Feminism

Today, International Women's Day, we honor women—something we should in fact do every day, without prodding.

Still, it's nice to have a special day to celebrate women. I was pleased to find this beautiful tribute created for the occasion: Women of the World ~ Divine Goddesses:

Yesterday, I predicted the Lindsey Vonn-SI cover controversy, despite a brief lull, wasn't over yet. And you're about to see why. Say what you will about Vonn, but she is making the most of her "Olympic moment"—as well she should. This is a clever woman who knows how to take advantage of opportunities; earlier this month, she opened, in timely fashion, her own online store.

What sparked the controversy was a cover. But what stirs the embers now is inside; namely, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I'm not naive enough to think for a moment that sexuality and aesthetics have ever been divorced from athletics, or that they should be. Thus I'm more often than not pleased when SI includes female athletes in its swimsuit edition (which is usually dominated by hackneyed images of weedy, yet nonetheless busty, "supermodels").

But neither am I naive enough to think that female athletes, when they do appear, are always presented fairly, that is, in a way consistent with their status as world-class athletes: photos airbrushed to hide muscles, submissive poses, and so forth are forever a problem. Diversity (are all great female athletes blond-haired and white?—sometimes one wonders) has been a problem too; but not one without welcome exceptions, e.g., Venus and Serena Williams.

So what to make of all this? It isn't so much that female athletes are being "sexualized" (for you can't make one what one already is), it is the way in which their sexuality is presented. Too often their athleticism and strength is downplayed, or hidden altogether. It's as though we as a society still can't, in 2010, appreciate that a woman can be attractive and powerful both at once.

A few thoughts to keep in mind, anyway. Now may the tumult resume:

An aphorism of James Thurber's (a takeoff on Wordsworth's "All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity") fittingly introduces this post. Now that the brouhaha over the Lindsey Vonn Sports Illustrated cover has calmed somewhat (but only for a time, I predict), perhaps we are in a better place to enjoy a little satire, this cute video produced by "Mom2nat":

National Girls and Women in Sports Day makes its annual visit today. I marked the occasion last year with an op-ed piece penned by WNBA President Donna Orender.

But this year, thanks to the crew at Women Talk Sports, it is a slideshow of photos from the past year in women's sports, images exciting and affecting, loud and quiet—moments captured in the lives of girls and women laced with the joys and lessons that come with playing sports:

Bowling isn't a sport I follow much, but this week it is on my mind, like so many others, thanks to Kelly Kulick and her win Sunday at the PBA Tournament of Champions. A sport that has been dominated by men as much as any other now has its first female champion. Billie Jean King gives voice to the significance of the event: "Kelly Kulick's win today at the PBA Tour's Tournament of Champions is not only historic, it serves as a motivational and inspirational event for girls and women competing at all levels all around the world."

For female athletes, old and young alike, this is a glimpse of the not-so-distant future in sports: women routinely competing against men, often victoriously.

Kulick talks about her big win with CBS's Harry Smith:

Watching the Australian Open this past week has reminded me just how annoying it is that tennis, a sport which has in recent memory generally been fair to female athletes, still makes a fundamental distinction between men's and women's play that blatantly patronizes female athletes. Why do men typically play five-set matches but women always three?

In truth, I don't like five-set matches, at least not for routine tournament play. I'd prefer a system in which all matches are three-set, except maybe the final. But whatever the system, have it the same for men and women both.

Rant over, now an aside. This morning I watched Serena Williams defeat Samantha Stosur, avenging her loss from when they last met. Great tennis players they are, but I think an arm-wrestling match might be even more entertaining—these two athletes have some guns!

In an interview full of revelations not altogether surprising, yet nonetheless disturbing, world-champion hurdler Jana Rawlinson (nee Pittman) tells Woman's Day that in a span of only 14 months she got breast implants and then had them removed. It is a classic example of what is perhaps best called the ugly paradox. Snippets from her interview throw into relief this paradox:

"When I looked in the mirror I just saw muscled arms, broad shoulders and big, strong legs," she says. "These are assets I need to run well, but they didn’t make me feel like an attractive woman.

