Feminists against fad, fizz ed: a poetic commentary exploring the notion of Joe Wicks as physical education

Introduction: Even though advocacy for poststructural feminist lenses to change/challenge physical education (PE) has grown over the years, there is an evident gap in qualitative research using poetic forms of representation in PE.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use a poststructural feminist framework to challenge a particular kind of hegemonic reproduction of PE, particularly to explore the notion of ‘Joe Wicks as PE’.

Participants and settings: Collaborative autoethnography framed this study and participants included three queer leaning female-identified early/mid-career PE teacher educators.

Data collection/analysis: Over the course of eight weeks, we collected and generated a variety of texts individually and collectively. To capture our reactions, we decided to collect data around two ‘prompts’, namely the recorded podcast titled ‘Is Joe Wicks the face of PE?’ of an Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP) hosted chat, and our participation in a 9 am ‘PE with Joe’ session. We presented the data gathered in this project poetically.

Findings: We divided the findings into two parts corresponding with our responses (collaborative autoethnographies) to the two themes, namely ‘We can’t fix this/that’ (aka ‘Banging our heads against a brick wall’) and ‘Joe Wicks as PE’ (aka ‘Feminist killjoys’).

Implications: We believe that a poetic representation, in addition to nurturing and amplifying the emotional and lyrical data collected, presented an opportunity to contribute to, and extends this kind of representational style in PE. In addition to this, collaborative autoethnography allowed us as a community to advance scholarship and provides a space for collective empowerment.