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How Black women's engagement in improving health and fitness raises questions about feminism and the construction of black female identity
Body Language
Sisters in Shape, Black Women's Fitness, and Feminist Identity Politics
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Kimberly J. Lau
Elli Köngäs-Maranda Professional Prize, American Folklore Society, 2011
"Shockingly, while feminist debates marched forward about health, fitness, and the body, all too many of the debates marched on without good ethnographic analysis of marginalized bodies. Lau’s nuanced and interesting account of Sisters in Shape steps in to fill this gap and offers an impressive array of detail that elaborates the fine lines between discourse and practice, groups and individuals, empowerment and oppression, hope and harm. There is a clear dearth of books that carefully examine African-American women's bodies—particularly from a qualitative perspective—and particularly those that stand at the critical juncture of feminism, bodies, fitness, gender, race, and health. Body Language is a needed correction."
—Shari L. Dworkin, Associate Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California at San Francisco, and author of Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness
In her evocative ethnographic study, Body Language, Kimberly Lau traces the multiple ways in which the success of an innovative fitness program illuminates what identity means to its Black female clientele and how their group interaction provides a new perspective on feminist theories of identity politics—especially regarding the significance of identity to political activism and social change.
Sisters in Shape, Inc., Fitness Consultants (SIS), a Philadelphia company, promotes balance in physical, mental, and spiritual health. Its program goes beyond workouts, as it educates and motivates women to make health and fitness a priority. Discussing the obstacles at home and the importance of the group's solidarity to their ability to stay focused on their goals, the women speak to the ways in which their commitment to reshaping their bodies is a commitment to an alternative future.
Body Language shows how the group's explorations of black women's identity open new possibilities for identity-based claims to recognition, justice, and social change.
Excerpt
Read an excerpt from Chapter 1 (pdf).
Reviews
"In Body Language, Kimberly Lau adeptly draws the reader into the Sisters in Shape culture, whose central players emerge as multidimensional beings. The author’s personal and extended connection with the group provides rich detail as to its origins, day-to-day activities, and impact on Black women looking not to embody familiar health statistics. The ‘discursive’ focus of the text is novel, and explores the reworkings of identity and body that Sisters in Shape enable through talk and action."
—Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, Associate Professor of Sociology and Education Studies at DePauw University, and author of Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman (Temple)
"Lau has authored a theoretically nuanced ethnographic study of Sisters in Shape (SIS), technically a consulting firm of personal trainers located in Philadelphia.... Lau describes the ways in which the discourses of self-esteem enacted by SIS members engage women to improve personal fitness as well as family and community health.... She also listens carefully to the women as they integrate spiritual, social, and health goals and negotiate familial and cultural expectations. The future orientation of SIS fitness discourse provides a potential way of reimagining identity politics as situated knowledges, accommodating postmodern critique and lived experience. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
—Choice
"This engaging, thoughtful book interweaves theory, history, and the heartfelt by using the reflective words of the Black women who participated in the program [Sisters in Shape].... Readers will be inspired by the narratives as the participants share their challenges not just around weight but issues of oppression and the search for community. Their stories are largely triumphant as the author weaves a story of women countering a culture of competition with the strength of community support.... Overall, the reader will come away with a more feminist view of the pathways needed to attain greater health and well-being for Black women, body and soul."
—Psychology of Women Quarterly
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. The Anatomy of a Movement
2. Experience: Spirituality, Sisterhood, and the Unspeakable
3. Performance: Negotiating Multiple Black Womanhoods
4. New Bodies of Knowledge
5. Rearticulating Feminist Identity Politics
Notes
References
Index
About the Author(s)
Kimberly J. Lau is Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of New Age Capitalism: Making Money East of Eden.