"Lean, mean" and feeling "powerful": Premature osteoporosis among young female athletes: Experiences and feminist sociological analyses

Joyce Sherlock

De Montford University, Bedford, England

This paper focuses on issues of being in control and being out of control of one's behaviour raised through research which gathered accounts of the experience of overtraining amongst young sportswomen. The initial purpose was to understand the processes involved in overtraining in order to educate others: young sportswomen, parents, teachers, coaches, doctors and sporting officials. In triathlon, the young women's sporting ambitions were accompanied by training regimes which absorbed, with work and sleep, their whole way of life. The culture of the sports club proved to be absolutely central to their social world and sense of personal identity, so that injury meant being unable to be the person they saw themselves as being. Training to become faster was accompanied by almost excluding eating or rationalising a low fat diet to reduce body fat and excess weight. Long term lack of menstruating was not an unwelcome fact of life. Together, the intensity of training and imbalance between energy intake and expenditure, combined with amenorrhea, would seem to have contributed to premature low bone density in these extremely thin females (Drinkwater,1992; Wilmore, Wambgans, Brenner, Broeder, Paijmans, Volpe & Wilmore, 1992) (although, osteoporosis could be more connected with reproductive function than diet). Through their sporting involvement these young women became thinner and faster, but also fragile. Their disciplined behaviour signified self-control and yet they recognised an obsessiveness which was a loss of that control. They experienced being driven to irrational behaviours, of being unable to choose the sensible and healthy option even if able to recognise it, such as to rest instead of training when on the edge of injury, or to eat without guilt.

This was articulated thus by one triathlete:

I laugh at myself over some things but at the same time am concerned at the power of all this. Sometimes when I've felt hungry I have even had second thoughts about having a banana. At the back of my mind and nagging me has been the knowledge that its fat content is higher than other fruits, so an apple would really be a better choice wouldn't it? Invariably I 'refrain' and choose the apple. Control and self discipline are definitely key factors in all of this. Just as sticking to training programmes, I...felt satisfaction in being able to 'say no' to certain foods, to discipline myself into the attitude that these were things that I 'didn't eat'. A part of this is to be regarded as someone who is 'healthy', has a 'healthy life style' and the association with this of avoiding fat and sweet foods. Now I know all too well that with both diet and training, what is 'healthy' should be seen as the top of a curve, not the end of a straight line-there are certainly very real dangers in going too far and as I indicated above, I can now see a 'power' of influence over attitudes and rationality that does 'get a grip' on you, so that you are arguably no longer in control...(I've)...got as far as being aware of 'the problem', that what started as a move towards a healthier diet became a health risk in itself... I'm finding increasing difficulty knowing what tense to use-past or present?, because it isn't something I'm totally over by any means...getting into this situation and patterns of behaviour was progressive and took time, changing them does too, but awareness is certainly a critical first step...awareness alone isn't going to change anything and...you can only change if you really want to and believe in the benefits that will arise as a result. I'm not sure how far down the line I've gone..a little way but not far and it is difficult....

What follows is a socio-cultural analysis which extends research for overtrained female athletes and which began in 1995 with an interdisciplinary focus. Research into osteoporosis tends to be of a medical nature and overtraining is often analysed in psychological terms (see, for example, De Souza & Metzer, 1991). Of the few sociological studies which have any direct relevance, Nixon 11 (1989) extends Yates, Leehay and Shisslaker's (1983) observations on the similarities in character, adaptive qualities and background between American males addicted to distance running and anorexic women. The males are perceived as "obligatory runners", whose behaviour might be glorified, but females exercising to keep thin are more likely to be considered sick. Nixon 11 (1989) concentrates on the differences between them, but both frame behaviours in terms of problems of identity and role adjustment, "positive deviance" and pathology on the part of participants fitting into American society. He emphasises the importance of his recognition that these subjects are very successful adherents to, and practioners of, behaviours designed to achieve the American dream. They demonstrate values of individualism which may lead to asocial behaviour. He also recognises that the contemporary meaning of success may be ambivalent and for females, bringing ambiguities such as unpopularity generally and with males in particular. Males may not find the kind of satisfaction in work they had anticipated. Both males and females may turn, for security, to gender appropriate ways of finding alternative success in a time of loosening patriarchy, which yet retains equivocal responses to female power. Their obsessive preocccupation with running and anorexia may be further exacerbated by the severance of links with significant others in a sub-culture whose taken for granted competitiveness does not challenge such compulsive behaviours. As such, why these people behave the way they do is because socialisation into the values of the American Dream has been adhered to in unrealistic ways which do not take structural obstacles into account, thus creating unstable identities which need social support and control to bring them out of their uncontrollable behaviour. The existence of females who become very serious about running is acknowledged by Nixon,11 (1989), but they are not seen as addictive, rather pursuing routes to traditional femininity through keeping weight down for an attractive appearance.

