Citation

Foote S. J. Sport Soc. Iss. 2003; 27(1): 3-17.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0193732502239581

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

From their initial coverage of her as she first established a reputation as a skater to the deluge of media attention following the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, journalists have shared two narrative strategies for analyzing Tonya Harding. First, they focus relentlessly on what they consider to be the crisis of her working-class childhood, and second, they argue that no one has adequately considered the role of class in Harding's life. This article looks closely at the way Tonya Harding has been figured by the press as the nexus of various scripts about the relationship between class and identity. As the author shall show, Harding fascinates the media because she does not conform to an easy role in the morality play about hard work and social ambition. Harding thwarts expectations about what good working-class girls should want and should do, and she crystallizes the public's endless appetite for thinking about class and class distinctions. At the same time, the author shall argue that Harding's departures from conventional class scripts reveal the limitations of analyses that attempt to take seriously the relationship between class and other elements of identity such as gender and race, as well as those that understand the more intangible ways that class is lived and experienced by social actors.

Language: en