Volleyball: Playing Within the Boundaries of Femininity

Women’s sports historians have long ignored the sport of volleyball and the large impact it had on women and girls. The existing scholarship has been more interested in looking at sports in which women overtly challenge notions of femininity and break through male-defined norms to break the gendered boundary lines. This project seeks to explore how the sport of volleyball and its position of hyper- femininity has masked its importance to the study of gender and sexuality and sports history. It covers the sport’s entire history—approximately one hundred and twenty- five years. It starts with exploring volleyball’s early history and creation as a form of recreation for older men uninterested in more strenuous physical competition. Then it follows the sport’s expansion across the United States as it quickly became a game associated with college women who found volleyball a popular choice on so-called “play days,” for younger girls on the playground. As the new athletic woman became more accepted and skimpier attire the norm, a volleyball uniform came into being and although it differed according to region, it transformed the game into a sport and the player into an athlete. On one hand men came to enjoy and encourage women’s new- found sexuality on the other hand, women were trapped in a male gaze and easily objectified. These changing attitudes, for better and worse, is what helped transform volleyball from a mere game into an ever so popular spectator sport and grapples with tension over the female volleyball player as sex objects versus an athlete. It looks at how marketing women as sexy athlete transformed them into icons and that established a new notion that when it came to women strength equals sexy. The research revealed how volleyball created a unique space for women who wanted to be involved in sports and without directly challenging masculine norms. Indeed, because volleyball became known as a “pretty girl” sport it allowed female volleyball players to push boundaries without violating gender and social norms. Ultimately, this project pays tribute to an aspect of sports history that has perhaps been overlooked because of its assumed gendered complacency.