Female Athletes

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:

This is so according to findings from a recent study. Frankly, I am not surprised by the findings, and I suspect few who have given the matter much thought are.

Nevertheless, it would be hard to overstate the importance of this study to female athletes:

"I think the implications are that so many women are taking BCP, and if they are active or competing, and want to achieve the highest level of performance, they need to consider whether birth control is a negative influence on that," said senior investigator Steven Riechman, Ph.D., also of Texas A&M.

Keep in mind, too, that the type of oral contraceptive used made a difference: low-androgenicity pills may be a better option for female athletes.

Certainly something to consult your doctor about if you are an athletic woman.

Fight Night (aka Rigged), which stars former taekwondo champion Rebecca Neuenswander, comes out on DVD today. You will find it at not only the usual outlets—Amazon, Best Buy, Netflix, etc.—but also the official website, where your purchase will most profit the people responsible for this delightful little film.

Not one to purchase many DVDs, I look forward to owning this one.

WNBA star Chantelle Anderson has shared her thoughts about a much-debated topic: "Can a woman realistically expect [to] be seen as a great athlete AND a sex symbol?" Often I find that what she says agrees with my own views; and ultimately, we arrive at pretty much the same conclusion:

it's a great thing that men's magazines are stepping away from the stick skinny models and not only featuring curvier women like Beyonce and Kim Kardashian, but also tall, lean, muscular women like the Team USA Olympians that did the cover shoot for FHM in 2004. As long as the pictures are classy and not raunchy, I don't have a problem with it at all.

Not always, but quite often, the clamor over some perceived objectification of female athletes betrays a "sex is dirty" mentality. Objectification, held to such strict interpretation, takes place millions of times a day, in many facets of life beyond those only of a sexual nature. To focus so heavily on instances associated with libido is fitting only if one has a Puritan's worldview.

Thus I share Chantelle's opinion: I see no reason to think that a woman can't be seen as strong, athletic, and sexy all at once. Moreover, that would be a welcome change.

Sex is inescapably a part of life, rather like food. And while true that now we typically eat in a civilized manner—with forks and spoons as opposed to hands, for example—when last I checked, we still make a big deal of eating. In moderation—that is, minus tangible harm and vulgarity—celebrating our sexuality is no more "wrong" than celebrating our ability to prepare and consume a fine meal.

Congratulations, UConn Huskies!



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

Her new book, just out today:



Dara will be signing books—perhaps in your part of the country?

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.