Queering Football

Körperpraktiken im Frauenfußball zwischen Normierung und Destabilisierung der Geschlechterordnung

Abstract

English Abstract: In preparation of the FIFA World Cup 2011, German football officials used a strategy to feminize and heterosexualize women footballers in the media. In doing so they attempted to raise the sport’s popularity, which afterwards has led to the widely acknow-ledged thesis of the ‘feminization of women’s football.’ In this article, we argue that the at-tempts made by marketing and media experts to undo the non-conforming gender performance of female athletes are limited to the marketing body of the players. The athletic body of the players, by contrast, is widely neglected in the ‘feminizationthesis.’ With this distinction between a marketing and an athletic body, we aim to illustrate the simultan-eity of affirmative body practices as well as subversive practices of queering in order to do justice to the complexity and contingency of the mediated subject in football. Based on a qualitative analysis of sport photographs taken during a women´s football tournament, we identify the athletic body’s potential to destabilize the heteronormative gender order.