Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality

Summary

This essay begins with a discussion of Simone de Beauvoir’s account of women’s existence as constrained. Young believes that de Beauvoir neglected some important aspects and made it seem like it is women’s bodies, their anatomy, that determine their being unfree. The female body then becomes something to transcend, or break free from, rather than something that people recognize is in fact conditioned to be the way it is.

Young relies for her analysis on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about perception: “that it is the ordinary purposive orientation of the body as a whole toward things and its environment which initially defines the relation of a subject to its world”. She also chooses to focus on the kind of movement where the body aims at accomplishing a definite purpose or task. She believes this is more important than looking at movement such as dancing because “accomplishing tasks is basic to the structure of human existence”.

Her point is not that there are no physical or muscular differences between the sexes, but rather that women have a different mindset when it comes to performing tasks. They do not see themselves as capable, do not “summon the full possibilities of our muscular coordination, position, poise, and bearing”, do not put their whole bodies into it with the ease that men do. So, when someone says that they throw like a girl, climb like a girl, hit like a girl, etc. it is not a compliment. It means that the person is not putting their whole body into it, that it is falling short. Young says that women tend to wait for and react to things, rather than meeting them. They lack confidence; they hesitate; they think of their bodies as fragile. This keeps them distracted from paying attention to what they want to accomplish. This extends beyond sports to other realms of life as well.

She says the cause is often from lack of practice. Women become used to thinking “I can’t” rather than “I can” and approach tasks this way. Thus, “Feminine bodily existence is an inhibited intentionality. By contrast, an uninhibited intentionality “projects the aim to be accomplished and connects the body’s motion toward that end in an unbroken directedness which organizes and unifies the body’s activity”. Young’s point is that having an uninhibited intentionality makes a difference in how people think of themselves. For example, if someone sees a goal and put their whole body into reaching it, rather than shying away from full exertion, it will make a difference in whether or not the outcome is successful. She draws on Merleau-Ponty’s idea that the body is what allows us to think of ourselves as beings.

This means, though, that the body cannot exist as an object. But women often think of themselves as the objects of motion instead of subjects making the motion happen. They are uncertain of their body’s capabilities and feel like their bodies are not completely under their control (perhaps due to factors such as puberty or pregnancy). Her closing point is that “Women in sexist society are physically handicapped” which means that they are “physically inhibited, confined, positioned, and objectified. Girls are not encouraged to use their bodies as freely as boys are, and this socialization follows them throughout life. They learn how to actively hamper their movements and act like little ladies (not get dirty, not tear clothes, etc.) and then see themselves as fragile. Even those who want to be bold and move their bodies openly face multiple threats—including being objectified, touched, or raped—and these threats serve to police women’s bodies and keep them confined, physically and mentally. She ends with the speculation that “the general lack of confidence that we frequently have about our cognitive or leadership abilities, is traceable in part to an original doubt in our body’s capacity”.

Scholarly reception

This essay has become a classic in feminist theory for its attention to female experiences and embodiment. It has been praised for breaking radical new ground in philosophy and providing a strong foundation for performance and corporeality studies. Its popularity is reflected in the fact that it has been reprinted in several book-length collections of essays and features in the title (see Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (1990) and On Female Body Experience: 'Throwing Like a Girl' and Other Essays (2005)).