Women's Sports

Janet Raloff of Science News reports on the recent findings concerning oral contraceptives and female athletes. To some of you, her account may be more intelligible than the one I referenced last week. If so, it's worth more space here to direct attention to it. Why? I give three reasons. First, because there are precious few sports where strength training is not at all relevant, both for athletic performance and for injury prevention. Second, because the findings present something more nuanced than an either-or dilemma ("should I take the pill or not?"); i.e., some pills, those with low-androgenicity progestins, don't produce the problem. Third, because there are other considerations beyond those related to athletics. The best possible advice to female athletes: stay informed and consult your doctor.

The free market, much maligned lately for political hay, though to her credit not by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, does something really well: it makes clear the value society places on things. For example, this weekend I learned that a 21-year-old quarterback, unproven in the NFL, is worth $72 million ($41.7 million guaranteed, with incentives as much as $78 million over the next six years). Meanwhile, Serena Williams, the highest paid female athlete ever, has career earnings of $24 million. Says something, doesn't it?

Oh, well. The IWFL season is under way, which means football played for the love of the game.

Respect these powerful women—or else:

Tax Day draws near. This may be a difficult time for some of you. If you're a politician, I'm guessing probably not. The rest, however, might be needing some relief.

The New York Liberty, so aptly named for a post close to tax time, is doing its part to help by giving away free popcorn to fans who purchase tickets $34.50 and up. Mention code SHAMEKA when you order tickets at ticketmaster.com, 877-WNBA-TIX, or the Garden Box Office, and you'll get a free small popcorn to enjoy while watching some great WNBA action (offer expires September 14).

Visit the Liberty website to see what else is planned for the upcoming season.

Congratulations, UConn Huskies!



And kudos to ESPN for their superb coverage of the women's tournament!

Search Google for "sports memorabilia" (with the quote marks) and you'll get, as of today, 7,820,000 results. Obviously, there is a substantial market for sports memorabilia. How much of it, though, is dedicated to female athletes? From what I can tell, not so much.

Sportsmemorabilia.com seemed a good place to do research, inasmuch as it came up first in the search results. I was pleased to find memorabilia for Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Mia Hamm, Annika Sorenstam, Venus and Serena Williams. Not so surprisingly, Maria Sharapova and Danica Patrick were there as well. Still, many were missing. No Mary Lou Retton. No Sheryl Swoopes. No Lisa Leslie. No Jessica Mendoza. No Cat Osterman. No Candace Parker. And to be honest, there are, by my reckoning, two dozen male athletes for every one female athlete.

I've talked before of the lopsided, and in my view perverse, obsession our society has with male athletes, and its parallel: the marginalization of female athletes. The world of sports memorabilia, I submit, is further evidence of how skewed we have things.

Nowadays, boys and men are informed that it is "manly" to worship male athletes but somehow the opposite with female athletes. This is nonsense. The 300 Spartan men who defended the Pass of Thermopylae certainly would have understood it as such. Spartan women were expected to "exercise their bodies in running, wrestling, casting the discus, and hurling the javelin." Strong women they were, and their men respected them for it. All of Sparta took pride in the hard physiques and athleticism of its women. The men of Sparta, nourished by physically capable sisters, wives, mothers, grew to be hard, brave men. Gorgo, Queen of Sparta and wife of Leonidas, who led the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, articulated this best. When a foreign (probably Athenian) woman said to her, "You Spartan women are the only ones who rule their men," Gorgo replied: "Yes, we are the only ones that give birth to men." (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, 14.1-4.)

Sparta wasn't a paradise, for women or men; it was, in fact, harsh and authoritarian. Primitive as it was, though, we could still learn something valuable from the Spartans: reverence for athletic women.

Oh, and with so much going on, this weekend would be a good time to put that lesson into practice.