the courts not recognizing the plaintiffs as disabled. A later decision ruled that disabled persons do not constitute a protected class or minority. Groups and individuals who identify within the LGBTQ+ community have also experienced a long history of challenges to the political and social elements of their identity. As Siebers (2012) explains,

The emergence in recent decades of people who define their identities based on sexual preferences and practices is transforming the landscape of minority politics. Sexual minorities are fighting for the rights and privileges accorded to majority populations from many legal and political fronts. (p. 38)

Consequently, establishing theoretical space to claim identity that links individual expressions and experience, politics, and mediated representations must remain flexible enough to accommodate post identity notions, while providing active challenges to oppressive normative constructions.

When persons with disabilities form coalitions with members of the LGBTQ+ community on everyday issues, as with safe and assessable restrooms, the linkage between practical oppression opens opportunities for theoretical expansion. J. Butler (1993) expands this type of critical queerness as “that which is, in the present, never fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes” (p. 288). Essentially, critical queerness argues that queerness is used to illuminate queer as a category of identity and site of cultural agency, which remains fluid enough to enable theoretical, political, and social resistance. Thus, the pairing of critical queer theory with disability theory promotes situations of deconstructing bodies as sites of oppression.

Beyond practical struggle against normative constructions that parallels the hurdles of the disability community, intersex and transgendered individuals represent, on a theoretical level, opportunities to understand the oppressive nature of power through disability. As Wilkerson (2012) explains,

Intersex perspectives have emerged out of struggles with the medicalization of non-normative bodies and sexualities, a concern that has been important for the transgender movement and, in some ways, for transsexuals as well. These movements have much to offer disability theorizing of sexual agency, agency in medical contexts, and agency under oppression. At the same time, disability theory, particularly through notions of interdependence, can advance intersex and trans projects of theorizing agency, as well as ongoing work in philosophy and feminist theory on embodied agency. (p. 184)

To these areas, it is important to add the context of athletic competition. The theoretical links between the two perspectives, from the roots of the critical movements that have struggled against the medicalization of the body and the body as a site of resistance, as Foucault and Butler have argued, create socially acceptable borders of capability of what a body should be able to do, athletically. Examining this struggle through direct athletic competition brings to the forefront the struggle for self-determination for athletes with non-normative bodies.

Analysis

To reach the 2012 London Summer Games, Godsey and Semenya had to qualify. In their qualification attempts, there is an opportunity to gain critical perspective as to how to use the disability lens in regard to access and identity when examining the construction of athlete. Therefore, this analysis for this case study focuses on the bodies of the two athletes as points of potential resistance when it comes to normative constructions of body. Godsey and Semenya faced distinctly different challenges in both access to the Olympics and their identity as athletes. However, each was challenged on the grounds that their bodies may not be socially acceptable in their athletic contexts and therefore resistive to these normative constructions.

For Godsey, qualifying for the Summer Games involved more than throwing a hammer in the track and field trials held in Oregon. Specifically, negotiations of access and identity play directly into Godsey’s qualification journey. Godsey’s access to the athletic stage of the Summer Olympic Games in London was a tangible one, as well as symbolic. To participate in the sport in which Godsey excelled as a college athlete, Godsey had to maintain status as a female, despite openly identifying as transgendered. As no Olympic category exists for the transgender, intersex, or transitioning individuals, access to the Game is limited to those who can pass for either a male or a female. Godsey, therefore, achieved access to the qualification process by passing as a female as certified by tangible and symbolic measures. Although Godsey had expressed plans to take part in hormone treatments to transition to a male body, plans for those treatments were put on hold until after the Olympics. Thus, in a pre-transition state, Godsey’s body retained the normative female body, including a vagina and acceptable levels of estrogen and testosterone. In terms of physical access, Godsey, under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules, could not participate in hormone therapy or surgery that altered what is considered to be normal genitalia or hormone levels. Another issue that centered on access involved having the proper locker room accommodations. Being able to access appropriate restrooms, changing rooms, and showers is a potential health and safety concern for all athletes but particularly transgendered ones (West, 2010). During the qualification trials, Godsey had access to the facilities assigned to his competition and not his social gender.

