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'You can't be too vain to gain if you want to swim the Channel' : marathon swimming and the construction of heroic fatness

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Throsby, Karen (2015) 'You can't be too vain to gain if you want to swim the Channel' : marathon swimming and the construction of heroic fatness. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 50 (7). pp. 769-784. doi:10.1177/1012690213494080

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1012690213494080

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Abstract

The fat body and the sporting body are conventionally understood as mutually exclusive, coming together only in sport-based weight-loss interventions. However, the sport of marathon swimming relies upon body fat as a performance advantage, and weight maintenance and gain are a common element of the training process. The concept of ‘heroic fatness’ offers (some) swimmers a means of negotiating this anomalous sporting embodiment, positioning swimming fat as an undesirable necessity, nobly, but provisionally, borne. The paper argues that this construction is made possible through the construction of swimming fat as fake and as separate from the self. However, the paper unsettles this ideal-type of heroic fatness through the identification of the exclusions upon which it relies, both in terms of gender, and in relation to those who are already fat at the start of training. This opens up the possibility of more ambivalent modes of fatness that run counter to both heroic fatness and its unheroic counterpart – the very ‘real’ fatness that is the target of instrumentalist sport-based weight-loss interventions.

Item Type: Journal Article
Divisions: Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Journal or Publication Title: International Review for the Sociology of Sport
Publisher: Sage
ISSN: 1012-6902
Official Date: 1 November 2015
Dates:
DateEvent
1 November 2015Published
5 July 2013Available
Volume: 50
Number: 7
Page Range: pp. 769-784
DOI: 10.1177/1012690213494080
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Access rights to Published version: Restricted or Subscription Access
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant:
Project/Grant IDRIOXX Funder NameFunder ID
RES-000-22-4055Economic and Social Research Councilhttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000269
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