Description
The experience of the female long distance runner, situated in the wider culture and economically driven system of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), is unique and deserving of its own exploration into the ways that females shape their identities, accept certain narratives as truth, and challenge or resist the power structures in place. Separate but not completely isolated from the rest of the female population in the United States, and the rest of the non running female athlete population, these women face specific and inherent challenges as both women and distance runners. They experience their worlds, bodies, medical diagnoses, and their relationships in a way that requires careful anthropological analysis from an emic approach that utilizes subjectivity and agency as valuable tools, as well as a feminist approach that grounds this phenomenon as a gendered one. The purpose of this research is to provide a detailed illustration of how the female runners in the NCAA are perceiving, negotiating, navigating, and embodying their complex culture and the phenomenon of normalized disordered eating within their sport. Using both survey results from 218 participants at the undergraduate and graduate level and semi-structured interviews with 14 women, my research aims to uncover and find athlete-driven solutions for the current crisis in the NCAA regarding disordered eating. Though this research in no way seeks to diagnose an entire culture with a pathologized psychological disorder, I am hoping it untangles the web of relationships, power systems, and individual identity negotiations within the sport that normalize disordered eating throughout the sport at both the collegiate and elite level. As a former Division I runner with a history of disordered eating and Female Athlete Triad (FAT) diagnosis, I seek to uncover the complexities and supposed inherent hazards of this sport in order to envision a future without the toxicity and assumed risk of being a female distance runner.