Godsey’s access is also symbolic, meaning it expanded beyond the trials in Eugene, Oregon. Godsey began the process of being a public transgendered athlete while still in school and competing for Bates College where coaches, administrators, athletes, and Godsey worked with school officials and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) policy as well as interpersonal relationships between other students, athletes, and fans. Bates had no official policy regarding transgendered athletes and sought support for Godsey from both the student body, other schools in the division, and the NCAA. At the time, Bates officials consulted with the NCAA and the National Center for Drug Free Sport as well as with fellow New England Small College Athletic Conference institutions for guidance and support. An 11-point FAQ document on Godsey’s decision and its potential impact was released to the media. “Keelin and I also gave team members every opportunity to come and talk to us about the situation,” stated Bates track coach Jennifer Hartshorn, “but it really ended up being a non-issue for our team.” Not only did this tactic ensure physical access to competitions, but it also allowed for the environment in which normative constructions could be deconstructed on both policy and interpersonal levels. Open dialogue remains an important element in providing access past socially constructed and policed barriers (Anderson, 2009).

Godsey’s identity plays into the use of the disabilities lens in regard to gender and athlete. Entering into the Olympic trials for the 2012 Summer Games, Godsey had already changed his name to Keelin from Kelly and identified as a transgendered male. That identification led to resistance to normative constructions, particularly those that sustain gender binaries. This conflict can be clearly seen in contradictory reports that list Keelin as Kelly and alternates pronouns between he and she. For instance, a Bates press release from 2006, which described Godsey as successfully defended his NCAA Division III title in the hammer throw, listed his name as “Keelin.” However, a link from the official NCAA website listed Kelly Godsey as among the four-time all-Americans.

The Olympic trials produced another instance in which identity became a point of resistance. Despite the fact that he goes by Keelin, based on a rule set in place, Godsey was listed officially as Kelly, according to the name printed on his birth certificate. Furthermore, although Godsey openly identified as transgendered, there was no such category in the Olympic trials. He had to compete as a female. Godsey seemed to recognize how these shifting categories complicated his identity. In an interview after the Olympic qualifying trials, he described himself with, “I’m a gender fucker right now.” Not only did Godsey’s body create tension by challenging strict gender binaries, but it also produced friction within the transgender community. He stated, “People from the trans community tell me I’m trying to get the best of both worlds. I’m not getting the best of any world.” When asked by a reporter why he had not undertaken the surgical or hormonal processes as with many transgendered individuals, he explained, “It’s hard. It’s a decision I have to make every day. But it’s the competition. Track and field is my life. Track and field saved my life.” Identification as an athlete remained a central component that layered within Godsey’s gender identity. “For me to be in a fair competition, I have to compete as a female,” he said in a release. “I could not compete versus men.” By understanding Godsey’s queerness through a disability lens, the sporting body created more space for resistance for Godsey but became a point of pressure for Semenya.

For Semenya, access and identity also revolve around the construction of her body and the capabilities within the context of athletic competition. Directly following her win in the women’s 800-meter at the 2009 world championships in Berlin, Semenya was the target of gender testing due to her impressive victory and masculine features that included a muscular definition and a deep voice. Many believed that Semenya would be stripped of her accolades and banned from Olympic competition. Other athletes told reporters, “These kind of people should not run with us” (Clarey, 2009).

In the past, a visual check of the external genitalia was used to determine the sex of an athlete, but today, multiple techniques are used to solidify the gender binary. “There’s no simple test to determine gender, so what we’re left with is an imperfect system,” says Dr. Eric Vilain, a UCLA medical geneticist who served as a medical adviser to the IOC on its new policy for testing female athletes for “hyperandrogenism,” or those who produce excessive levels of male hormones. The IOC regulations state that “the performance of male and female athletes may differ mainly due to the fact that men produce significantly more androgenic hormones than women and, therefore, are under stronger influence of such hormones.” Women who are found to have abnormally high levels of androgens may have an unfair advantage, according to the regulations. Vilain says that he believes it would be “extraordinarily difficult” for women to reach the male range threshold for testosterone, which is not spelled out by the IOC because of differing lab testing methods (Clarey, 2009). These tests provide a tangible and measurable barrier to access for any athlete, male or female, who falls outside the medically determined normative ranges, despite the fact that Olympic competition is intended to isolate the most athletically gifted people in the world. Therefore, Semenya’s body, which held Olympic athletic potential, was deemed so masculine that it was subjected to invasive gender testing before she could be granted access to Olympic qualification.

