Abstract

Sporting environments are designed with norms suited to an idealized male body, with coaching practices, medical research, and dominant norms assuming the physically active body does not menstruate. Biomedical research in combination with social and cultural norms has constructed a notion of the menstruating body as taboo, disabling, and confined to the private sphere. Therefore, in this thesis, I ask: How do athletes make sense of their experience of menstruation within a culture of sport that mandates its invisibility? Through six semi-structured interviews with athletes who menstruate, I show how the atmosphere of sport intensifies the expectations of menstrual concealment. I find that an atmosphere of concealment permeates sport which communicates the unacceptability of outwardly menstruating bodies. This is sensed by athletes who modify their habits accordingly. This finding is supported by the fact that, when decontextualized from sport, my participants largely described positive or neutral relationships with menstruation; however, within the atmosphere of sport, they were oriented towards menstrual concealment. The expectations towards menstrual concealment acts as a significant source of frustration for my participants. They describe the joyful experience of sport as shaped by a collective atmosphere, otherwise described as a state of flow, which menstruation disrupts. Significantly, this is attributed to the social expectation of concealment, which forces athletes to undertake constant bodily attention, inhibiting full immersion in the experience. These findings suggest that menstruation itself is rarely an inherently limiting experience; instead, the atmospheres which structure menstruating athletes' experiences limit their possibilities.