THE BODY CONSTRUCTION IN WOMEN'S SOCCER: ESTABLISHING RELATIONS WITH HEALTH
Body. Women's soccer. Health. Physical Education.
Researches about the several meanings and representations of the body in corporal practices, especially in soccer, have progressively increased their presence in the field of studies on human movement, culture, and education. The investigation regarding women in the soccer universe has been conducted from different aspects of analysis, in multiple works. However, there are still many questions to be discussed, since those researches only analyze some aspects of the corporal practices in sports, without treating the issue of the construction of the body of these athletes. Therefore, this research aimed to understand social-cultural factors that contribute to the construction of the body in women’s soccer and its relation to health, attempting to generate reflections on Physical Education. We have chosen the phenomenology of the philosopher Maurice MerleauPonty (1999) in order to consider the experiences of fifteen players of a soccer team named Cruzeiro Futebol Clube, located in the city of Macaíba, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, also counting with other bodies and phenomena to construct knowledge as something infinite, unfinished. Thus, the presented conclusions lead to the relations between body, health, and sports. We have presented the necessity of considering the individual in its totality, by providing an understanding of the human being in its way of being in the world, whether in the social-cultural, physical, spiritual, sentimental, or physiological questions. This study contributes to the Physical Education field for touching upon a way of viewing and seeing health in Physical Education from an existential perspective. Therefore, our study allows professionals to have the freedom to conduct their practices without being held by the fads imposed by the physical culture of health, as well as guides the involved subjects to recognize the limits and possibilities of their own body and health, by collaborating to a perception that appreciates the individual while connecting their relations, experiences, and, most importantly, their wishes.