The Shine Nightclub (25 May 2010)

The Shine Nightclub rocks! As a nightclub located in the heart of Hamilton city, Shine Nightclub serves the local gay community by offering them a modern, clean and safe party space.

I always think gay bars are mysterious places. I think they have their own way of practice, their own way of decorating. In other words, gay’s bars formed their own circle. But after benign to the Shine Nightclub, I found gay bar is just like a normal club. In fact, straight people also go to a gay bar; they come for the atmosphere, the music and the drinks. Moreover, no one can tell who is gay unless someone intentionally expose herself/himself and self-identified as gay.



But take a second thought, if there are really no differences between gays guys going to a straight bar and gay guys going to bar, why gay bars bother? I suggested it has something to with the pride/shame binary.
According to one of my research (2007) pride/shame politics have affects and are lived though gendered and sexualized bodies and spaces. This applies to gendered and sexualized spaces like gay bars and affected. Gay bodies in gay bar suffering from identity defining and identity is erasing. On one hand, they are happy and pride to find their own spaces where people are alike here and at the time they also feel shame because being gay will transform their identities and excluded them from normal people.

Hamilton Gardens (14 May 2010)

Hamilton Gardens is a public park located at the southern end of Hamilton City New Zealand. It is the most popular tourism destination in the region that attracts more than 300,000 visitors a year.
The garden is divided into five parts, some of the most significant garden design traditions are represent in the Paradise Garden Collection, different aspects of the relationship between people and plants are represent in the Productive Garden Collection, different forms of garden fantasy are represent in the Fantasy Garden Collection, story of plants selected and bred for the garden are represent in the Cultivar Garden Collection, different historic interpretations of an idealised landscape the are represent in the Landscape Garden Collection. Those stories of the five collections come together and become one special theme of the Hamilton Gardens. (Hamilton Gardens, n.d.).


I have visited Hamilton Gardens for more than once, my last visit was on the 14th April, 2010. One of studies focused on the production of heterosexual bodies and spaces in the wedding tourism context in New Zealand (Johnston, 2006). Therefore, this time, out of heterosexuality and tourism perspectives, I pay close attention how heterosexual bodies and spaces are produce in the wedding tourism context at Hamilton Gardens as Hamilton Gardens is a popular wedding tourism destination (Hamilton Gardens, n.d.). During my visit, just like what I have expected, I saw a couple having their wedding in one of the gardens. But to my surprise, many visitors seem to get used to see weddings in the gardens and pay little attention to it. Then, I recalled Hubbard’s (2000, p. 206) saying that moral heterosexual performances are naturalized in a variety of everyday social settings in Hamilton Gardens public park.

Small parade in Hamilton (03 May 2010)

For more than one evening, I saw a group of men dressing in funny female clothes, running on Victoria Street, Hamilton. Therefore, I believed they run on a regular basis. They really caught my attention, as a Geographer whose interests include space, gender and tourism, I decided to wait for them and hoped to talk to them. What motivates them to dress like women? Or do they consider they are performing a small scale of parade as some kind of tourism activity? Have they been in any trouble for acting this way? Unfortunately, I never see them running again.
The question that I came across was in fact evoked by my research and others tourism and geography researchers. Today, many geography scholars including me believe we live in a hegemonic world that heterosexual ideas and performances are naturalized in daily lives (Johnston, 2006). Therefore it is abnormal for being homosexual. In 2007, I published a research article, mobilizing pride/shame: lesbians, tourism and parades, which explores how pride, shame, performativity, gender, sexuality and politics of resistance in the tourism event of Pride Scotland (Johnston, 2007). I made a few findings. First, performing in a queer parade enables an articulation of both queer celebration and protest against normative and oppressive forms of sexuality. Second, the pride parades may exaggerate the processes by which bodies and places become gendered and sexualized (Johnston, 2007 p.34) for performers intend to dress up to show they are a group of gays while audiences expect to see bodies that defy normative assumptions of gendered and sexualized bodies (Johnston, 2007, p.35). Third, participants in the Pride parade are not just gays and lesbians but also heterosexual people trying to look/act camp (Johnston, 2007). And their camp performance are somehow acting against heterosexual being natural and gay being odd

Waterworld (19 April 2010)

Today is a very nice day. After days of raining the sun finally shines. I took out my year pass in my drawer which I have not used it for a long time. I decided to bring my kids to the Waterworld. Waterworld located in Hamilton, has one of the largest indoor or outdoor aquatic facilities in New Zealand. Some facilities include New Python Hydrolides and Screamer Speedslides, fun inflatable, outdoor Splash Pad area for toddlers, spa, sauna and stream rooms (waterworld, n.d.). In waterworld, I noticed many girls are wearing bikinis. I remembered when I was a little girl. Women used to wear one piece swimming suits instead of the sexy bikinis nowadays. I wonder, are there any reasons behind the change? Can I explain it using Geography?
Perhaps, I should get my head around some of the studies I done before. In my research Transformative Tans: Gendered and reaced bodies on beaches (2005) which I examine “the intentional act of transforming the colour of one’s skin-sun-tanning-by Pakeha” (Johnston, 2005b, p. 110), I found out that the trendy act of being tanned represents a link between the bronzed body and the feminized erotic. A tanned body help women get sexualized attention and becomes attractive, beautiful, confident and sexy in others eyes (Johnston, 2005). Under this way of thinking, will express a female body with bikini become more attractive, beautiful, confident and sexy than express with one piece swimming suits?

V8 Supercars Hamilton (18 April 2010)

V8 Supercars started in Australia, is an international touring car racing. For more than two years, Hamilton city is stop of the racing and V8 Supercars Hamilton becomes one of the biggest tourism events in Hamilton (Hamilton City Council, n.d.).



In fact, the V8 Supercar is a set of car racing events that can be used as materials to explore some geography disciplines like femininity and masculinity, body and mind and sex and gender. To address the matter of femininity and masculinity, I wonder anyone noticed that the racing car spaces are dominated by men, from pit crew to drivers, and coordinators to other workers. The only type of women exist in the field is “race girl” or “race queen”. The roles of men and women in car racing confirm the stereotypical constructions of femininity and masculinity because sexual and masculine bodies (Johnston, 1996). Men dominate the wheels and pit shops and actively discourage women from participating in the driving and racing, while the women dominate and other causal spaces. Women bodies are then produced by the environment of the car racing events that they wear make ups and put on clothe that expose their flesh as expected. Under such a manner, because of the normal sex and gender expectations, one will never see a race car driver or a pit crew with miniskirts.


However, as I suggest in my work flexing femininity: female body builders refiguring the body (1996), the traditional feminine/ masculine binary is not always unchanged. Inside my paper, I investigated the bodies building of female body builders and their training environments and argued that one of the reasons for female body builders to build their bodies was to against the hegemonic notions of masculinity.

It is rugby time!!!!

Without doubt, rugby is the most popular sport in New Zealand. The Chiefs is the famous local rugby team in Hamilton. A rugby game played by the Chiefs is a good material to show how bodies are gendered and sexualised. Obviously, the Chiefs is a male rugby, only the fitness survives. Under this environment, all the players are muscular and strong, a 100% match with the tradition masculine stereotype of male (Johnston, 1996). May be you are just a mama boy when you first played rugby, but gradually the environment will shaped your bodies. Once the ball kicked off, there will be no mercury.