Abstract
Many menstruating athletes experience harm due to a lack of research on practices suited to their bodies. To categorise these harms, sports scientists established the syndrome RED-S, otherwise known as the female athlete triad, to describe athletes who develop osteoporosis, disordered eating, and lose their menstrual cycles. However, this syndrome frames the poor health of menstruating athletes as intrinsic, thereby ignoring the complex cultural factors that contribute to its development. This research proposes a new understanding of female athlete health by drawing on embodied aesthetics and somaesthetics to centre the relational, sensory, and somatic experiences of menstruating athletes. I propose that sports science is a technology that intersects with cultural beliefs about menstruation and femininity to generate knowledge which mandates a normative shape and feel of bodies. Though athletics centres the body, the cultural environment of sports encourages dissociation from somatic experience. This is amplified in menstruating athletes because of cultural beliefs about menstruation as something that should be concealed and detached from the self. Classifying injury becomes contingent on these cultural circumstances, with loss of menstruation, developing pain, or worsened mental health framed as irrelevant. Based on interviews with athletes who have the capacity to menstruate and upcoming fieldwork, this research challenges the traditional, medicalized view of female athlete health by prioritising the value of somatic knowledge and subjective experience to foster a holistic approach to athlete care and performance.
Presenters
Halle KottStudent, MA Social and Cultural Anthropology, Concordia University, Quebec, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Menstruation, Embodied Aesthetics, RED-S, Somatic Experience, Sports Science
