Feminism

In a San Jose State University Spartan Daily piece, Angela Marino writes of having overheard a male student complain about women's sports. He doesn't think that women can play sports. Fine. But why complain? Surely he's not being forced to watch women's sports, so why is he troubled by them?

I was asked about this strange phenomenon—this vehement aversion some men have for women's sports and female athletes—recently, not for the first time either, and I couldn't offer a concrete answer. Such behavior is to my mind perverse and incomprehensible.

Not that I haven't tried to understand it. And I perhaps can when it comes from a male athlete, since he may feel female athletes pose a threat; they could someday steal the spotlight away from him. But what of the ordinary male sports fan? So much of this hateful nonsense comes from him. He dotes on male athletes yet finds female athletes unworthy of his attention—or worse. Odd, isn't it?

It is fitting that Angela's piece should appear in something with Spartan in the title. Some time ago I wrote a piece in which I told of the lesson Sparta, 2,500 years hence, still holds out for us. Where men among the bravest, sturdiest this world has ever known held strong, athletic women in highest esteem.

I end here with Angela's trenchant conclusion:

Female athletes have the ability to be as influential as male athletes if given the same opportunities that male athletes have been given. In the 21st century, it is time to open our minds and get over the primal idea that men are the dominate source of physical strength.

Sufficiently hyped, ESPN The Magazine's "Body Issue" hit newsstands Friday. The issue features several male and female athletes in various "nude" poses (PG-13 stuff, perhaps). Predictably, this has sparked some little controversy, much of it unwarranted, but not all of it.

First I of course refer to the prudes. They are animated, whether they admit to it or not, by a worldview quite uncomfortable with sexuality and the human body. (One is tempted to ask if they understand how they came to be.) Thus, to them, an athlete's appearing nude is a dirty, low thing that depreciates the athlete's athleticism. Never mind that sport is in fact all about bodies, and that the nude athletic form has been admired since antiquity.

Second is a slightly more nuanced scrutiny. Here the critical eye looks to see if female athletes are therein portrayed fairly, especially compared with how their male counterparts are portrayed. In other words, are they presented as strong, dynamic, potent—all the things we most associate with elite athletes? Such scrutiny can be overdone, but isn't entirely without justification. For example, we know that female athletes often feel pressured to present a softer look. (Serena Williams, one of the athletes featured on a "Body Issue" cover, recently admitted as much.) And I don't know how many times I've seen photos of a female athlete that had obviously been airbrushed (or the digital equivalent) to soften her look, whereas had the subject been a male athlete, the photos would have been, if anything, sharpened for the opposite effect.

Often, however, this scrutiny betrays a provincial worldview. It is generally white, middle- or upper-class, heterosexual, and of that authoritarian mindset which ironically passes for liberalism these days. Nor is it without its own streak of Puritanism (common in the US, not so much in Europe). Here one often finds subtleties overlooked in a rush to judgment. As one example, a strictly male-female sexual dynamic is taken for granted, overlooking the appeal erotic images of female athletes might hold for lesbians. Another, the classism on which most prudery is actually based.

So where does the "Body Issue" fall in my view? Well, I can't say. I don't have a copy yet. What I've seen (sample gallery) is, I think, tastefully enough done. (The Sarah Reinertsen cover, in particular, I find affecting and gorgeous.) Judge, then, for yourself; only do so with an open mind.

Iris Kyle won her fifth Ms. Olympia last weekend. One doesn't risk much saying that she is this decade's dominant female bodybuilder. But has she been rewarded enough for her talent and hard work? Apparently not. Kyle was paid a meager $28,000 this year while the winner on the men's side got $200,000—a shocking discrepancy that leaves little doubt about how far we need to go before female athletes are justly compensated.