Body Awakening through AthleticsA Gender Analysis of Corporealities in "Breathe, Annie, Breathe"

  1. Rocío Riestra-Camacho 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Oviedo
    info

    Universidad de Oviedo

    Oviedo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/006gksa02

Revista:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Any de publicació: 2019

Volum: 41

Número: 1

Pàgines: 109-124

Tipus: Article

DOI: 10.28914/ATLANTIS-2019-41.1.06 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAccés obert editor

Altres publicacions en: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible

Resum

In the context of Young Adult Sports Fiction, Miranda Kenneally’s Breathe, Annie, Breathe (2014) addresses some crucial problematics that her protagonist, Annie, experiences through her body changes as she enters the world of athletics and campus life. Structured as a coming-of-age novel, Breathe, Annie, Breathe depicts Annie’s progressive acknowledgement of her body as she trains for a marathon so as to honor her recently deceased boyfriend. First characterized as a rather passive young woman with no awareness of her physical and emotional potential, Annie starts to become a mature adult with a burgeoning sense of self, able to understand her body, academic goals and sexual desires, ultimately leading her to recover her affectivity beyond her first love. As her training progresses, Annie focuses increasingly on her growing endurance and prowess rather than her weight loss. Thus, from a gender perspective, Kenneally’s novel demystifies the weight-loss process as an intrinsically feminine one, aligning it with wellbeing rather than beauty, in contrast to previous young adult novels. This points to an evolution in the Young Adult Sports Fiction genre which should be addressed in order to evaluate the positive impact it may have on young female readers’ canons of corporeal beauty.

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