Illuminating Gender II

by Curtis Fogel, University of Calgary, Canada

1     In Boxing, Masculinity and Identity, Kath Woodward approaches the sport of male boxing, where traditional notions of masculinity appear to clash with fluid notions of gender. Woodward's project is to explore how male boxers establish and reestablish their masculinity and identity, both within and outside the boxing ring, with one foot in a world dominated by notions of heroic masculinity and the other in a society with ever-changing gender norms and expectations. More specifically, Woodward focuses on the role of the body, narratives, and film in forming masculine boxing identities. In her own words, the central task of the project is to investigate: "How do boxing masculinities work?" (37).

2     A senior lecturer of sociology at the Open University, Woodward has published extensively on the subject of identity, particularly as it relates to gender. In her monograph Boxing, Masculinity and Identity Woodward uses boxing to frame broader theoretical and sociological concerns. If on the one hand Woodward thus seeks to illuminate the topic of boxing with the help of social theory, on the other she employs boxing to examine social theory. For example, she uses Pierre Bourdieu's concept of illusio, or a shared understanding of the stakes of a particular game, to shed light on the possible internal experiences and rationales of being a boxer. In doing so, she reveals the importance of gender to the concept of illusio in Bourdieu's work, i.e. the fact that, in order to be successful in his field, a male boxer must invest in 'masculine' stakes. Although predominantly focusing on male boxing, the author makes some references to female boxing, too. This, however, is characterized in terms of a masculine coded space, which Woodward exemplifies by referring to Million Dollar Baby, arguing that the film revolves around the female boxer's male coach and trainer.

3     In analyzing the role of the body of the male boxer in relation to masculine identity formation, Woodward draws heavily on the work of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. Thus she illustrates, how the body of the boxer is shaped and disciplined through regulatory practices such as weight training and dieting — to turn it into a strong, hard and agile weapon. This disciplined body, Woodward suggests, becomes a form of physical capital which can then be converted to economic or cultural capital in the form of a strong, masculine identity.

4     According to Woodward, the boxer's need and motivation to attain this strong, masculine body is rooted in the regulatory discourse of boxing narratives, which for her involve any discursive practices surrounding the sport such as personal stories, pictures, various forms of news media, the Internet, locker room talk, and film: "Boxing identities are situated within particular narratives which have both a well-established tradition and enormous purchase at every level" (19). In these narratives, the heroic struggle to achieve the impossible is a recurrent theme: "Boxing deploys the language of legends and constructs its own mythological heroes" (100). Discursive renditions of this are the rags-to-riches story and stories appealing to traditional, breadwinning masculinity, evoked in many different ways via real-life examples or through film and other mediums, representing the boxer as a man down on his luck who must enter the ring, and win, in order to feed his family.

5     A further theme of boxing narratives examined by Woodward is the heroic battle between good and evil, exemplified by the 1964 fight between Mohammed Ali and Sonny Liston. At the time, Liston was known as the bad guy of boxing because of his involvement in the dark side of the trade including organized crime and his over-aggressive demeanor in the ring. Ali, on the other hand, was the hero, set on the mission to knock Liston down and out. Through these narratives, Woodward argues, boxing legends and heroes are born: "The masculinities that are implicated in the practice of boxing are about fantasy, mythology, and the invocation of legend" (102). Such legends can be born through a fight in front of millions of people such as the Ali versus Liston, or they can result from a fight in a local gym attended by only a handful of people, where the story nonetheless spreads from locker room to locker room until it achieves legendary status. For Woodward, the importance of this discourse of heroism is that it regulates how far boxers are willing to go in training and damaging their bodies, which ultimately contributes to the formation of their masculine identities.