Hybholt Maria, Spotswood Fiona
Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
University of Bristol Business School, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Sociol Health Illn. 2025 Feb;47(2):e70004. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.70004.
This article examines leisure time physical activity (LTPA) for middle-class women as relational, intricately linked with societal understandings of personal responsibility to work, to family and to health and entangled with the emotion management of 'successful' middle-class womanhood. We focus on middle-class Danish women who engage in routinised participation in LTPA. We illuminate through our qualitative study how emotional reflexivity involves dispersed practices that are entangled with this lifelong physical activity and how these entangled, mutually evolving practices enable women to dutifully enact 'successful' womanhood, in line with contemporary ideals. First, emotional reflexivity during LTPA represents a habituated way to handle the routine pressures of everyday working and caring, enacted through practices of switching off and working through. Second, women are better able to manage their emotions during challenging everyday situations because of their routinised LTPA that both still emotions and enables engagement with them. Particularly, exercising in nature strengthens the women's capacity for emotion management. Emotional reflexivity practices become part of the LTPA practice template. Lifelong LTPA enables busy middle-class women to succeed at, and sustain, overwhelming and unrealistic caring and working practice performances that meet neoliberal ideals.
本文探讨了中产阶级女性的休闲时间体育活动（LTPA），认为其具有关联性，与社会对工作、家庭和健康的个人责任的理解紧密相连，并与“成功”的中产阶级女性气质的情感管理交织在一起。我们关注的是那些经常参与LTPA的丹麦中产阶级女性。通过我们的定性研究，我们阐明了情感反思如何涉及与这种终身体育活动交织在一起的分散实践，以及这些相互交织、共同演变的实践如何使女性能够按照当代理想尽职尽责地展现“成功”的女性气质。首先，LTPA期间的情感反思代表了一种习惯性的方式，用于应对日常工作和照顾的常规压力，通过“关闭”和“排解”的实践来实现。其次，由于她们经常参与LTPA，女性在具有挑战性的日常情况下能够更好地管理自己的情绪，LTPA既能平息情绪，又能让她们与情绪互动。特别是，在大自然中锻炼增强了女性的情绪管理能力。情感反思实践成为LTPA实践模板的一部分。终身参与LTPA使忙碌的中产阶级女性能够成功并持续地完成符合新自由主义理想的、压倒性的和不切实际的照顾和工作实践表现。