In addition to the tangible barriers to access that Semenya had to face, symbolic barriers to access, including public scrutiny and attitudes toward intersex individuals, became an integral part of her qualification process. Although Semenya never confirmed or denied reports, numerous news outlets ran stories of leaked medical examinations that included DNA testing. It was revealed that Semenya had no ovaries or womb but did have undescended testes that produced significantly increased amounts of testosterone. Many speculated in interviews and news reports that Semenya would undergo hormone therapy to reduce the amount of testosterone her body produced to meet medically determined and IOC-accepted normative levels for females. Furthermore, her refusal to address specific questions and to grant interviews that concentrated on gender testing and subsequent results created an environment in which bodies resistant to abstract gender binaries could remain taboo, shameful, and medically fixable. Positioned as a possible intersex athlete, Semenya’s access to the 2012 Summer Olympic Games qualification process became one in which speculation provided insight as to the intangible barriers to access that athletes who have non-normative bodies must navigate in addition to being fast enough and strong enough to qualify.

Semenya’s identity also became a point of extreme scrutiny. Following the gender testing, Semenya went through a mediated gender rebranding that emphasized her feminine characteristics. In an exclusive interview and makeover featured on the cover of the September 2009 edition of You magazine in South Africa, Semenya’s womanhood was proclaimed. The four-page spread included side-by-side images of Semenya on the track and in dresses as well as quotations from the track star that expressed her desires to dress and act within the boundaries of the normative constructions of female. For example, Semenya stated, “I’d like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance. I’d also like to learn to do my own makeup.” Under the specter of ongoing gender testing, during which Semenya regularly expressed her identity as female, these makeovers expressed identity in light of her gender conflicts. The extent to which the article emphasized Semenya as female is summed up best on the cover that stated, “Wow, look at Caster now!” Transgression, followed by alteration, plagued Semenya’s qualification process.

Conclusion

The qualification process of Keelin Godsey and Caster Semenya for the 2012 London Summer Olympics illustrates how the disabilities lens allows for critique of the access and identity of the body as a space of resistance in relation to sport. The bodies of Godsey and Semenya became the focus of intense scrutiny, policing, and discourse. Their position as world-class athletes creates layers of identity and access through which their bodies become resistive to normative constructions. Within the cases of Godsey and Semenya, problematic normative constructions, which can be critiqued through a disability lens, isolate reliance on zero-sum binaries, scientific bias, and social policing. By examining the Olympic qualification process of Godsey and Semenya through the disabilities lens, multiple theoretical implications became apparent.

First, a critical disability lens highlights non-normative bodies acting as spaces of resistance, and, thus, challenge ablest notions even outside of what is socially constructed to be a disabled body. The application of a disability critique is theoretically and methodologically helpful in understanding the access and identity issues of transgendered and potentially intersex athletes, yet neither athlete has referred to himself or herself, or identify, as disabled. The case study demonstrates how bodies without the traditional socially recognized markers of disability, like the use of a hearing aid or wheelchair, can utilize this critical lens to understand the relationship of the body in multiple, sometimes conflicting, identity constructions. For example, Godsey was outspoken about the construction of his body and how that works within the rules of sport. His articulation of being biologically female, stalling transitional hormone and surgical treatments, and his personal appearance, name, and gender identity muddle multiple socially constructed identities that use the physical body as point of reference. When Godsey portrays his body in resistance to multiple identity patterns, including those in the sporting, disability, and transgendered community, he queers the understanding of multiple identity markers. Queering CCR lenses is particularly important to expand understandings of intersecting critical identities, and produces opportunities for social and theoretical resistance.

