The Pink Dumbbell Problem - Terri Roberts

Today, using a student-generated interview guide, I will be having a conversation with Terri Roberts. Terri is currently a part-time graduate student at MSVU working on her MA in Women & Gender Studies. Her thesis, The Pink Dumbbell Problem, is about gender and agnotology in the fitness education industry. She is a full time fitness instructor and is also a course conductor for the Nova Scotia Fitness Association. Her side-gig is writing children's books about Celtic mythology which introduce the Gaelic language. Students prepared for creating this interview guide by reading “Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality,” Published by Iris Marion Young in 1980. To quote Young, her paper “seeks to begin to fill a gap that […] exists in existential phenomenology and feminist theory. It traces in a provisional way some of the basic modalities of feminine body comportment, manner of moving, and relation in space. It brings intelligibility and significance to certain observable and rather ordinary ways in which women in our society typically comport themselves and move differently from the ways that men do.” Young is interested in the embodiment of norms experienced by women who are, quote, “situated in contemporary advanced industrial, urban, and commercial society.” She argues that even the experiences of women in our society who live against feminine norms of body comportment have their lives situated and given meaning by these norms. Students created interview questions that in many cases were informed by the Young reading but that would nonetheless make sense to listeners unfamiliar with Young’s work.