Analysing accounts of the osteoporotic young women in my sample showed that they recognised the compulsive nature of their training making them "obligatory runners", not recognised in the research above. They showed a strong commitment to the club sub-culture of triathlon which does not challenge continued compulsive behaviour, much as the males above had done. Since these are "obligatory runners" who are female, and there exist male anorexics (Waugh,1993), an explanation for their behaviour cannot be entirely, if at all, that traditional gender behaviours are providing coping strategies for identity problems. Further, the female runners say that significant others during the growing up process at one point or another were far from supportive, in expecting them to aspire to a model at odds with their perception of themselves, whether of traditional femininity, or academic achievement, which the running behaviour challenged with a different body image or sporting success preferred to academic success. Rather than traditional femininity and sex-appropriate behaviours being the only gender aspirations available to contemporary British young women, feminist discourses may have encouraged so-called unisex sports like triathlon and perhaps aspirations towards gender equity, while the current popularity of females taking part in traditionally male sports such as football and rugby, may be a way of challenging traditional femininity.

Although a high incidence of anorexia amongst female British runners has recently come to light (Hulley, cited in Bee,1997), and Seaton (1997) talks about a crisis in women's running, my subjects did not present themselves as anorexic. What they share with anorexics is the belief that the social power their physical state imbued them with provided important ways for each of them to present her own idea of herself, her own desires, giving her a sense of control over destiny. There is a strong sense in each account of a belief in the freedom to become what she desires. Research on premature osteoporosis is strictly contemporary, coinciding with the increased competitiveness of sport as scientific training techniques become taken for granted. As osteoporosis, usually considered a disease of old age, seems more prevalent in women than men, so in young athletes, it is being presented as connected with female reproduction. Hormone replacement therapy has been a form of treatment for both age groups. McSween (1993) in her feminist and sociological perspective on Anorexic Bodies suggests that

in the anorexic symptom women try to synthesise contradictory elements in their social position through the creation of an 'anorexic body' (p.2).

Here we have an analysis which discerns a logic in behaviour which, popularly, and in much medical practice, seems nonsensical and devoid of any positive characteristics. Contradictions between being rational and educated on the one hand and domesticated and caring on the other, between being modest and chaste in contrast to being sexual, being constantly surveyed while supposedly having a right to survey, to be sexually active and choosing rather than only available to men's desires, to be independent and separate, while at the same time dependent and responsive, these are some of the common dilemmas related to control over her destiny reiterated by and for the contemporary female. Place (1989) saw this as resulting for her in a "battle to find words to express the world as it is -full of paradoxes and not the narrow, simple place some parents describe it to be" (286: cited in Eckerman, 1997, p.151). Self starvation was for her a means of trying to resolve the paradoxes, through the creation of a body on which the signs of the paradoxes could be read. A dilemma for the feminist analyst is whether she abrogates responsibility for intervention. Does a young woman have the right to starve herself to death? McSween (1993) makes it clear that she applies a feminist and sociological analysis to the accounts which she has gathered. It is her interpretation of what her subjects are saying that we hear.

Similarly to the way that osteoporosis is generally treated, McSween (1993), defines anorexia as a woman's disease. She says that the central features of anorexia are recognised by contemporary psychiatry, just as they were in the nineteenth century when Gull and Lasegue, quite independently in England and France respectively, introduced 'anorexia nervosa' and 'hysterical anorexia' to the medical establishments. These features are:

emaciation, occurring without organic causation; a specific distribution by age and by gender (although the class distribution was not noticed by Gull and Lasegue); the denial by the patient that she was ill, and the corresponding recognition of a degree of conscious choice in anorexia; and a view of anorexia as a non-organic disorder (McSween,1993, p.15)".

