This document summarizes Yasmine M. Jahanmir's final project for an NYU performance studies class on the construction of gender in synchronized swimming. It discusses how the sport privileges women's bodies as objects to be viewed rather than performing subjects. Sequins are used to fetishize women's bodies and detract from their performance. Due to being in water, the physical labor of swimmers is invisible, alienating their body from their work. The sport is deemed gender appropriate by constructing gender through performance, making it inherently gendered. The project questions whether exaggerated performances expose the theatrical nature of preconceived gender notions.

1. Femininity at Work: The Construction of the Gendered Body in Synchronized SwimmingYasmine M. JahanmirFinal Projects NYU Department of Performance StudiesProfessor: Barbara BrowningTA: SujayPandit

2. 1996 U.S. Olympic Synchronized Swim TeamPhoto: 1996 U.S. Synchronized Swimming Team Facebook Page

3. 1996 Tucson Sun RaysMEPhoto: Personal Collection

5. Annette Kellerman and Esther WilliamsSimultaneous focus on their performance and their looks.Mulvey’s “to-be-looked-at-ness.”Privileges statues as an erotic object, rather than a performing subject.Photos: history.sa.gov.au and http://www.skylighters.org/photos/sep99pu.html

6. Sequins and the Female BodySequins were originally gold coins sewn onto women’s garments to connote value.Modern sequins have become a replacement object for value.Sequins are used tofetishize the woman’s body, detracting from her performance.Photo: Flickr: Don Le

7. The Work is Edited OutDue to the medium, water, the “labor” that the swimmer performs is invisibleHer “labor” is therefore alienated from the commodity, “her body.”We never see the commodity, “her body,” for what it is. It is always partially hidden.Participating in the sport is the only way to ever connect the “body” to the “labor.”Photos: Flickr: oeyvind and domenicosavi photographer

8. Construction of GenderIOC deemed sports must be “gender appropriate.”Butler’s thesis: Gender is performative.Participants perform gender, thus, the sport becomes gendered.MePhoto: Courtesy of Manhattan Plaza WaterWorks

11. A détournement?Participates in the language of the spectacle.Exaggeration exposes theatricality of gender.Questions authenticity of preconceived notions of gender.Photo: Courtesy of Manhattan Plaza WaterWorks

12. Works Cited1996 Summer Olympic Broadcast. NBC. KVOA, Tucson, AZ. Personal collection of the author. 30 July 1996. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. [1990] 2008.Debord, Guy. The Society of Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. [1967], 2004.Freud, Sigmund. Translator Philip Reiff. Sexuality and the Psychology of Love. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 1998.Marx, Karl. Capital. New York: Penguin Classics, [1867] 1990. Million Dollar Mermaid, DVD. Directed by MervynLeRoy. MGM. 1952.Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1989.Wamsley, Kevin B. and Gertrud Pfister. “Olympic Men and Women: The Politics of Gender in the Modern Games.” From Global Olympics: Historical and Sociological Studies of the Modern Games. New York: Elsevier. Pg. 103-126. 2005.