Titillating or tortuous, appealing or atrocious, skimpy or serious, the uniforms that sportswomen wear have long been under scrutiny in terms of their interpretation, mediation, and simple comfort. Surprisingly, to date no single compendium exists that discusses that phenomenon. To fill that void, this book aims to bring the obvious to the fore with varying discussions on various sporting outfits on various sports teams and/or various (girls and) women in the sporting arena.
Emphasizing the language of sport, proposals are invited for this edited volume with a working title of Uniformly discussed: Sportswomen’s apparel, Palgrave Macmillan as a probable publisher. Abstracts should be submitted by June 15, 2018 (or earlier!), with final essays (25 pages maximum, including notes and references) due by September 15, 2018.
Inspired by a recent panel on “The problem of appearance for women journalists and athletes” at a Women, Sports and Media conference at the University of Maryland, which included examples of reportage on the LPGA dress code, Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby, and Native American women in sport, the idea is to extend that dialogue. Proposals might include topics of advertisement involvement, audiences, athleticism vs. opprobrium, cheerleaders, double standards, eroticism, historical timelines, gender injustices, locations(s), the marketing of femininity, nationalism/patriotism, performance, pink clothing, popular culture, professionalism, Olympic and/or Paralympic outfits, religious considerations, sexism and the notion that “sex sells,” uniforms for unisex sport, and of course sportscaster concerns. In addition, consider chapters on specifics such as
- Specific sports (e.g., aquatics, archery, athletics, badminton, basketball, bobsleigh, boxing, canoeing, curling, cycling, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, handball, ice hockey, judo, luge, rowing, rugby, sailing, skating, skiing, snowboarding, soccer, softball, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling),
- Specific brands (e.g., Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, Lulu Lemon), and/or
- Specific case studies (e.g., the Colombian women’s cycling team or ForPlay’s “sexy sports costumes.”)
The editor, Linda K. Fuller (Ph.D., U. Mass), Professor of Communications at Worcester State University, is the author/(co-) editor of more than 20 books—including Sport, rhetoric, and gender: Historical perspectives and media representations (2006), Sportscasters/sportscasting (2008), the two-volume series Sexual sports rhetoric (2009), The power of global community media (2012), Female Olympians: A mediated socio-cultural/political-economic timeline (2016), and Female Olympian and Paralympian events (2018). Awarded Fulbrights to teach in Singapore and to do HIV/AIDS research in Senegal.
Check out her website (www.LKFullerSport.com, talk to her at 413/596-3539, and make submissions via her email at LFuller@worcester.edu.