“Your Hair or the Team!” Body Politics and Possibilities of Resistance in Women’s Football in Turkey

Abstract

This research aims to discuss the experiences of the athletes in the field of football who are notcompatible with the normalized body in women’s football in Turkey, with Foucault's conceptual tools.We focused on football as a research field since it is one of the fields where gender inequality in sportis most visible. In this manner, women’s football idealizes cis-heteronormative femininity. Wecollected the data of this research, using qualitative research design, through in-depth interviews.Between May 2020 and January 2021, we conducted face-to-face and online individual interviewswith nine active female football players, which lasted an average of one and a half hours. Weanalyzed the data with thematic analysis method. The findings of the research reveal that the “ideal”female football player in women’s football in Turkey means having long hair, being feminine,beautiful and well-groomed. On the other hand, being a football player outside of this ideal isexperienced as an obstacle to their careers in football clubs and the national team. Actors in thefootball field dictate to football players, who are described as short-haired and masculine, to growtheir hair long and be more feminine, with various discipline practices. Because of these disciplinarypractices, athletes experience serious tensions between their body image and subjectivity and oncontinuing their football careers. However, the strategies they developed to avoid discriminationbecause of their body appearance, play a motivating role in their empowerment. As a result, women’sfootball is a field, where normalization and punishment practices dominate athletes, who are not comformable with cis-heteronormative femininity, but where athletes also experience empowerment despite the tensions they experience.