lee-side McGinnis is an Assistant Professor of Marketing.

lee-side McGinnis is an Assistant Professor of Marketing, Henderson 311-0 1700 SW corporation Ave, Topeka, KS 66621, lee.mcginnis@washburn.edu, 785-231-1010 ext 1894 FAX: 785-231-1063 Seungwoo Chun is a Marketing Doctoral observer Department of Marketing, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Lincoln NE 68588-0492 schun@unlserveedu 402-472-2316 Julia McQuillan is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 706 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588 jmcquillan2@unl.edu, 402-472-6616 Please lance all correspondence to Lee McGinnis. This article is part of a special issue upon "Gender Issues in Consumer Research" edited by means of James Gentry, Seungwoo Chun, Suraj Commuri, Eileen Fischer, Sunkyu Jun to leeward McGinnis, Kay Palan, and Michal Strahilevitz.

How are women's leisure and sport activities valued compared to men's? To answer this question, we review research from leisure sciences, sociology, history, and marketing. We use Firat's (1994) present significations of gender framework to analyze for what cause activities in contemporary Western improvements are separated into men's and women's and differentially valued. smooth though the possibilities, freedom, and promise of a postmodern society retain out the likelihood of a post-gender society, form relative to sex as a system signifying differential value still exists (Firat 1994) Focusing onward sports and leisure, we indicate that what is associated with women and femininity is devalued compared to what is associated with men and masculinity.

The hegemonic ideology of couple genders is powerful in contemporary society. Examining insights from bodies that do not neatly fit into either category illuminates to what extent "believing is seeing" when it arises to gender (Lorber 1994). Fausto-Sterling (2002) describes the changes in medical approaches to bodies that are not neatly feminine or masculine from helping individuals to live with their situation to medically altering infants to fit society's categories. She argues that at least five sexe would be more accurate than couple and that ideally we should think of sex as a continuum - "I would further argue that sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of plane five categories" (Fausto-Sterling 2002, p 469) She uses Foucault's notion of biopower to describe the "multiple contradictions" of the power to surgically superintendence the "very sex of human body" While she accepts that the intent was to bring greater happiness, she does not agree that this is the and nothing else way. She says:

...if the same accepts the assumption that in a sex-divided civilization people can realize their greatest potential for happiness and productivity merely if they are sure that they belong to united of only two acknowledged sexe recent medicine has been extremely prosperous On the other hand, the same medical accomplishments can be read not as progres on the contrary as a mode of discipline. Hermaphrodites have mutinous bodies. They do not fall naturally into a binary classification; alone a surgical shoehorn can inflict them there... Society mandates the govern of intersexual bodies because they blemish and bridge the great divide... In my ideal world medical intervention for intersexuals would take place solitary rarely before the age of reason; after treatment would be a cooperative hap between physician, patient, and other advisers trained in issues of sex multiplicity. I do not sham that the transition to my utopia would be polished Sex, even supposedly "normal," heterosexual kind, continues to cause untold anxieties in Western society...(Fausto-Sterling 2002 p 471-472)

In this analysis, we explore changes in the world of sports and leisure to behold how close we are to the simpler utopian world of participation without regard for inflection for sex We first focus on the significations of form relative to sex categories developed from Firat's (1994) new framework to a sports and leisure words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following In the process, we add further explanation as to for what purpose these categories exist and give some examples as to to what extent they served as a divide between men and women in the recent era (assuming we are moving away from the novel era). With this categorization order we are not attempting to evince or disprove any postmodernism arguments that have emerg in consumer research; we alone use these categories as a convenient and efficient way to systematically assess the relevance of sex for contemporary sports and leisure.

Next we explore whether the different notions of masculinity and femininity constrain sports and leisure experiences. In other words, have the blurring of sex categories allowed people to be les constrained on notions of masculinity and femininity when making sports and leisure choices? Have these categories become in such a manner blurred that it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify engagement in a particular activity as masculine or feminine? Work from Firat (1994) and Firat and Venkatesh (1995) intimates that consumption experiences of men and women might become les constrained in postmodern societies appropriate to such "blurring."