Running as a Way Fat Women Re-Story Their Bodies and Construct a Runner Identity in a North American Sociocultural Context

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-2022

Publisher

Elsevier

Source Publication

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

Source ISSN

1469-0292

Original Item ID

DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2022.102278

Abstract

Aim

This research sought to identify the process by which women who identify as fat or as not having a typical athletic body construct an athletic identity and persist in their running and other athletic endeavors despite body size-related barriers.

Methods

From an online recruitment effort, 19 North American women runners in larger bodies completed interviews in which they told the story of how they had become runners. A narrative analysis with a feminist, constructivist approach was conducted to identify story types.

Results

Four narrative types were identified: reclaiming the body, reclaiming health, space-making, and future-imagining. Through finding a size- and pace-inclusive running community, running persistently, and completing races, women relinquished the stories they’d believed that their bodies were not athletic since childhood and constructed an identity of runner in a fat body.

Conclusions

These women’s engagement in running is a personal form of resistance against those who define athletic and healthy as “thin” or “fit.” They have found a welcoming athletic community and have moved on to leadership where they are working to make running accessible to other women in bodies like theirs. Those reading these narratives should consider ways in which fat bodies have been excluded from athletics, as well as ways to support the work being done by women runners in fat bodies to redefine health and athleticism.

Comments

Psychology of Sport and Exercise, Vol. 63 (November 2022). DOI.

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