A Foucauldian perspective on the role of exercise in the construction of the women's body

Subjects are produced by the power of knowledge on the axis of certain rationality. Foucault's revealing power relations in the sense of the discovery of the subject has come into question with the existence of power in every human relations. The subject is involved in power relations within the boundaries of rationality at the stage of its formation and finds himself in the position of an object. In this sense, the body is in the position of being subject to control as the tool we have at first hand. The control mechanisms applied on the female body constantly idealize the female body with the concepts of thinness, delicacy, motherhood, beauty, vitality and care, and subject it to a standard form. Therefore, the thesis focuses on how much we dominate our body and how we make sense of it, in which each woman within the scope of the research will display her political stance. The study analyzes the way women who exercise perceive the body through in-depth interview techniques and includes the theoretical framework of body theories, especially around the body, subjectivation and power. In this study, it is questioned how the woman's dream of looking fit, the phobia of gaining weight due to aesthetic anxiety, and the unnoticed functioning of women's body policies reflect on women's self-perception. The aim of the study is to determine how the person who emerges by expressing the existing social practices related to the female body through language makes his own body obedient. The method of the study is based on the question of how female subjects perceive their own bodies, based on the interpretative constructivist approach. In this framework, data were collected through in-depth interviews with 23 participating women. During the data analysis process, the Maxqda program, one of the CAQDAS packages, was preferred because of the convenience provided in the use of the interface, deciphering the voice recordings on the data and coding the data.