Female Athletes

Thus far Brittney Griner has been the unarguable star of this year's NCAA basketball tournament—men's side included—and she took things a notch further last night when she pulled her Baylor Bears through to an upset victory over Duke. Next up for Griner and Baylor: a Final Four appearance and probable showdown with undefeated UConn. (I for one didn't disregard the Bears; still, last night they exceeded my fairly high expectations.)

Only in her first year, Griner has captured media attention and forced basketball fans of all creeds to note the women's game. Her promise, however, is so much more.

Like any great athlete, Griner is a force of nature, impossible to resist; for great athletes generally do not plead for attention, they command it. But here something rather less banal is being glimpsed: an expression of female power.

Thanks to stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, personal trainer Tracy Anderson has become a minor celebrity herself. Anderson caters to a Hollywood aesthetic that prizes slimness above all else (that is, for women anyway; men, not so much). Unfortunately, her work perpetuates a foolish ideal, not just in Hollywood but in the general culture; for better or worse, celebrities hold sway over how people think and act.

But it is particularly inimical when female athletes, their parents, or their coaches take such nonsense to heart:

Beware of the gym: the weights are too heavy. "After over-exercising in gyms in my late teens my muscles got very bulky and I was more like a gymnast than a ballet dancer. It looked like somebody threw me in the trash compactor: my neck got really short."

To point out just one relevant danger, female athletes would in fact do well to train their neck and trapezius muscles, and yes, with heavy weights.

One last observation. Not to take too much away from Anderson, but I suspect that more than anything else Madonna owes her fantastic body to an admirable work ethic and good genetics—I don't remember her ever not having a nice body, always rather athletic—and she would probably look and feel even better with some heavy weights thrown into her workout mix.

Zara Phythian probably doesn't rate this with her 13 world titles in martial arts, but the rest of us remain justifiably awestruck:

The inaugural Sao Paulo Indy 300 will mark several firsts, mainly of interest only to avid Indy-race fans, but one in particular grabbed my attention: this will be the first time that four women have started an IndyCar race.

Methinks IndyCar is entitled to a little self-praise:

"This is really fantastic for our sport," said Terry Angstadt, president of the series' commercial division. "Diversity is actually one of the attributes of the Izod IndyCar Series. Racing is the only sport where female athletes compete in absolutely the same field as the men, they race on exactly the same tracks, the same cars."

Now we must work so that this parity is true for all sports, for only then will female athletes no longer be undervalued.

You would be hard put to find a set of athletic skills more impressive than that wielded by acrobat and aerialist Lisa Whitmore, a formidable truth inescapably apprehended when viewing samples of her work:

Brittney Griner is an incredibly gifted athlete. A mountainous exemplar of corporeal strength, Griner represents the awesome, ever-swelling physicality of today's female athlete.

None of which makes her a saint, of course. But neither does a punch thrown in a moment of mental opacity in the heat of athletic competition count her as a shaitan. What she did was unquestionably wrong, and she should be punished in the way typical for her offense (and surely a punch has been thrown in an NCAA game before). And there it should rest.

Much has been said about this incident already, some of it trenchant, so I will add only two further observations. I hope never to find myself on the receiving end of a punch from Griner. And I hope Jordan Barncastle, who must have one heck of a chin, is okay.

Lenda Murray, eight-time Ms. Olympia, the greatest female bodybuilder ever, seems to have a talent for dance too, as seen here in video taken at the 2009 Lenda Murray Bodybuilding Championships. Perhaps a stint on DWTS (which, boo! doesn't have a female athlete this season) is next?