The visual images they choose to portray are, therefore, perfect for determining how this cohort of women negotiates social discourses around identity and femininity.

Combining Mikhail Bakhtin’s ( 1990) theoretical position on Architectonics and Erving Goffman’s ( 1979) writings on visual content analysis, the aim of this paper is to explore how female athletes are caught in a complex matrix of power, post – feminist neoliberalism, and self – presentation.