There is a contemporary consensus that 'anorexia'-lack of appetite-is a misnomer, as the anorexic woman still experiences hunger, and her appetite remains 'normal'. Through a critical debate with Turner's (1984) sociology of the body and others, significantly Marx, McSween (1993) argues that

we can identify the dominant bourgeois body-concept as that of an individualized and completed possession of the self which is finished (in normal circumstances) after the integration and separation of the formative years of infancy, and through which we pursue pleasure and satisfy our (internal) desires in the expropriation of the separated environment....desires form the 'core' of the person. The autonomous pursuit of individual interests is, then, the model for both the body and the self" (p.153-4).

She continues, showing that Turner's (1984) rendition is not gender neutral, but more applicable to masculinity than femininity,

masculine bodily integrity -or closure, or separation-is constructed in relation to, and depends on the maintenance of feminine bodily openness; and...masculine bodily instrumentality is defined in relation to the construction of the feminine body-as- environment...dominant(masculine) and subordinate (feminine) body concepts are created through a set of oppositions-open/closed, active/passive, hard/soft, muscle/flesh-and... consequently resistance to or changes in one affects or undermines the other (159).

For my purposes, what Turner's (1984) analysis does, which Nixon11 (1989) and McSween (1993) do not do, is to indicate the possibility of an individual perceiving themselves as a candidate for social success in consumer culture, without considering gender to be an issue. But the point McSween (1993) makes in bringing a feminist dimension into a criticism of Turner, is that broad tenets of feminism, such as doing what men can do and doing things for your own pleasure, have so much permeated popular consciousness, or at least the social milieu of the formally educated (and such is the inflexibility of functionalist analyses like Nixon11's, which can talk easily about deviance, as though we had clear ideas about normality and health) that we have to recognise that subjects can see anorexia as a positive strategy for them, struggling for their individuality on their own terms against continuing perceptions of male surveillance acting upon them both sexually and authoritatively.

In her application of a bodily analysis to interviews with anorexic women, McSween (1993) shows how the feminine body is created as an object on which the masculine subject acts, and which he owns: women maintain bodies as objects through dietary, cosmetic and behavioural practices rather as caretakers than owners. She argues that Turner's (1984) assertion that women have a 'phenomenological possession' of their bodies sits uneasily with women's alienation from their bodies as the objects of masculine sexual desire and site of personally controlled reproduction.

As a step towards evaluating the usefulness of McSween's (1993) method for more deeply understanding the overtraining drive in prematurely osteoporotic sporting females, I now outline what she says about the fitness boom. She sees this as part of an increased concern with bodily health. Initially a middle-class phenomenon, capital, the mass media and the state have taken it up and the market is still expanding. She cites Turner's (1984) reference to associated behaviours as 'forms of secular asceticism' or 'calculating hedonism' and anorexia is one of these. So these non-oppositional 'body-maintenance' practices are ways in which we enable ourselves to consume more sex, work and achieve longevity. This is of benefit to the state and the medical profession and the healthy jogger becomes the healthy citizen. McSween (1993) extends this, pointing out that as well as treating the body as a vehicle for consumption and individuation, it can also be a 'last resort' of a sense of individual control in the absence of believing that we can impact upon our environment. This is an idea of living in rather than through the body. Seeing this as gendered, through the ideology of femininity, the female is acted upon rather than acting, consumed rather than consuming. Chapkis (1986) is cited as arguing that 'the exercise of control over the body compensat(es) for a basic sense of a life out of control' (McSween, 1993,p.156) and that the pursuit of beauty is more attainable than such male controlled desires like jobs and promotion. Chapkis is also said to argue that fitness for women is fit to be looked at rather than fitness to act.

In spite of the reluctance of British governments to become deeply involved in centralising sport (Hargreaves,1986), a governmentally funded British Academy of Sports is a response to the emergent, arguably, global consumer culture of sport. This puts the emphasis on the nurturing of talent, performance rather than participation, and the creation of national champions. As such, the significance of sporting success is designed to indicate the health of the nation in not only physical, but political and economic terms, as the success of the Australian Institute for sport has done. Training for the osteoporotic subjects, as they put it in their own words, epitomises such practice where desire to achieve performance goals, to become a better performer, are tied in with a severe rejection of acceptance of the 'body as it is', for a self-immolatory set of short term and long term aims in running, swimming and cycling distances and sprints, in a highly structured way. For example:

I wanted "to be a runner" and be recognised and recognisable as such-and..(A)nother characteristic of these people that I was impressed by and...desired was that they 'looked fit'-and themselves desired...being 'lean and mean'. The aim ...was to minimise body fat... in losing any 'excess' weight which would...slow down their running in...(10km upwards) races. The relationship between 'thinness' and running identity and performance was something that I was aware of but..became increasingly conscious of and influenced by. Running magazines and television reinforced...what I now see as a dangerous message: 'the thinner- the faster'.

