Athletic Women Blog

Aneta Florczyk owns the official title but one could make the case that Becca Swanson is the strongest woman in the world. Swanson holds every noteworthy world powerlifting record, including a 600-lb bench press that is daunting even to contemplate.

Not long ago, Swanson visited Jakked Hardcore Gym to lift with some of the strongest men in the Chicago area. The T-shirt says it all:

Somewhere there is a little girl warming up with your max

As a whole, Xena had the strongest female cast of any action series, or film, ever. Xena, throughout its run, consistently staged a universe dominated by strong female characters always portrayed ably by athletic women. The writing may have ebbed at times, but the cast never did that I could tell.

This goes for not only Lucy Lawless and Renée O'Connor but also the supporting cast (indeed, especially even): Tsianina Joelson, Hudson Leick, Victoria Pratt, Gina Torres, among others. Impressive women—some (e.g. Pratt and Joelson) had been accomplished athletes—who made their characters convincingly formidable; in other words, textbook casting for strong female characters.

Xena Con 2010 was held this past February in Los Angeles. The Amazon Varia (er, I mean Tsianina Joelson) showed up. We are lucky enough to have some video:

By giving young women many more opportunities to compete in athletics Title IX made possible the awe-inspiring female athletes we see today. I am singularly grateful for that.

Never far from it, Title IX was again in the news this week when the Obama administration, of course not without fanfare, announced that it was revising (or re-revising) the rules of compliance for colleges.

I am not an expert on Title IX arcana, and have no desire to be, but ever the chronicler of politicians' capers, I can say without risking much that the move was made with political calculations in mind. The reform actually goes against the advice of the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights, and is probably a political stunt more than anything else. Obama and his minions know that he needs his base intact when angry white men turn out en masse this November, if he is to keep Congress anyway.

Is the reform, then, itself wrong-headed? I don't think so, but I don't know enough about it to be counted on to say. But it is odd, I think, that the change goes against the recommendations of the USCCR. And at the Sports Economist I found another option, seemingly ignored altogether, which again made me think. Then there was the infernal logic of the Cato Institute.

I really couldn't care less about men's sports, collegiate or otherwise, and I'm always skeptical of claims suggesting that opportunities are being "stolen" from men and handed to women. Nonetheless, I do care about fairness, individual rights, rule of law—the things that make our society at least marginally better than a banana republic.

Title IX has clearly done much good. But that doesn't mean it's only benign. The handiwork of politicians rarely is (and the Law of Unintended Consequences usually has its say if nothing else). Hence Title IX supporters, and here I count myself, should always be mindful of its potential flaws.

Finally, I'll caution once more against thinking that female athletes can gain equal status simply by fiat. That must be earned in gyms and on playing fields.




(Umm, did I miss something?)

Hollywood abounds with talented athletic women nowadays. So many, in fact, that there isn't excuse for our not finding an action heroine on television every night; a superheroine in movie theaters every month.

Allison Caetano, a former nationally ranked gymnast turned to acting and stunt work, for instance. What follows is Allison's action reel. If ever it does anywhere the time-honored warning certainly applies here—don't try any of this at home!

That advanced hula hooping might be a revelation of otherworldly athleticism was not something I had considered before discovering Marawa the Amazing. Now, I'm thoroughly convinced of it. Methinks that soon you will be too:

Most of you no doubt know by now that Martina Navratilova has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately, a full recovery is expected, thanks in large part to its early detection—the key to beating cancer.

Any coherent list of greatest female athletes would have Navratilova near the top. She has profoundly influenced not only her sport, tennis, but women's sports generally. What is more, she openly challenged, sometimes at cost to her career, parochial views of gender and sexual orientation.

Reading a piece by Greg Couch of FanHouse.com brought to mind again how remarkably ahead of her time was Navratilova. Long ago, she showed the way to excellence in women's athletics, how outworn feminine ideals must be shrugged off unabashedly with brawny shoulders. Despite the backsliding we've seen at times, the changes that Navratilova and a few other pioneers ushered in seem now to have taken hold, though never should they be taken for granted:

She committed fully to building strength and fitness, which led her to become one of the greatest tennis players of all time, setting up one of sports' great, all-time individual rivalries with Chris Evert.

Navratilova won that rivalry, but Evert was always the popular one, usually seen as the good guy.

It was something Navratilova had trouble accepting.

As is often the case when someone breaks a mold, it was met with discomfort when she began to bulk up. At the time, her muscular appearance was seen as unfeminine. But she would change women's sports with it.

Even Evert, bypassed by Navratilova during her career, began lifting weights and improving her fitness, which allowed her to win another major title.

And today, the muscle and strength in women's tennis and women's sports in general, a great example to young girls, is almost mandatory.

She is an authentic heroine. We look forward to her full and speedy recovery.

My post from yesterday started to feel oddly prescient as I watched Maya Moore take control in the second half of the championship game last night. Considering, though, how perfectly in tune was her performance with her character and athletic talent, I probably shouldn't swap my current trade for astrology or crystal-gazing.

The magic is all hers.

Probably Maya Moore would excel in any sport she chose to compete in, so exceptional are her athletic gifts. But she has opted for basketball, and tonight she will lead her undefeated UConn Huskies into battle against the Stanford Cardinal to decide the national championship.

We certainly don't need science to tell us how good Maya is. But neither can science reveal to us precisely what makes her so good—some of the elite athlete's magic remains cloaked, perhaps for ever and for the best.

I rarely find much sound thinking in the writings of an avowed Marxist, but "Let Caster Semenya Run!" by Dave Zirin and Sherry Wolf actually contains snippets of clarity, as here:

What is really at stake here, aside from the persecution of a young athlete? Lurking beneath the salacious coverage is the sports world's underlying ethic--women are inferior to men.

The notion that there is an enormous physical gulf between men and women's athletic abilities is rarely questioned. No male athletes are tested to see if they are intersex because maleness is considered the physical gold standard against which women must be judged. Silly details like what happens when attempts are made at leveling the playing field between the sexes are ignored. For example, the 1988 Olympic record in the women's 400-meter freestyle swim would have beaten all men's times before the 1972 Olympics. In cross-country skiing, where endurance, strength and agility are key, the women's Olympic record of the fifteen-kilometer race in 1994 would have beaten all men's before 1992. In the thirty-kilometer race, the women's Olympic time in 1992 would have beaten all men's times in previous 30-kilometer races, according to the Women's Sports Foundation.

And perhaps this is also the case, once or twice anyway, in Wolf's book.

Still, the cognitive dissonance one experiences when even for a moment considering that communist thought might be the place from which human rights will spring is too much to endure. There are philosophies, nay organizations, much better suited to bring about the changes that Wolf allegedly champions.