Title: The Relationship Between Embodiment and Social Media Usage Among 8-9-Year-Old Girls in Gymnastics
Supervisor: Moss Norman
Committee members: Andrea Bundon, Fiona Moola
Abstract: Given the implementation of the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rule in 2021, which allows National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes to brand themselves, the pressure for women athletes to forge a sexualized social media brand may well have intensified. However, the impacts the NIL, and social media more broadly, has on younger girl athletes remains under-examined. In popular media and some scholarly domains, there is a moral panic surrounding girls and social media, where girls are assumed to be at risk of online predators or body-related disorders (e.g., poor body image, eating disorders). However, literature that explores how pre-adolescent girls engage with this type of social media content is lacking, despite there being evidence that they are using social media platforms. This study uses a poststructural feminist lens to examine how girls (8-9 years old) who are gymnasts navigate social media in forming their embodied subjectivities. Theoretically, the study is grounded in feminist poststructuralism and the new sociology of childhood, wherein I aim to understand the experiences of young girls when engaging with body-related social media content, through their voices directly. Because the feminine body is central to the sport of gymnastics, it is especially important to consider how the consumption of body-related discourses on social media intersect with those circulating within gymnastics in shaping the embodied subjectivies of young female gymnasts. To achieve these research aims, this study will utilize an adapted photo elicitation methodology with eight-to-nine-year-old girls, with the hopes of empowering the voices of young participants within this topic of research.