Another subject talked about a coach pursuing this "dangerous message". This philosophy was embraced by participants at both elite and below elite level, where the ruthless competitive values of high level sport are internalised by individuals as members of clubs, but not necessarily being monitored for self-inflicted and potentially dangerous excesses. The individualism of fulfilling potential manifest by these subjects can be related to 'calculating hedonism' because of the pleasure derived in the pursuit of desire, to be identifiable as an athlete, through physical abilities and body image. The extent to which this can be seen as oppositional is in the degree to which one sees sport and femaleness as a legitimate combination in contemporary culture. The purpose of the sporting endeavour would seem to be for its own sake rather than to consume more, as McSween's (1993) reading of Turner (1984) suggests. Yet it is also living through the body rather than in the body since the clear purpose is an instrumental one. As a subject put it:

..Gradually I think I felt myself developing an identity from my participation -as 'someone who ran, and..running started to become 'part of my life'..like my running and my training, my commitment to a low fat diet was something that in time became far more structured and disciplined.

Whereas the state may seem to benefit from a politically docile, self-absorbed athletic population, which at the highest level will be championed as a product of liberal democracy to bring national glory, the politics of women's sport as an equity issue is a slow struggle against hegemonic masculinity and not an issue voiced by the subjects themselves. The medical profession may suffer rather than benefit, as with the sportswomen I interviewed getting viruses regularly, stress fractures, broken limbs from cycling accidents, needing bone scans and experimental treatment, all of which take up precious resources. This is how two subjects articulated their experiences:

over-training...develops very gradually, it's that pattern of that hard, sustained, constant training that I got into...over a matter of years...that gradually your body is saying, hang on a minute, I need a break from this..what that gave rise to was repeated sore throats, eye infections, as well as problems with...pulled muscles. As soon as I started to train it seemed that something would go... I experienced increased circulatory type problems,...I lost a big toenail on two two occasions simply because that circulation had been cut off for so many hours and I remember the pain...of this and the misery of feeling the cold which thin people tend to do.

At 28 years of age, I have the bone density (in my spine and hips) of an 80-90 year old woman. Each day I take 3 different drugs in an attempt to curb further bone loss, one of which is considered a poison and has not been clinically accepted for routine prescription within the UK.....Women of my age are normally building bone rather than losing it. The threat and fear of fracture has become so prominent that I have been forced to undergo a complete change of lifestyle-from that of a competitive and successful athlete, to a relatively "sedate" individual.....I guess that one of the frustrating facts is that my "condition" might have been avoidable and is, to some extent self-inflicted.... While she was training hard "Despite my thinness, I felt strong and powerful". Yet a bone scan revealed bone density of a woman in her 70s. Incredibly, I managed to convince myself that it didn't matter; to blot it out of my mind and tell no-one else....Two months later, whilst "storming along" on an early morning training cycle ride...I swerved to avoid a pothole, failed to hear a fast approaching car and was knocked flying. This resulted in a broken pelvis and three months off training. Within 2 weeks of the accident I was hopping around on crutches...Another 2 weeks on, I still couldn't walk, but found that I could pedal, almost pain free on my turbo trainer...My mind was saying "do it" even if my body said "no". I became a "driven woman" again, determined to regain "fitness" and this continued for another two years, with "some good times in cycle time trials, but (I) was pushing my body very hard and constantly suffered upper respiratory tract infections". After contracting the Epstein Barr virus while feeling "like death", yet cycling 150 miles a week and swimming 4 hours each week "my body "packed in" and despite extreme motivation, I couldn't exercise..I'd reached rock bottom and it was time to quit.

Much of the treatment for sports injuries has to be privately funded and the specialism of sports injuries has opened up another career avenue for doctors. This is not to mention the relatively new career of sports scientist and the development of exercise physiology in both an understanding of general exercise on the body and also training regimes for committed athletes. But for females this is relatively marginal terrain. Lottery finance for sport, most markedly influencing gender equity as a criterion for acceptance, has been seen as a positive financial intervention, with interesting consequences as in the recent case of cricket and the MCC. In this context women's sport has yet to throw off the vestiges of separate organisation and largely amateur ethos and become truly integrated on either terms of equity or of women themselves. At the same time, the perceived affluence of women in the consumer market, and the success of companies like Reebok, prompting Nike in America to win the market sector of sporty young women, may have consequences in UK.

