Abstract

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the references to sport in current issues of four teenage girls’ magazines. Attention is directed towards the negative stereotyping surrounding females in support, the risks girls’ face on entering the sporting domain, and the trivializations of involvement in sport, whether of females or males. The young readers of these magazines are faced by contradictions, which are explored here in the light of recent theories of teenage girls’ subcultures and processes of indentity formation. ‘Sportiness’, in these popular publications, is represented as incompatible with heterosexual desirability. The paper concludes by stressing the need for alternative discursive practices on the part of editors, the PE  profession and others, that would encourage teenage girls and young women to develop a stronger sense of self, and empower them to define themselves autonomously.