Methods that move: exer-gaming and embodied experiences of femininity

Within this chapter I unpack the notion that there exists any form of ‘evidence that matters’ by arguing for a consolidated return to the ‘body that matters’. Whilst the presence of the body has reinvigorated the field of sport sociology and physical cultural studies theoretically and conceptually, I make the argument for a centring of the tacit, sensuous body, its fleshy sinews, its movement and its (in)activity as a locus within more creative methodologies.
By drawing on my research focused on embodied experiences of femininity whilst ‘exer-gaming,’ I explore the ways in which research that is concerned with how individuals variously learn about and experience their embodied subjectivities can seek to develop specific research methods that incorporate movement and bodily comportment. These methods, I contend, allow for an affective analysis of the physical as at once, lived, mediated and socioculturally situated. Through this multi-method approach I question the power relations and embodied becomings as girls play exer-games, thus this chapter explores the convergence between popular cultures’ (re)presentation and symbolic investment in the body and the moving, acting fleshy figuration. Shifting between the assemblage of digitized, mediated and everyday experiences of the moving corpus opens up potential methodological positions that deal with the ways in which bodies, within these research spaces, are (re)productive and (re)producing.