With regard to triathlon and the osteoporotic subjects I want to gain a better understanding of, it can be observed, and one subject has pointed out, that the masculine model of testing the limits of endurance are the aspiration of strong and less strong women and men, with the standard being set by the most powerful men and the organisation of the sport. This is far from being the unisex sport of the millenium, being hierarchical and administered mostly by males. So, with regard to the issue of control for my subjects, there has been no definite move towards the openness of femininity but clear aspirations towards the closed ideology of masculinity and individuation. This is not necessarily how the osteoporotic subjects perceive their behaviour, but sociologically, it has taken place in a context of control literally by males and ideologically heterosexually bounded (as by media invisibility and the kinds of representations of women in sport) so that sport is defined as competitive, aggressive, needing total dedication, a closed structure. McSween (1993) makes the point that the definition of feminine in bourgeois culture operates through the concepts of discipline, object and chaos. She also goes on to say that self-control is part of being feminine-we watch how we sit, walk and what we eat. I'd say that my subjects do not easily watch these, one at least openly rejecting the idea that gender has much to do with her behaviour. As in the film A League of Their Own, the sports business world, sporting institutions like physical education and national governing bodies of sport today, regulate dress codes and behaviour in a way generally taken for granted. Players in the film trained in functional clothing of their own choice, but then had to be groomed for the market to wear short 'girlie' dresses, be socially graceful, womanly, poised and decorous. Their exhuberance, on the other hand, was at first a surprise to audiences and then a necessity to draw the crowds. It had to be kept under control when it broke out in a dance hall. McSween (1993) recognises a reworking of such issues in different social contexts and 1990s UK is obviously very different from 1940s US. The question is whether osteoporotic female athletes, like anorexics, use their bodies in sport as a 'site of image production': objectifying, disciplining and coping with chaos.

McSween's (1993) emphasis on a bodily analysis, which indicates that as well as treating the body as a vehicle for consumption and individuation, it can also be a 'last resort' of a sense of individual control in the absence of believing that we can impact upon our environment, could be applied to sport in the sense that, as an institution, it is more renouned for its conservative tendencies than its critical edge. In the case of sportswomen's accounts this would not seem to apply, for they have clearly aimed for individuation and to an extent achieved it. As professional young women, they are financially independent, and have a strong sense of resistance to being consumed. As such they may well pose a threat, in challenging and undermining the ideology of male competency and heroism. This is far from the threat of feminine openness, discussed by McSween (1993). If women can do what have been seen as the mythical physical feats of humanity, then these can hardly have the social currency they once had. Chapkis (1986) is cited as arguing that 'the exercise of control over the body compensat(es) for a basic sense of a life out of control' (McSween, 1993,p.156). This certainly might apply in the case of the osteoporotic subjects, but they do not speak of the pursuit of physical beauty at all. They are ambitious to attain such male controlled desires like jobs and promotion. If endurance sport is the last bastion of hypermasculinity, then they have gone for it full tilt. There seems at first glance no sense in which we can apply Chapkis' comments that fitness for women is fit to be looked at, rather than fitness to act, from what our sporting subjects say about themselves. That is, except for the reference above by a subject to a desire to be like new acquaintances, triathletes, whose image and lifestyle was 'lean and mean' and by another, to athletic training making her 'feel powerful'.

There seem to be some distinctions between prematurely osteoporotic female runners with obvious eating disorders and anorexics. Remember that McSween (1993) argues, in explanation of anorexic behaviour that the feminine body is created as an object on which the masculine subject acts, and which he owns: women maintain bodies as objects through dietary, cosmetic and behavioural practices rather as caretakers than owners. She argues that Turner's (1984) assertion that women have a 'phenomenological possession' of their bodies sits uneasily with women's alienation from their bodies as the objects of masculine sexual desire and site of personally controlled reproduction. If we take each point in relation to the triathletes, there is much more of a tendency for women to behave like men, in the sense that the desire is not for a feminine body on which a masculine subject acts, but rather for a sporting body which is owned by the female herself in the pursuit of her desires, which are to be lighter and faster, but which have made her fragile. The social context of the running club is relentlessly competitive, not in the sense of competing for a male, but in the sense of becoming a better athlete, improving performance times, training harder and in a more dedicated way, gaining satisfaction from self-discipline, countering lack of control and lack of self-discipline. This is both not feminine in the sense that masculine desire would, at first sight seem to be absent in sexual terms, and it would seem gender neutral in the sense of simply being, to the subjects themselves, as rational as possible, as efficient as possible, as professional in the sense of being as ruthlessly competitive as possible. It is, however, from a sociological perspective, clearly a masculine model adopted by females driving their bodies as though the female reproductive system were of no consequence, and as though the quasi-neuter body was inviolate. Also, for one subject, answering: "Why the dedicated participation, why the overtraining, why the level of commitment..." says

