New approaches for studies of Muslim women and sport

This article offers a new approach for examining Muslim women in sport, which combines the domains of sporting participation, consumption and representation. It proposes moving beyond a sports development paradigm and deficit model of sports participation, whereby marginal communities are incorporated into the mainstream by playing sport, to take account of other ways that people engage with sport as consumers and fans. Conceptually, this approach is informed by transnational feminist perspectives, which foreground the role of power hierarchies in the production of knowledge about the sporting female Other. It suggests that sport practitioners, scholars and policy makers pay greater theoretical attention to how Muslim women are constructed within sport discourses. By widening the research focus to consider consumption and representation, possibilities emerge to expand on the narrow research and policy fields of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘well-being’ focused on physical health outcomes through which Muslim women’s engagement with sport is commonly framed.

Advertising the 2015 Cricket World Cup: representing multicultural female sports fans

Intersectional accounts of how women sports fans from diverse cultural backgrounds are represented remain largely unconsidered in fandom literature. This article examines an Australian advertisement for the 2015 Cricket World Cup, which features as its main protagonists female cricket fans supporting a variety of countries. It makes use of a transnational feminist cultural studies paradigm to frame a discussion of how commercial sports media narratives situate these fans as ‘‘ordinary.’’ In considering how the multicultural female sports fan is configured as ordinary in the Australian sporting context, I demonstrate the ways In which narratives of gender and nation are mobilized to situate multicultural women as marginal to both the Australian nation and cricket, despite the prominence given to ethnically diverse women in the advertisement. This manoeuvre, I argue, responds to the cultural and economic transformations of cricket globally, simultaneously denying and universalizing difference as a mechanism to assuage the anxieties generated by the decentering of Western power in international cricket.

The passion plays of celebrity culture

If there is a cultural arena today where passion plays a central and heightened role, then it is in the affecting and textural operations of celebrity. Celebrity representations are crafted out of passionate aesthetic signifiers and impassioned pleas to the senses, to the emotions and to the exaggerations of feeling that the consumer or fan is asked to register and then fully embody. Celebrity culture attempts to turn one into a passionate creature, ruled by the heart, lost in a sea of desires and desiring wants and needs, as the adoring figure that moves us, moves intimately before us. Such passions can and do go unrequited, of course; some are resisted and rejected, and some celebrity passions register as fully carnal and liberating encounters. That is to say, the plays of celebrity passion serve (hetero) normative and policed accounts of feeling and belonging in the world, fuel a desire for commodity objects and material possessions, and yet also open up the possibility for engagements that are violent, liberal and unregulated. In this article, I will explore the ways in which celebrity culture engages with passion and through the idea of it involving a modern form of the passion play. Following Lauren Berlant, I will argue that the passion ignited by the celebrity works to contain and regulate desire, and yet also offers up the opportunity for sensorial engagements that violate and resist the normative terms of desiring. I will suggest celebrity figures are themselves caught up in this passion play, suffering and feeling deeply at the same time, while channelling this violent crisis to their fans as they do so. Finally, I will write the article passionately, from an impassioned perspective, measuring and weighting my own desires in the contradictions and tensions of passion as they emerge in the body of the writer before you. This article is part of a themed issue entitled ‘Passion’.

Prevalence of mental health disorders in inflammatory bowel disease: an Australian outpatient cohort

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to characterize prevalence of anxiety and depressive conditions and uptake of mental health services in an Australian inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) outpatient setting.

METHODS: Eighty-one IBD patients (39 males, mean age 35 years) attending a tertiary hospital IBD outpatient clinic participated in this study. Disease severity was evaluated according to the Manitoba Index. Diagnosis of an anxiety or depressive condition was based upon the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.

RESULTS: Based on Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale subscale scores >8 and meeting Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview criteria, 16 (19.8%) participants had at least one anxiety condition, while nine (11.1%) had a depressive disorder present. Active IBD status was associated with higher prevalence rates across all anxiety and depressive conditions. Generalized anxiety was the most common (12 participants, 14.8%) anxiety condition, and major depressive disorder (recurrent) was the most common depressive condition reported (five participants, 6.2%). Seventeen participants (21%) reported currently seeking help for mental health issues while 12.4% were identified has having at least one psychological condition but not seeking treatment.

CONCLUSION: We conclude that rates of anxiety and depression are high in this cohort, and that IBD-focused psychological services should be a key component of any holistic IBD service, especially for those identified as having active IBD.

Muslim women and sport: participation, consumption, representation

This paper proposes a new framework for approaching Muslim women in sport, beyond the oft-utilised framework of sports development. In preference to a deficit model of sports participation, where marginalized groups and individuals are incorporated into mainstream culture as players of sport, we bring together three domains that remain under-investigated in terms of Muslim women and sport in Australia and internationally – participation, consumption and representation. By shifting the research focus toward the contribution of both active and passive sports participation to fostering pleasure, enjoyment and self-determination for Muslim women, possibilities emerge to expand on the narrow priority formulation and policy fields of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘well-being’ focused on physical health outcomes through which Muslim women and sports-based interventions are commonly framed.

Celebrity identification

Forms of identification are central to the experience of celebrity. Through an investigation of the meaning of identification and how that translates into our para-social relations with celebrity, this essay situates the work in this area of the study of celebrity - from fan relations to the emulatory structure of identity that celebrity provides for a culture.

Sexy women sports fans: femininity, sexuality, and the global sport spectacle

In recent years the relationship between women and sport fandom has undergone significant shifts. The rapidly changing sphere of global sport is seen to offer women newly visible roles in the global sport economy as fans, broadcasters, celebrity athletes, and media personalities. In light of calls for greater inclusivity and diversity in sport, this paper examines the emergence of new forms of “sexually empowered” female fandom, which situate women as active participants in the sporting spectacle. Whereas sexy women who followed men’s sport or male athletes were once derided as “groupies,” thus socially marginalised and excluded from identification with sport fan communities, I argue that the sexy sport fan has emerged in the context of post-feminism as a visible and necessary type of feminine fan identity to meet the needs of the global sport economy. This study extends feminist sport media analysis beyond its focus on how female athletes are represented whilst also contributing new insights to sport fan research by analysing how female supporters are constructed through mediated accounts in terms of gender, sexuality, and nation.