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Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 47, Issue 4, pp 325–342 | Cite as

Empowering Girls Through Sport? Sports Advice Books for Young Female Readers

  • Dawn Heinecken
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

Advice books by female athletes are among the top selling sports books for young readers in the US Though they have received little attention to date, sports advice books are important to examine because of how they function as a form of conduct manual instructing girls in specific understandings of female identity. Implying that girls face unique challenges in a sexist society, sports advice books articulate a feminist concern with girls’ well-being and present themselves as empowering girls by enabling girls’ self-transformation. Examining the ways that girls are urged to transform, this study interrogates the subjectivity and world view sports advice books offer to readers within the wider context of globalization and neoliberalism. It argues that the postfeminist construction of female subjectivity within girls’ sports advice books operates to support ideologies that do more to limit, than liberate, girls.

Keywords

Young adult Sports Gender Postfeminism Neoliberal 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Women’s and Gender StudiesUniversity of LouisvilleLouisvilleUSA

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