..I think this all hinges on the sort of issue of insecurity, the need for an identity for recognition and the security that that can offer, and the absence of that otherwise in one's life. And certainly in my case I trace it back to my childhood and what I regard as particularly from my father a sort of essential rejection of who I was, of the character I was and that I wasn't the daughter that he'd hoped I would be and that I think left a very big impression on me....I was a swot at school, I wore glasses...and if you add that to a situation at home...of great insecurity and uncertainty because of my father's mental illness....I didn't have any control over the situation I was living in and that's left me very scared of being out of control of anything, and so being out of control of my life....He essentially wanted me to be a glamorous, slim, a woman who's basic priority would be marrying someone successful and bringing up a family.

There a strong sense of closure here, an instrumentality, little sense of openness, and a rejection of the body-as-environment. Dominant (masculine) and subordinate (feminine) body concepts are revealed in the emphasis on the need for activity over passivity in training, its consequences in creating a hard, muscular (lean and mean) look-and that consequent resistance to femininity brings in a celebration of the woman she desires to be, regardless of whether masculinity undermines femininity. Women are controlling their reproductive processes, and pleased to be without the nuisance of menstruation, controlling their desired image in relation to expected images from childhood, while ironically, at the same time they are being controlled by the ideology of ruthless competitiveness, a belief in bourgeois competitive individualism for status as recognisably a runner, not a woman. Whilst acting as though she owns her body and self, the triathlete is owned and controlled in the sense of, 'being in the power of', the institution to which she has committed herself. She acts as a caretaker of her body for her own pleasure in competition, for the satisfaction of her own desires.

The irony is that in finding her own path to control, away from confessed deeply negative and traumatic experiences in adolescence, she has become deeply committed to a culture of achievement which arguably controls her unless she changes her way of life fundamentally. One subject talked about self- destruction, both of her body and her way of life: the dominance of exercise(her daily run) to the exclusion of interest in its effects: sexual abuse and sexual avoidance: training making her feel "powerful" and as a displacement for relationships: "runorexia" rather than anorexia: low bone density: physical and emotional pain: maturity. She is a researcher and, as part of wanting to help others avoid the mistakes she has made, has appeared on national television, carefully negotiating a role as informant, not victim. She has advised the National Osteoporosis Association on this subject group and written for women's magazines. For her there has been a shift towards concentrating on professional achievement and also an approach to a social life which is calculated to be more rational than previously. She is different from another subject in making an unsuccessful love affair a central aspect of her obsessiveness. A desire for a fulfilling domestic life seems to be more important to her in the account and from other observations. Another subject talked about the difficulty of admitting what she had got into: wanting to be a runner with a "lean and mean" look: differences in competitive levels of swimming and cycling, increasingly structuring activities, discipline and stress: changes in food tastes: overtraining and thinness: lack of structural support: explanations for her behaviour. Her considerable professional and sporting achievements consume her entire existence. Control of her life through personal achievement is the way she continues to live. She has not changed her punishing lifestyle and seems more concerned with maintaining some equilibrium that enables her to maintain present achievements than prepare for future health. The first subject tells us about an identity shift while the second has become her idea of a successful woman, in spite of what her father wanted her to be.

