Pam R. Sailors

“Look Great Naked!” “Sexy Legs Now!” “Score a Perfect 10 Body!” These invitations appear regularly on the covers of glossy fitness magazines, always beside a photograph of a too-perfect-not-to-be-airbrushed, generally scantily clad, young woman. Are they really invitations or are they imperatives? What should we make of the apparently presumed connection between fitness and sex? These are the questions that drive this article, in which we distinguish between fitness and sport and provide a feminist account of fitness to set the stage for analysis of the conflict between norms of femininity and heteronormativity in sport and in the fitness industry. We examine the medicalization of fitness to show that women’s...

A survey of the philosophy of sport literature reveals that arguments regarding the issue of sex segregation in athletics have been advanced from time to time, but there has been little sustained discussion, no consensus, and no change in existing practice. In this paper, an effort to advance the conversation, I begin with Jane English’s seminal 1978 article as a springboard and employ existing literature on the question of sex segregation in order to raise difficulties with English’s analysis and outline the basic alternative positions that have been taken on the issue. My own contribution to the conversation is in the introduction of four distinctions – between individual and team sports, direct and indirect competition, contact and non-contact sports, and amateur and professional sports – that have not been part of the discussion about the conditions under which men and women might compete against one another. These distinctions resolve several difficulties noted by others and suggest a more nuanced conclusion about desirable changes to the structure of sporting competition

This paper examines footraces that are paced and unpaced, and runners who are pre-arranged, designated pacers and those who are not. Although pacesetting is commonplace in footraces today, the practice challenges our conception of sport competition, the nature of competitors and the meaning of records. For example, Bale calls paced races as ‘staged experiments’ to set world records and argues that pacers were crucial in the running career of Roger Bannister. In 2011, the International Association of Athletics Federation banned women’s world records in mixed gender running events, like major marathons, because women were paced by male runners. By examining these cases and others, the authors here will claim paced footraces are qualitatively different than unpaced competitions, pacers introduce peculiar motives and intentions as competitors, women should not be denied opportunities to excel and perform at their very best, and the 2011 IAAF policy is unjustified