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Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of Bourdieu and postfeminism, this article analyses extant tensions between young women's gendered habitus and the health-related learning spaces of Physical Education (PE) and Instagram. We draw on data from a two-phase qualitative research project with thirty-seven young women (aged 15-17) from three secondary schools in Spain who self-defined as physically active and engaging with exercise content on Instagram. Data obtained through focus groups and semi-structured interviews reveal how these young women's subjectivities are formed through negotiating the gender 'rules of the game' within these key pedagogical fields. Notably, most participants were critical of their learning in PE, which mainly remains a traditional masculine field. By contrast, they valued Instagram as an engaging space in which to learn about fitness to transform their bodies toward the feminine ideal. This involved a constant process of self-optimization, including the development of the 'right' mental dispositions, fitting strongly with their gendered habitus. Within this paper, we have developed the concept of 'postfeminist habitus' to explain the participants' engagements with health-related content on Instagram, which through language of choice and empowerment, disciplined the young women to achieve the normative body as a marker of success. We argue that while there are notably different patterns of engagement with PE and Instagram, in both spaces there is evidence of symbolic violence that reproduces the gender order. We conclude by suggesting changes that might make PE a more meaningful and hybrid learning space for young women.

Health-related knowledge and messages are embedded in and disseminated through various social spaces such as families, school sport, PE and, more recently, social media. Such sites can be understood as fields in a Bourdieusian sense, structured spaces of relationships in which individuals' practice is shaped by a shared understanding of rules, processes and valued resources (capital) (lisahunter et al., 2015; Sandford & Quarmby, 2019). Importantly, practices within these fields are intensely gendered, inscribed with gender norms that define expected behaviours and dispositions based on what constitutes male or female identities. These gender norms function within a gender order (Connell, 1987) that is often reduced to binary and oppositional understanding of masculinity and femininity, sustaining masculine domination (Bourdieu, 2000). Such ideas are then reproduced via the logic of practice of these fields and become deeply embedded (lisahunter et al., 2015).

PE has been acknowledged as a key formal learning space in which individuals acquire health-related knowledge and the associated valued practices and norms. However, research has long confirmed how girls' experiences in PE continue to be constrained by dominant gendered norms (e.g. Metcalfe, 2018; Roberts et al., 2020). The 'superiority' of the male body and of characteristics such as aggression, competitiveness and strength, contributes significantly to how the concept of ability (Wright & Burrows, 2006) or the 'good' student (hunter, 2004) in PE are understood. Therefore, young women are globally marginalized in PE, a tendency consistent with their persistent disengagement from the subject (Roberts et al., 2020; Scraton, 2018). Despite much research in this area, PE continues to be an 'unsafe space' (Scraton, 2018) for many young women, where exposure of the body, public displays of performance and normative comparisons prevail, resulting in discomfort and positioning them as powerless and inferior (Metcalfe, 2018). Many PE teachers subconsciously reproduce the gender order, reinforcing the relevance of masculine ability and performance through their own beliefs, embodied practices and curriculum activities (Brown, 2005). However, the scenario is becoming more complex as the field begins to embrace burgeoning new active femininities ('can do' girls) and neoliberal discourse of opportunities that provide an illusion that everyone can achieve their own destiny (McRobbie, 2009; Scraton, 2018). The co-existence of such evidently conflicting ideas within the same field, could create spaces of contestation that are difficult to navigate for young women. For example, as girls demonstrate their physical capital in PE, they risk being labelled as 'trouble-makers' or 'tomboyish' when they defy convention (Roberts et al., 2020) or behave 'like men' (Hill, 2015).

Like other social media platforms, Instagram has become a highly influential space where young women experience and learn about their bodies, health, and identities. Here, they can easily access popular culture fitness practices (usually via the 'fitspiration' hashtag) shared by fitness influencers or celebrities (Camacho-Miano et al., 2019). Through liking, commenting and sharing photos and videos, they can also actively participate within these online communities, giving 'producers' a sense of belonging and positive affect (Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2020). Such fitness content is often rooted in discourses of healthism (Crawford, 1980), which encourages a neoliberal moral imperative towards constant self-improvement as an individual responsibility (Rich, 2018). These discourses are intensely gendered, functioning for young women as a postfeminist biopedagogy (Camacho-Miano et al., 2019) which bring together a postfeminist sensibility (Gill, 2007), neoliberal notions of the self and discourses of health consumption. This biopedagogy functions to instruct and regulate young women's bodies and subjectivities through a language of choice, empowerment and health while, simultaneously, conceiving exercise as disciplined aesthetic work to achieve the normative body.

Postfeminism describes a cultural sensibility that 'has become the new normal, a taken-for-granted common sense that operates as a kind of gendered neoliberalism' (Gill, 2017, p. 609). It defines contemporary gender relations through contradictory but patterned features, such as the relevance of the body for women and for their femininity; intense surveillance of women's bodies; and normative beauty disciplines concealed by notions of individual choice and empowerment (Gill, 2007, 2017). Postfeminism also has a distinctive 'affective life' as it increasingly establishes the emotions and feelings that women are expected to nurture (Gill, 2017). Specifically, the focus on a positive mindset (Favaro & Gill, 2019) functions as a regulatory force that suggests that women are responsible for their own futures, but no longer constrained by structural inequalities or power relations. Therefore, the postfeminism that 'circulates' in digital health cultures (Rich, 2018) also shapes and become deeply engrained in the subjectivities of young women (Camacho-Miano et al., 2019; Gill, 2017).

Research shows that online social spaces for health and fitness are also influenced by wider social structures and practices, many of which are rooted in intensely gendered discourses of healthism (Rich, 2018). Women within these online spaces can become complicit in maintaining this gendered space by 'producing, evaluating, and consuming content online that is held together by a shared interest and a set of power relations among agents sharing this interest' (Levina & Arriaga, 2014, p. 477). Here, the broad field of social media - and its component platform-based subfields such as Instagram - can be understood as a site in which informal pedagogies (including those about health and the body) are both produced and reproduced. Through consuming and producing, largely visual, content which is legitimized by the accumulation of symbolic capital through likes and comments, young women learn what is valued and what constitutes healthy practices. These online social practices are significant, therefore, because they shape young women's gendered habitus, nurturing their health-related preferences, interests, and tastes (Sandford & Quarmby, 2019).

While PE and Instagram privilege different forms of capital and habitus, the intersection of these fields holds implications for young women in relation to their gendered subjectivities and their health-related learnings. Indeed, Sandford and Quarmby (2019) suggest that these areas of overlap can create spaces of conflict, where multiple messages and perspectives compete for prominence. Thus, how young women learn about physical activity and health within and between both fields is an important area for investigation.