Desexualising and Reframing Female Bodies in Female Naked Hiking Discourses

This study analyses desexualisation and reframing of female bodies in selected newspaper articles that discoursed on female naked hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains. It employs purposive sampling and textual analysis to collect and analyse data. The study utilises Butler’s theory of performativity, as outlined in Bodies that Matter, which posits that bodies are constructed through the persistent repetition of acts rather than being pre-determined by prior discourse. In essence, bodies are continuously evolving entities that are shaped and reshaped through social practices, with attributes attributed to them. Data was collected from South Africa’s Daily Sun and TimesLive online newspapers in the form of articles with inserted images. Two newspaper articles, titled “Imbokodo’s MAPONA Hike” and “Behind the Scenes as 21 Naked Women Hike in the Drakensberg”, with three inserted images, were sampled and selected. Notwithstanding the time lapse separating the publication of selected articles and their accompanying images, they allowed robust engagement with desexualisation and the reframing of naked female bodies on hiking trails. The findings of the study showed that the selected articles depict naked female bodies contesting and challenging their sexualisation and reframing them as agents that demasculinise and claim their place in and through hiking spaces.