Empowering “Sporty Sisters” Through “Active Living”: A Feminist Multi-modal Critical Discourse Analysis of the Lorna Jane Fitness Fashion Website

Nash conducts a feminist multi-modal critical discourse analysis of the retail website of Lorna Jane (LJ), an Australian fitness fashion company, to examine the discursive strategies used by the company to authorise a particular notion of “active living” for women. Specifically, she examines how the semiotic choices on the website signify key postfeminist discourses and themes related to health and fitness and how they are used to place the responsibility for fitness and health onto individual women. Nash focuses on the discourses inscribed through the technologies, styles, fabrics, colours and cuts of clothing items as well as the underlying assumptions and biases of these constructions and the power relationships underpinning them. Nash concludes that women’s “empowerment” is imagined in a limited, individualistic way.