Moroccan Dutch kickboxing champion Rachida Bouhout – 'I hope I win, inshallah'

Here you see a video made by Raja Felgata and Margo de Haas about Moroccan-Dutch kickboxing champion Rachida Bouhout:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZn-mdBm_MM]

For more information about the meaning of kickboxing, read a really great post by my colleague Jasmijn Rana on the blog of Cultural Anthropology: Sports: Provocation – Feminizing Fighting Sports? She participated in Thai-/kickboxing sessions with young Moroccan-Dutch girls:

The phenomenon of “Ladies-Only” training contests the masculine practice of Thai-/kickboxing by challenging the aggressive, competitive and painful nature of the sport. Participation of girls and women in this sport is often initiated as a form of ‘empowerment,’ both by local governments and the gyms, and incited by national policies. The wider public tends to view kickboxing negatively as an overly aggressive sport. Yet in the case of women, kickboxing is perceived as emancipatory enskillment and as a form of self-defense. My research on female kickboxing practices in the Netherlands demonstrates how ideas of masculinity and femininity are contested and reproduced in sports.

Rana, Jasmijn. “Sports: Provocation.” Fieldsights – Field Notes, Cultural Anthropology Online, February 10, 2014, http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/489-sports-provocation