Unlike Godsey, Semenya’s struggle during qualification with the identity and access to her body was complicated by media speculation and her silence on the issue. In what the media perceived as coaches and officials that attempted to protect the 18-year-old from public scrutiny over her gender, Semenya granted few interviews and never publicly answered questions as to the specifics of her testing, the results of those tests, and her qualification for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Compared with Godsey, Semenya’s relative silence altered the resistive qualities her body presented. In particular, reporters relied on personal narratives within discourses of identity to authenticate experiences of disempowerment and to help critique hegemonic normative constructions. Semenya’s publicly mediated controversy and subsequent magazine makeovers create important questions as to the effectiveness and ability for bodies to act as spaces of resistance when placed in relation to framed media messages. The second case study will examine this question in detail.

Context

On February 14, 2013, authorities in South Africa arrested Oscar Pistorius for the murder of his girlfriend (Polgreen, 2013), and though he was judged innocent of premediated murder, the courts convicted Pistorius of culpable homicide in the summer of 2014. Unlike other tragic stories of violence, this one involved an athlete whose unlikely successes, and fall from grace, was dramatically framed by the media. Pistorius was, after the Olympics, a national icon who rose from obscurity to international fame on carbon fiber legs (Polgreen, 2013). As a sprinter from the Republic of South Africa, Oscar Pistorius qualified in 400-meter and 4 × 400-meter relay races despite running on prosthetic lower legs. Barred from the Beijing Summer Olympic Games 4 years earlier, Pistorius won an appeal because he showed that his carbon fiber Flex-Foot Cheetah blades did not give him a significant advantage over other athletes. In the summer of 2012, Pistorius became the first double amputee to participate in the Olympic Games. Most importantly, his participation opened significant discursive space about normative constructions of ability, masculinity, and the framing of disability within athletics. Because NBC had exclusive coverage of the London Olympic Games, as a part of their prime-time broadcast, the network aired a vignette titled “Oscar Pistorius’ Unique, Inspiring Journey to London.” Actively framing the construction of Pistorius for audiences, NBC’s in-depth interview interwove Pistorius’s story with the traditional Olympic narrative. One question this study seeks to address is how did NBC construct a frame of a disabled athlete in its storytelling of Pistorius? Did NBC rely on a traditional narrative commonly found in sport—masculinity—or did Pistorius’s disability change the narrative or frame used to tell the story of his historic bid into the 2012 Summer Olympic Games? Given the media hype of the Olympic Games and the media coverage of Pistorius’s bid to run in the 2012 Olympic Games, viewers from around the world probably became aware of Oscar Pistorius through NBC’s narrative. Therefore, the media’s preoccupation with him deserves critical examination. Through a lens of feminist disability studies and paying close attention to constructions of masculinity within the vignette, this monograph examines the framing of Pistorius within normative constructions of disability and sport.

Background

The participation of Oscar Pistorius in the 2012 London Olympic Games broke starkly from Olympic tradition. Favoring exceptional speed, strength, and skill embodied in normative constructions of capability, the Olympic Games, more than any other sporting event, holds claim to the highest ideal of able-bodiedness. Ignoring structural inequalities in training, sponsorship, coverage, and qualification, the Olympic myth posits that the most capable, natural athlete will prevail (Angelini & Billings, 2010).

Although other great athletes have challenged the Olympic myth of able-bodiedness (Wallechinsky & Loucky, 2012), Pistorius offers a unique transgression because of his success in the Paralympics and his use of prosthetics (Ponnampalam, 2012). Within the Paralympic Games, Pistorius is legendary. Beginning with the 2000 Athens Summer Games, Pistorius had never raced at any world championship. Yet, as an inexperienced, teenage runner, Pistorius broke multiple world records and earned multiple gold medals (Ponnampalam, 2012). While dominating competition in the Paralympic Games, Pistorius changed his focus to compete in able-bodied events. Against runners without prosthetics, Pistorius’s times qualified him for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. However, coming from his success against Paralympic competitors, he was viewed as a disabled athlete who ran against able-bodied competitors.

