Aly Bailey

Research interests

My community- and arts-based research centres queer, fat, mad, and disability justice in the study of aging, fitness, and health. My ongoing program of work, including a recent project titled ReVisioning Fitness, is about untethering eugenic, colonial, and white supremacist (mythical) ideals of the body/mind from notions of “fitness” and “wellness.” I take a critical approach to so-called “inclusion” by centring and celebrating bodies of difference in the re-imagining of places of leisure, especially fitness spaces. I partner with public, nonprofit and for-profit stakeholders to bring difference-affirming research to action via film screenings (e.g., digital storytelling and mini-documentaries), revising health and wellness programming, and developing training modules. The goal of this work is a worldview shift on the meanings of "fitness" and "health" by (re)prioritizing community, relationality, joy, care, and rest and making "fitness" an opportunity for body/mind reclamation.

Graduate supervision and student opportunities

I am currently accepting applications from graduate students with research interests related to:

• Fitness, exercise, and health
• Critical feminist theories
• Embodiment and body image
• Critical aging
• Mental health and Mad studies
• Body reclamation

Graduate studies application details

Teaching interests

• Aging and mental health
• Leisure as resistance
• Experiential education
• Land-based pedagogy
• Active learning

Education

BA, York University

MA, Brock University

PhD, Brock University

Postdoc, University of Guelph

Postdoc, McMaster University

Selected publications

See Google Scholar for full list of publications.

Bailey, K.A., Bessey, M., Lamarche, L., & Griffin, M. (Under review). Weight supremacy as white supremacy: An urgent call to discontinue the use of BMI in body image research. To be included in a special issue on Racism, White Supremacy, and Resistance in Body Image Research, in Body Image. 

Griffin, M., Bailey, K. A., & Mazrouei, S. (In press). Rethinking the ‘fit’ in fitness: Misfitting (loudly) to transform physical activity futures. Leisure Sciences. 

Jiang, K., Bailey, K. A., & Lamarche, L. (In press). An infinite project to nowhere: #Wellness on Instagram. Feminist Media Studies. 

Bailey, K. A., Griffin, M., Lopez, K. J., Habib, S., Fayyaz, N., & Leighton, J. (2024). (Re)claiming subversive spaces on TikTok: The complexities of body activisms within physical activity cultures. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise, & Health, 1-16.

Bailey, K. A., Bessey, M., Rice, C., Kelly, E., McHugh, T.-L. F., Punjani, S., Dube, B., Tshuma, P., Besse, K., Sookpaiboon, S., & quest, s. (2024). In the wake of canada's violent eugenic legacies: An urgency to ReVision Fitness. Included in a special issue on Leisure and (Anti-)Racism: Towards a Critical Consciousness of Race, Racism, and Racialisation in Canada (B. Hamilton-Hinch & K.J. Lopez, guest eds), Leisure/Loisir, 48(2), 347-370.

Bailey, K. A., Bessey, M., Rice, C., Poplestone, L., & Gillett, J. (2023). #AccessibleYoga for whom? The non-performativity of accessibility and inclusion on Instagram. Leisure/Loisir, 1-26.

Bailey, K. A., Griffin, M., Lopez, K. J., Habib, S., Fayyaz, N., & Fudge Schormans, A. (2023). Building community or perpetuating inclusionism? The representation of “inclusion” on fitness facility websites. Included in a special issue on Leisure, Inclusion and Belonging (D. Fortune & K. Gallant, guest eds), Leisure/Loisir, 47(4), 659-680.

Bailey, K. A., Rice, C. Gualtieri, M., & Gillett, J. (2022). Is #YogaForEveryone? The idealised flexible bodymind in Instagram posts. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise & Health, 1-16.