Both subjects tell in their accounts that they became part of athletic club cultures which were experienced as feeling good, right and natural for them. One describes in detail how she became acculturated:

The social aspects of clubs...is a really big thing in terms of the...stress associated with over-training and perhaps being forced by either injury or illness in not being able to train. It's not just the fact that you can't train, it's the impact that that has on your whole lifestyle, your whole confidence, your identity, everything because when you're training at these sorts of levels and you're working, you've got a job which you're committed to and working hard as well, apart from those two things and generally carrying out the sort of everyday mundane things in life there's not a lot of time for anything else and inevitably your social life revolves around the people you train with and know through the sport and if suddenly you're not actively participating in that sport you're missing out on a lot more than just the sport. And it leads to isolation, loneliness and I think when you are injured or something, I mean I'm the last person who'd want to go along and spectate, or even necessarly be with those people who I'd normally train with, because that just rubs in the fact that you're injured or you're ill and can't do it and, therefore, as I say, there is this loneliness and isolation, and I don't think that people who aren't in that situation realise the impact that it does have on people....it's a major part of your life that isn't there and it's very, very difficult to cope with....

For the other, her osteoporosis put her at such risk that she had to give up exercise almost altogether and had to break away from club culture, a fundamental change involving deep pain, having to learn that other less active pastimes, previously considered inferior, can be learned and eventually enjoyed, but not without a sense of loss: "I feel that I've lost part of my "identity" as well as my self-esteem". It would seem that McSween (1993) has much to contribute to an understanding of these particular women when she says "Reconciling the hidden incompatibilities between individualism and femininity is the central task of growing up female in contemporary Western culture" (p.3).

Pressures to be surveyed, to compete for a man, are deeply embedded in heterosexual discourses from childhood socialisation through to adolescence, and in the idea of sport as a morally worthy and healthy pursuit. But, in an environment of a traditional incompatability of sport and femininity, there have been many challenges to deep-seated cultural prejudices against female freedom to choose sport. In the context of female sporting success often being undermined with lesbian inuendos unable to accept that women can be successful and skillful in sport in their own right, such as has been so blatently revealed in the case of Theresa Harrild's treatment by, and subsequent condemnation of cricketers' attitudes at Lord's (Daily Express, Mar.12th, 1998) the idea of individuation to which some females, such as my triathlete subjects aspire seems incomprehensible. It also seems to be just one in many competing discourses surrounding femininity and sport.

A conclusion from the previous discussion is that clearly the homogenous image of femininity implied by McSween (1993) and psychoanalytic cultural analysis does not apply to the triathlete subjects. Like anorexic women, they are very thin, without organic causation; they are in their late twenties and early thirties and undeniably middle-class and highly educated; they confess to recognising a problem which they did not or will not confront fully; they view their obsessive overtraining behaviour as having social, psychological and physiological influences and consequences. But in the context of sport, the gendered nature of their behaviour is more towards a 'masculine' than 'feminine' end, with similar consequences. Furthermore, male athletes can suffer from low bone density (Bennell, Brukner & Malcolm,1996) and Waugh(1993) writes about anorexic males, who need to be accounted for. In the case of the latter, taking up sport as a means to better self esteem and social solace, can play a part in becoming anorexic. Biological essentialism, which might be implied by physiologists focusing on female athletes and hormone replacement therapy as a cure, does not account for the social and psychological aspects of an understanding of overtraining, sought by my subjects.

It is easy to read McSween (1993) as implying a kind of feminine essentialism through her method and conclusions. Certainly many healthy women in contemporary society would appear to choose a recognisably feminine image, and there is little challenge to this in many media images. But, other women do challenge the image by looking different, and also, not only sportswomen, but many professional women challenge traditional expectations everyday in their workplace. They may or may not subscribe to stereotypical femininities, but, I would concede that they are ultimately governed by seemingly rational, professional, gender neutral discourses, which can be aligned with middle-class, white, heterosexual, masculine, achievement orientated values. So while there is more choice being enacted by many people, there is still a dominant standard of attainment which is ultimately sexist in its expectations. McSween (1993) does recognise this, but my example of women who may well be anorexic, but who are or have been also seriously sporting and academic, does show that thinking only in 'feminine' terms does not answer the question of why they would prefer to continue. That lies in the meaning the lifestyle they have chosen offers them as a legitimation of their desired perception of themselves. This way of life provides the means of them controlling what they can be.

