FIANZA DE BUENA CALIDAD

While numerous constraints to leisure clearly exist, recognizing possibilities for

navigating through these constraints can be an essential part of asserting one’s own freedom to choose, often a core conceptualization of leisure itself (Freysinger et al., 2013a). As Bregha (1980) aptly asserted, “An adolescent needs to believe that they can attain freedom from their constraints, in order to attain freedom to progress forward in life” (p. 36). Indeed, adolescence can be a critical time for resisting traditional passive, submissive, other-directed femininity (Wearing, 1998). Studies of women’s leisure have indicated that leisure can be an important avenue for resisting gender ideologies, for creating a sense of personal or collective

empowerment and even for bringing about positive social change by challenging gendered power relations (Shaw, 2001). While individual negotiations of leisure constraints may not be

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resistance not be limited to intentional, collective acts with clear, ‘positive’ outcomes. For instance, “an individual girl’s struggle to be allowed to participate on a boys’ hockey, soccer, or football team may lead to her personal empowerment” which may be seen by other girls who “may adopt the resistant behaviour themselves, or may begin to question and challenge their own and others’ assumptions about the appropriateness of girls’ participation in “boy’s” sports” (Shaw, 2001, p. 195). In this way, individual negotiations of constraints may spur new discourses and behaviours, which challenge notions of appropriate femininity (or other constraining

ideologies), creating space for the third theoretical construct in Shaw’s (1994) framework of women’s leisure – leisure as resistance. Sometimes strategies for resistance involve physical ‘tools’ that aid in opening up new spaces, figuratively or literally.

2.7.1 Technology and Public Space

A recent study by Foley, Holzman, and Wearing (2007) examined adolescent girls’ use of cell phones and determined that this technology can assist adolescent girls in gaining increased access to public spaces and leisure opportunities therein. Previous research has found young women to be disadvantaged, compared to their male peers, in terms of access to public spaces (Byrne, 2004).

To understand the limitations that adolescent girls experience in public spaces, it is crucial to recognize that leisure spaces are socio-cultural constructions which are continually subject to confrontations as “power, identity, meaning and behaviour are constantly negotiated and renegotiated according to socio-cultural dynamics” (Aitchison & Reeves, 1998, p. 51). A central part of socio-cultural dynamics is the negotiation of social divisions, where some groups are more powerful than others and, as such, more ‘entitled’ to claim and occupy both physical and social spaces (Pritchard et al., 2002). In terms of negotiating social divisions, research has

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demonstrated how space is racialized, gendered and heterosexualized (Pritchard et al., 2002). One study by Pritchard, Morgan and Sedgley (2002) highlights how leisure spaces can be multiply constraining in their exploration of how sexuality and gender combine to constrain women’s use of public leisure space, even within the designated gay and lesbian space of the UK’s Manchester’s village. This study contributes to the small body of gender tourism research which “acknowledge[s] . . . the synergy between gender relations and spatial relations...”

(Aitchison, 1999, p. 19). This acknowledgment is particularly salient for adolescent girls whose access to public spaces is often restricted due to parental concerns about safety. Indeed, a prevailing contemporary form of femininity is the construction of girls as vulnerable to the dangers of public spaces, itself a construction reinforced by parents (Campbell, 2006). This recognition does not ignore the real concerns of parents based on actual violence which may occur in public spaces. It does recognize, however, that the public world has been “constructed as unsafe by family, peers, normative regulations, fear, violence and sexuality” (Van Roosmalen, 1993, p. 28). Indeed, the disadvantaged access to public spaces experienced by adolescent girls is due, in large part, to constraints around safety. In spite of these constraints, however, some adolescent girls are negotiating access to public spaces through the use of mobile technology.

Foley et al. (2007) argue that adolescent girls’ access to public space is facilitated by the use of cell phones because the phones provide a sense of security through being able to readily contact others. This increased access to public spaces facilitated by cell phones may expand the scope of identity development for adolescent girls as they may be more inclined to explore a broader array of leisure opportunities, including those that occur in public spaces, precisely because the security provided by cell phones may allow them to “safely” experience more “intense, identity-seeking activities” (Wearing & Foley, 2002, p. 3). Along with providing

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increased, safe access to public spaces, cell phones could potentially assist adolescent girls in asserting and projecting more self-confidence in public spaces (Foley et al., 2007). In this way, cell phones can provide adolescent girls with opportunities for resisting constrained spaces and self-concepts.