Pistorius’s use of prosthetics visually upsets the Olympic myth. Although other athletes with bodies that disrupted normative claims of able-bodiedness competed and medaled in various Olympic Games, these athletes did so without prosthetics necessary for participation. Most recently, Terence Parkin, another South African, competed in the 2000 Sydney Games and the 2004 Athens Games. He won a silver medal in the 200-meter breaststroke (Wallechinsky & Loucky, 2012). Identifying as a person without hearing, Parkin competed without visible markers of disability, symbolized by a prosthetic, nor was a prosthetic necessary for his participation. Therefore, though his body would not fit oppressive, normative constructions of “normal,” Pistorius’s transgression challenged these normative claims differently. Pistorius’s use of prosthetics is viewed as giving him an advantage. Simply put, if you took away his prosthetics, he would not be an Olympic sprinter. Under this logic, Pistorius was banned from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games.

Theoretical Framework

Analysis

Between the 2012 Olympic quarterfinals and semifinals in the men’s 400-meter sprint, NBC aired an in-depth interview titled, “Oscar Pistorius’ Unique, Inspiring Journey to London.” By applying Garland-Thomson’s four tenets of the feminist disability lens with Trujillo’s (1991) five mediated constructions of masculinity, implications of NBC’s framing become clear.

Conclusion

The NBC video presented a situation in which the framing of Pistorius’s non-normative body created a narrative that fit the resistive act of his competition into context for the viewer. Linking a feminist disability lens to the analysis helps isolate instances in which the resistive nature of the competitive act may be at odds with the narrative frame.

Garland-Thomson (2005) approaches disability as a set of practices that classify the body as able or disabled. Pistorius has been known for making comments about disability and ability such as “you are made able by your abilities.” However, these sayings were not included in the NBC interview. Instead, the video stayed away from the term disabled. As Pistorius said early in the piece, “My mother would say ‘your brother puts on his shoes and you put on your legs and that’s the last I want to hear about disability.’” However, the report did not hesitate to use other terms associated with Pistorius. For example, the film’s interviewer, while talking to MIT professor Dr. Herr, discussed Pistorius as “a freak.” Herr conceded that the term “freak” might not have been the best word, and though he himself had used the term in the past, it was meant as a complement. Despite these clarifications, “freak,” particularly in the context of a non-normative body, rang as derogatory. This trend continued as the interviewer catalogued the other labels associated with Pistorius. While the camera focused on his prosthetics as he walked down the track, the narrator used descriptions such as bionic, cyborg, and kangaroo. The use of non-human descriptions of Pistorius in reference to his body helped to differentiate him from the normative construction.

This differentiation seemed an intentional frame of the interview as it compared how Pistorius and Herr talked about the prosthetics and how the interviewer discussed them. Pistorius referred to the prosthetics as either his legs or prosthetics. Herr, himself a user of prosthetic legs and a researcher in prosthetics, called Pistorius’s prosthetics “just a piece of carbon.” On numerous occasions, the interviewer called the prosthetics “cheetah blades.” Although this may be the manufacturer’s name for the model, the combination of an animal and a tool more closely resembled previous labels emphasized by the film such as “kangaroo” and “cyborg.” When Pistorius called his prosthetics “legs,” he seemed more like an able-bodied human than if he was compared with an animal or robot. Therefore, while the vignette refrained from using “disabled” as a descriptor, it highlighted other labels that emphasized his disability.

Disability, according to Garland-Thomson (2011) also functions as a way of describing the instability of bodily forms, particularly in regard to human fragility. Disability emphasizes the fluid and temporal nature of human’s bodies. The NBC vignette used discussions of injury and teachable moments with children to construct disability as instability. As described earlier, Pistorius’s rugby injury, described by the NBC narrator as inevitable, provided a situation through which disability highlights human fragility because it acts as a space of comparison. When Pistorius talked about his rugby injury, he laughed about the situation. According to him, an injury usually meant mashing his prosthetic back into the correct shape or sending away for a new one. In this case, however, his knee, not his prosthetic, was badly damaged, and rendered him immobile. A few of those who watched yelled at Pistorius to “walk it off.” It was only after his injury forced him to remove his prosthetic that the idea of easily overcoming his injury became ridiculous. In this case, Pistorius’s rugby injury, the exposure of his body, and the attention of the crowd worked to frame disability as a representation of fragility.