"There are a couple of girls – who I won’t name – in world athletics who are Olympic champions, but they look like men – and I don’t want to be like that. I feel masculine enough as it is. That’s what pushed me into getting the first surgery for the enhancement."

While female athletes (and women generally) feel out of place in athletic bodies there can be little hope of raising the status of women in sport: it's hard to be a superior athlete without an athletic body. Thus by needlessly holding herself back the female athlete gives comfort to those who view her and her sport as inferior (always DIII to men's DI). I sometimes see talk of troubled trends in women's sports (persistent problems, in truth), yet here is the too often ignored root of it all. Progress will remain arduous until this last, most inimical hurdle is cleared.

I'm glad that Rawlinson decided to have the implants removed. I only hope that the deeper lesson doesn't endure unlearned:

Jana’s breasts went to a DD when she was expecting her son Cornelis, 3, and while she was breastfeeding. "Then I felt like a different person, soft and womanly, and I absolutely fell in love with my big boobs."

My little contribution to a "Best of '09" series by Women Talk Sports bloggers is a selection of favorites from this blog. I don't expect you'll find a particular mood or theme, less so a standard of quality, but rather, I hope, a few morsels that provoke reflection or simply entertain:

The story of Tina Lockwood

A Kind of Grace

Super shenanigans

Esther Williams

A lesson from the past

Athlete or sex symbol? A false dichotomy

A Wonder Woman of color?

Aneta Florczyk: setting records, inspiring women

Female Muscle: a little schooling for its detractors

Ruminating on the big fight

DC shakeup. The ugly paradox

The Body Issue

Advancing women's sports: largely a bootstrap process

Bridgett "Baby Doll" Riley and her art of violence


Happy New Year!


More "Best of '09" from other WTS bloggers:

Best of '09: Forming a community, WomenTalkSports.com

The "Best" of 2009 and the State of Girls & Women in Sports

Best of '09: A Fresh Meat’s Perspective

Best of '09 – A Year for Women in Wake

2009 Salute to Women in Sports

Victories and Failures in Women's Sports in 2009, or #FTW and #FAIL (Hot or Not for us old-timers)

Best of 2009: The Humble Emergence of Tanisha Wright

Best of the Best of 2009

President Obama has, this once anyway, done pretty much what he said he would do when he ran for president: He is sending more troops to Afghanistan to win the "good war." Leaders in Europe seem pleased with President Obama's speech; but not so pleased that they jump at the chance to help. (Perhaps their reserve in such matters explains why they can afford things like socialized medicine [well, mostly afford], whereas the US teeters on the edge of bankruptcy even without.)

On the other hand, Michael Moore is upset. I have little sympathy. Moore's hurt is that experienced by any fool who looks only to politics and politicians for answers to the world's problems.

No friend of war am I. If I had my way, the US wouldn't be involved in so many conflicts. But neither am I a pacifist (a morally suspect position if ever there was one). Sometimes a stand must be taken; it is indeed the right thing to do. Those who do so with honor and courage are worthy of our highest esteem. Let us not overlook, then, the warrior women who have fought and continue to fight courageously:

Reebok has a new line of shoes, and of course new commercials to promote them. Called Easytone, the shoes condition a woman's butt and legs, so we are told anyway. No gym. No workouts. Just wear shoes. Snake oil? Perhaps. But that's not what I'm concerned with today.

What bothers me is the image peddled to women as the ideal. A "toned" look suggests, to me and many others, I'm sure, an athletic physique. Maybe not a bodybuilder's, but manifestly athletic. What is presented instead, though, is the same soft, smooth, size 2 look we are informed constantly is the feminine ideal. Is this model's physique really much different from that seen in a thousand other advertisements?—



Contrasted with that of fitness athlete Jelena Abbou seen in this Fahrenheit commercial, it becomes obvious how paltry Easytone's "toned" look is:



In the Fahrenheit commercial we see a woman lucidly strong and athletic, yet strikingly attractive by any reasonable standard. Why can't there be more like this?