2.7.2 ‘Playful Practices’: Emotion Play and Creative Leisure

Insights about potential avenues for leisure constraint negotiation, or resistance, for adolescent girls are also apparent in research which examines women’s coping in particularly stressful periods of their lives. Fullager’s (2008) research on women recovering from depression illustrates how women’s depression can be seen as a manifestation of stultifying gender norms which culminate to constrain women’s authentic identities and lives. While Fullager’s work critically highlights the constraints of gender norms, she also focuses on how women use leisure as a “counter-depressant” to recover or transform themselves (Fullager, 2008). Since adolescent girls are in the process of discovering their identities and adult women faced with depression are in the process of recovering (or transforming) their identities, the strategies of these women may well benefit adolescent girls who are negotiating their own constraints.

The women in Fullager’s study spook of mobilizing their leisure time to specifically “recover a space away from the performative expectations” they encountered as women (or, ‘superwomen’) (Fullager, 2008, p. 41). Indeed, for women who felt they had lost themselves, recovery from depression (and from the gendered constraints that contributed to their depression) “involved the renegotiation of gendered expectations” held by themselves and by others

(Fullager, 2008, p. 43). For many women, this renegotiation came in the form of what Fullager calls “emotion play” which are “playful practices [which] embodied an ethos of lightness, letting go, relaxation, and enjoyment in taking time” (Fullager, 2008, p. 45). Leisure provided women

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with opportunities for “emotion play” in diverse activities. Many activities were connected to creativity, which allowed women to find a voice and a space for themselves, through such pursuits as journal writing, poetry, art classes, and community theatre (Fullager, 2008).

In addition to creative forms of leisure, another context that was crucial for women recovering from depression was friendship, particularly female friendships (Fullager, 2008). There was an emphasis on enjoyment of friendships, which often involved engagement in different leisure activities and which ultimately created “the context of a playful belonging” for emotional reciprocity and emerging identities (Fullager, 2008, p. 45).

2.7.3 Female Friendships

Throughout literature on women’s leisure, and particularly resistance leisure, a recurring theme is female friendships which create supportive environments where women and girls feel they can be themselves and can resist limiting gender norms. Hey’s (1997) research specifically on adolescent girls and friendships concluded that “it is within the intimacy of girls’ networks that the processes of ‘making oneself as a girl’ is at its most intense” and that “it is between and amongst girls as friends that identities are variously practised, appropriated, resisted and

negotiated” (Hey, 1997, p. 30). One way that the friendships of women and girls can facilitate resistance to stereotyped gender roles is through the use of humour. Within the safe spaces of female friendships, humour can emerge to playfully, yet critically, identify incongruities in “the way things are supposed to be and the way things are” (Green, 1998, p. 181).

For adolescents in general, “hanging out” with friends is a highly valued form of leisure (McMeeking & Purkayastha, 1995). For adolescent girls, peer relationships may be particularly meaningful since female socialization emphasizes dependence on others and maintenance of

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close social bonds (Gilligan, 1982). As Kilbourne (1999) asserts, “one of the most powerful antidotes to destructive cultural messages is close and supportive female friendships” (p. 149).

Adolescent girls’ negotiation of leisure constraints can take many forms, including using leisure as resistance, where challenging the limitations of gender ideologies can be personally empowering. Resistant acts can even have a collective impact by encouraging others’ resistant behaviours and creating new discourses that offer broader meanings of femininity. Expanded conceptions of femininity can also be projected through the confidence and independence facilitated by tools such as cell phones. Insights from women recovering from depression – and transforming their identities- can be informative for adolescent girls developing their identities, where leisure can be a space for resisting gender expectations and experiencing playfulness and creativity. Finally, female friendships can be a supportive space for girls to challenge constraints and experience freedom to decide for themselves who they are. Understanding the experiences of girls’ leisure constraints and negotiations involves exploring diverse perspectives, including the unique positions of adolescents from minority races and ethnicities.