Through the telling of Pistorius’s failed attempt at rugby and his coach’s deception, the vignette reminded viewers of the chain of events that sparked his running career. The narrator, accompanied by videos of a young Pistorius jogging, asserted that running began as a rehabilitation practice. In fact, Pistorius was led to believe that his coach was encouraging him to run to rehab for rugby. Running, particularly on his signature prosthetics, as the video captured, became symbolic of his representation as disabled. As he began running and racing as a form of injury rehabilitation, his future endeavors on the track became representative of his efforts to rehabilitate his body. Therefore, no matter how successful a sprinter he became, his running remains a symbol of his injury, and thus, his disability.

Within representations of human fragility remains the fluidity of able-bodiedness. Classifying separate situations and people as able or disable became an important function of the report’s frame. In one scene, Pistorius was shown at a sports festival as he tells a story about his experience to a group of children. During a water break, he told how he showed off his prosthetic legs to the children who began pinching its legs to understand their relationship to his body. Pistorius then told how he was surprised when, suddenly, a young child began pinching his arm to “see if it was real.” Questioning Pistorius’s realness, especially in a playful, innocent way, stressed the fluidity of the human body and the constructions used to police disabled forms.

Context

When Leisel Jones, the eight-time Olympic medalist and reigning world champion swimmer in the 100-meter breaststroke made waves in the pool during the 2012 LSOG, it was not only because of her swimming. Publicity from multiple publications, including her hometown newspaper, The Melbourne Herald Sun, commented that she “appears heavier than at previous meets” (Blatchford, 2012). Before and after pictures of Jones in her swimsuit combined with the results of online polls from readers created a firestorm of controversy as to whether her weight was appropriate for the event. As with other Olympic bodies, normative constructions of even the most decorated Olympians highlight the strict policing that accompanies athletics. Not surprisingly, weight stigma became a focal point of a particular mediated construction after the Olympic Games.

During the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, athletic apparel giant Nike launched a new advertising campaign titled, “Find Your Greatness.” Nike officials explained that the campaign was intended to “inspire anyone who wants to achieve his or her own moment of greatness in sport.” Launched prior to the time when the world would focus on the best of the best in sport, the themes and descriptions that were a part of the Nike commercials attempted to create identities for athletes that contrasted with the expected celebrations of greatness seen by most of the reports about the Olympic Games. The differences opened opportunities to deconstruct normative assumptions within competition.

The first of the Nike greatness commercials established links to the 2012 LSOG. The film first established how London, England shared its name and athletes with other places around the world. Cities with London in their names located in Canada, Jamaica, Nigeria, Ohio, and South Africa were cited in the commercial while viewers were shown quick shots of athletes hard at work. Regardless of the location of the scene, the film’s voiceover announcer reminded viewers that greatness is not just reserved for the “superstar athlete but is inherently a part of what we can all aspire to and achieve.” While referencing the 2012 LSOG, the first commercial drew clear distinctions between the popular Olympic athletes and common individuals who strove for greatness. Further illustrating these distinctions, Nike’s campaign offered a unique glimpse into the construct of a mediated athletic body of resistance.

The Nike “Find Your Greatness” campaign included television commercials aired in the United States and on YouTube. These commercials were constructed in strikingly similar fashion. They involved video of individuals who participated in sports while the same voiceover read a monologue about greatness. However, despite the consistency of form and content, there was a significant amount of diversity within each video. The athletes ranged in age from toddler to late middle age with different races, nationalities, and religions shown, and pursued a wide range of athletic endeavors that included juggling, baseball, running, rugby, and an assortment of daredevil stunts. For example, in one of the commercials, “Find Your Greatness—Basketball,” a young man performed tricks that involved juggling, dribbling, and catching four basketballs. The voiceover explained that sometimes, greatness is about having fun.

The commercials also featured a number of disabled athletes. These ads included a wheelchair racer and a young man who played baseball with one hand. A stark difference between these commercials and others was that the definition of greatness became framed by the monologue as overcoming individual physical limitations. Subsequently, a narrative analysis of the most popular and controversial of the Nike campaigns follows. The video titled “Jogger” was the most downloaded commercial during the month of August 2012. It featured an obese 12-year-old boy jogging.

