Paper Short Abstract:

This research challenges the medicalized view of menstruating athletes. It prioritizes their subjective experiences to foster a holistic approach to care and performance. This perspective offers insights into how technologies of sport transform the somatic practices of menstruating athletes.

Paper Abstract:

Many menstruating athletes experience harm due to a lack of research on practices suited to their bodies. To categorise these harms, sports scientists established the syndrome RED-S to describe athletes who develop osteoporosis, disordered eating, and lose their menstrual cycles. However, this syndrome ignores the complex cultural and technological factors that contribute to that shape their experiences. This research proposes a new understanding of female athlete health by drawing on embodied aesthetics and somaesthetics to centre the relational, sensory, and somatic experiences of menstruating athletes. I propose that sports science is a technology that intersects with cultural beliefs about menstruation to generate knowledge which mandates a normative shape and feel of bodies. Though athletics centres the body, the cultural environment of sports encourages dissociation from somatic experience. This is amplified in menstruating athletes because of cultural beliefs about menstruation as something to conceal and detach from the self. Technologies which are framed as performance enhancing tools further this dissociation by quantifying somatic experiences. Based on interviews with athletes who have the capacity to menstruate and upcoming fieldwork, this research challenges the medicalized view of menstruating athletes by prioritising their subjective experiences to foster a holistic approach to athlete care and performance. This perspective offers new insights into how the cultural and scientific technologies of sport transform the somatic practices of menstruating athletes.