These subjects are female "obligatory runners" (Yates et al, cited in Nixon11, 1989) the existence of whom has only been recognised in the past decade. They have been or are taking part compulsively in an activity which still signifies virility but which is becoming more acceptable as pleasurable and a worthwhile enterprise for women, in spite of continuing media ambiguity. They also have silences on food or recognise an eating disorder, still signified as a woman's disease. If they are thin, whether they have an eating disorder or not, the fact of others reading their body as possibly anorexic, may undermine their legitimacy to some extent. Both sets of behaviour signify being out of control, and they interpret their own behaviour as an attempt to control their own lives. In the individualistic 1990s to argue that they are deviant and have unstable identities, is definitely, from a feminist and current sociological analysis, inadequate. But the importance of identity and appearance are by no means absent from an explanation of their behaviour, either a personal interpretation or a feminist or sociological one. McSween (1993) is right when she identifies "hidden incompatibilities between individualism and femininity" (p.3) in contemporary Western culture.

Like anorexics some of these women may wish to produce neuter bodies as a sign of not wishing to be acted upon by masculinity. But this is countered by some females wishing to produce a body desirable because it is a sporting body and not a traditionally feminine one which might imply, to the subjects themselves, not being intelligent, or being passive. To produce this body means belonging to a subculture of like-minded people, emulated for their lifestyle and their appearance. This gives meaning until the need to be the best, a standard presented socially and ostensibly neutrally, takes control. Although they do not necessarily forefront their femaleness as important to their identity, and they show disinterest in either promoting or challenging femininity, their behaviour appears rational and professional, but they are in an arena dominated by extreme male physical standards. In their life histories they reveal a number of incompatibilities between their perception of themselves and how significant others wanted them to be. Their bodies do reveal a surface which indicates something of this, but each life history is different and provides a different explanation for the way the creation and maintenance of identities has intersected with discourses of achievement, desires of image and temptations of fantasies compelling them out of control. Osteoporotic female athletes, like anorexics, use their bodies in sport as a 'site of image production': objectifying, disciplining and coping with chaos, but the difference is that in sport they have chosen an ambiguous goal for a female: glorious sport: glorious if you are a woman? That lies at the heart of the personal and the cultural dilemma.

References

Bee, P. (1997) 'The women athletes who starve to win', in The Telegraph, August 8th,18.

Bennell, K.L., Bruckner, P.D. & Malcolm, S.A. (1996) 'Effect of altered reproductive function and lowered testosterone levels on bone desity in male endurance athletes'. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 30: 205-208.

Coddington, A.(1997) One of the lads. Women who follow football. London: Harper Collins.

DAILY EXPRESS, Mar.12th, 1998.

Drinkwater, B. (1992) 'Amenorrhea, body weight and osteoporosis' in Brownell,K.D., Rodin,J. & Wilmore,J.H. Eating, body weight and performance in athletes. Lea & Febiger.

De Souza,M.J. & Metzer,D.A. (1991) 'Reproductive dysfunction in aenorrheic athletes and anorexic patients: a review' in Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 23: 995-1007.

Eckerman, L. (1997) 'Foucault, embodiment and gendered subjectivities: the case of voluntary self- starvation', in A. Peterson and R.Bunton(eds.) Foucault. Health and Medicine. London: Routledge.

Hargreaves, J.(1982) Sport, culture & ideology. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.

Hargreaves, J.(1986) Sport, power and culture. London: Polity.

Kennedy, E. & Sherlock, J. (forthcoming) 'So she wants to be a sledgehammer? Tennis femininities on British television'.Continuum. The Australian Journal of Media Culture.

McSween, M. (1993) Anorexic bodies. A feminist and sociological perspective on anorexia nervosa.London: Routledge.

Nixon 11,H.L.(1989) 'Reconsidering obligatory running and anorexia nervosa as gender-related problems of identity and role adjustment' in Journal of Sport and Social Issues,13 (1),14-24.

Seaton, S.(1997) 'The crisis in women's running', Runner's World Vol.5. No.9 Sept: 8.

Sherlock, J. & Penney, D. (in review) Thinner, faster and fragile: the onset of osteoporosis and young female athletes.

Turner, B.S. (1984) The body and society. Oxford: Blackwell.

Waugh, B.(1993) 'Anorexia nervosa in young boys', in Neuro-Psychiatrie de L'enfance et de Adolescence, 41: 287-290.

Whannel, G.(1992) Fields in vision. Television sport and cultural transformation. London: Routledge.

Wilmore, J.H.,Wambsgans, K.C., Brenner, M., Broeder, C.E., Paijmans, I., Volpe, J.A.and Wilmore, K.M. (1992) Is there energy conservation in amenorrheic compared with eumenorrheic distance runners? Journal of Applied Physiology. 72: 15-22.