Jogger

The 1-min “Jogger” video starts with lovely shades of purple and pink as the sun sets behind a non-descript rural road within a desolate, almost vacant landscape in the foreground. Within seconds, a runner appears far off, jogging slowly down the center of the road toward the audience. The voiceover starts with a message that most viewers believe: Greatness is a gift that is reserved for a chosen few. It is at this point in the video that it can be discerned that the runner is an overweight boy. As the runner gets closer to the camera, his gait, stride, and body become clear. His feet can be heard as they shuffle along the concrete, barely coming off the ground. As the jogger struggles to make it down the road, the viewer is told that greatness is no more unique than breathing and that all are capable of it. Initial impressions of the commercial have ranged from inspirational to exasperation, probably because of the myriad messages found throughout the clip. Some might look at a 12-year-old boy and find that his attempt to jog is inspiring. Runners might also find the video inspirational as the boy gives his best effort. However, the video might also prompt viewers to associate overweight persons with negative stereotypes.

Visual Video Construction

A low camera angle is often used by filmmakers to make an athlete appear bigger, more muscular, or more intimidating than when the camera angle is at eye level. Duncan (1990) reports on the gender differences found in the camera angles used for male and female athletes in newspaper photographs. Duncan found that photographs of male athletes tended to be from a low angle which made the athlete look more masculine and strong. Camera shots of female athletes tended to be from a high angle, which made the athlete look smaller, more feminine, and less powerful. The overweight jogger appeared in the center of the frame and far from the camera. Although his run brought him closer, the camera slowly tracked backward. The effect was to maintain same angle. As the camera moved slowly backward, the boy slowly gained ground on the camera so that he eventually appeared in front of the lens. From a distance, the viewer could see a person jogging slowly. As he neared the camera, a shift of his shoulders from side to side and the size of his upper body can be clearly seen. More than halfway through the video, the camera slowly moved from a low to a high angle. When compared with elite and recreational runners, this visual depiction of a 12-year-old jogger is not one that suggested competency, ease, or confidence. Although he made it to his destination, his struggle was evident by the visual representation of his movements, the way his clothing hung over his body, and the way his feet shuffled along the ground.

Theory

Academic scholarship examining issues of media portrayals and weight represents a robust understanding of the frequency and potential effects of such portrayals. This section examines scholarship specific to the relationships between media and their audiences while situating issues of weight within the critical disability lens.

Analysis

Nike’s commercial represents a media construction of a resistive body. The jogger, through his body shape and weight, provides a space to challenge assumptions of bodies and abilities. This analysis examines the narrative construction with regard to both the critical disabilities lens and other representations of non-normative bodies within athletic competitions highlighted by the Nike commercials.

Conclusion

Hardin and Hardin (2003) assert that media creations can further social change regarding normative constructions of disability and empower those with disability. They hope that scholars “concerned with disability, media, and social change will see it fitting to explore the progress and potential of sport media and society” (p. 258). Mediated constructions of athletes with non-normative bodies have the potential to have a significant influence on social beliefs, attitudes, and articulations that involve conceptions of the normal human body. Use of a critical disability lens produces a critique of weight issues as a social construction regarding normative bodies in athletics. The case study of Nike’s “Find Your Greatness—Jogger” commercial raises important questions about the authenticity of the media construction versus a personal narrative and the potential longevity of popular public media.

Theoretical Implications

Political Implications

Another important aspect of this analysis asks how physical contests between competitors regardless of disability, as opposed to athletic endeavors between only similarly categorized bodies, opens spaces for resistive movements or reifies the normative constructs through the scientification of results. The case studies here focus on individual narratives that shape the 2012 LSOG. The strict attention paid to athlete’s bodies creates isolated instances of resistance and allows, as demonstrated, entry points for theoretical discussions on disability, sexuality, and weight. Furthermore while the athletic endeavors of Godsey, Semenya, Pistorius, and others remain a worthy focal point for scholarship, the space created through the competition should also be discussed on a political level.