“Not for Everyone?”: Teenage Girls Transgressing Social Norms in Selected French Young Adult Sports Novels

The trajectory of girlhood encompasses various experiences, and these might include practicing sports. The examination of girlhood in relation to the participation in sports in literary discourse allows for a better understanding of what it has meant and currently means to be a girl. This article investigates the ways in which contemporary girl-centric French young adult (YA) novels represent practising sports as a girl in relation to gender inequality. Through close textual analysis of three recent YA novels – La fille d’avril by Annelise Heurtier, Championnes by Mathilde Tournier, and Le syndrome du spaghetti by Marie Vareille – and drawing upon the concept of gender-based socialisation as a discursive cultural and social practice with an impact on sports participation, I investigate the limitations the three teenage protagonists face and how they transgress the social and cultural norms imposed upon them by a patriarchal Western society. In all three novels, the protagonists are portrayed as heroines who experience gender inequality in different ways while practicing sports. Although only one novel has gender inequality and women’s rights as its main theme, all three can be read and interpreted through a feminist lens. By relating their experiences to numerous constructs associated with a patriarchal society at the level of social, cultural, and linguistic practices, the young protagonists – and young readers – are given the opportunity to challenge gendered norms and the monolithic order of a patriarchal society.