Abstract

Drawing on an analysis of autobiographical books written by female participants in extreme recreational sports races, this article offers an examination of self-presentations of athlete writers in relation to their serious leisure engagement in this type of sporting events that are often connoted with masculinity. The analysis centres on the authors’ constructions of various types of femininities, and how they challenge the subject/object dichotomy of the physical self in their narrations. A result of the examination is that the self-presentations enable negotiations of a position of being marginalized as average and ordinary women, who do extreme recreational sports and deviate from the male sports norm, but also enable experiences of empowerment through the physical activity and racing in the particular settings of extreme sports. This tension in the female racers’ self-presentations is analysed in reference to different social conditions that surround womens’ participation in extreme sports races.

Keywords:Femininities; Athleticism; Self-presentation; Extreme recreational sports races; Autobiographies; Subject/object