Tasked with garnering more fans, advocates for women's sports might understandably think an online community of feminists a good place to reach out. And in fact a WTS blogger tried this recently—with, at best, mixed results. I will here give the essence of what happened, and suggest where discourse about women in sport must go to effect genuine progress. First, though, I should insist that you read, if you haven't already, the relevant post and its attendant comments at feministing.com.

From the first we see signs of trouble:

I'm not interested in sports, I don't like playing them, I don't like watching them, I don't like talking about them or listening to people go on and on about them. I don't have to have anything to do with them if I don't want to. Just because I share a common genital feature with people who like sports doesn't mean I have to like them too or go to their games or promote their leagues.—Eresbel

Nope. I will continue to ignore the WNBA and NBA equally. I have no obligation as a woman to watch someone throw a ball into a hoop.—UnHingedHips

And it does seem to me a rather difficult sell to promote women's sports merely as a cause. The opportunity for women to play sports, yes; but to expect that someone by nature uninterested in sport is going to altruistically follow women's sports is probably unreasonable.

Then, the crux of the matter:

I'm a football fan, I don't like basketball. I do love gymnastics, track and tennis. Though I think they have a right to play I don't think they have a right to play indefinitely for an empty court and make no profit.—Phenicks

And, while WNBA players are extremely talented, it is a little like watching minor league baseball -- which is why it doesn't make my list of sports to follow, and why I doubt most men will ever care.—KBZ

Who cares how much effort people put into sports? I may train all day at a sport for my whole life but if I don't match up nobody's going to pay to watch me play. If effort counted for anything Rudy Ruettiger would be in the Hall of Fame. He's not, because he wasn't a good enough athlete.—dawn_of_the_bread

It simply won't do to think that women's sports can prosper as a cause or by fiat. Fighting for opportunities and fair media representation is something we can and should all do, but ultimately it is up to the female athletes to attract fans and dollars to women's sports.

It would be an error, though, to assume that women are reluctant sports fans. They in fact shop for their sports entertainment much as men do. The NFL's growth in recent years, for example, has been largely the result of attracting more female fans; nowadays, women make up more than 40 percent of the NFL's fan base. (Ironically, this may partly be a consequence of more women having played sports in their youth.)

As an aside, a worthwhile suggestion for the WNBA:

The WNBA needs to focus on smaller cities with no (or very few) major professional sports teams or high-powered college sports teams. I live in Houston -- with the Rockets, Texans, Cowboys, Astros, Longhorns, Aggies (etc., etc.), the Comets hardly ever even made the evening news. They were basically drowned out by other, far more popular, sporting franchises in the area.—KBZ

One I have put forth as well (viz. here).

It makes sense to end this post by addressing female athletes. What can you, the female athlete, do to elevate your status and that of women's sports? Primarily three things: 1) Continue to push yourself and train hard. 2) Ignore those who doubt your athletic potential simply because you are a woman, for they have it all wrong anyway. 3) Do not allow erroneous notions about femininity to hold you back in your training or otherwise.

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.

DC shakeup. No, not that DC. I refer here to DC Comics, which now has a new name—DC Entertainment—and a new president. This overhaul by parent company Warner Bros. bodes well for a forthcoming Wonder Woman film. Another sign that things are looking up for the Amazon: she now has her own forum at Comic Book Resources.

The ugly paradox. Caster Semenya's story, though regrettable, has at least given rise to worthwhile, occasionally enlightened, media commentary. Among the best I've seen is "Women in sports: The ugly paradox," a piece that throws into relief what is the nub of the story, and the bane of all female athletes: "They say the Semenya case shows that an old, ugly paradox is alive and well in women's sport: The same giant quadriceps and bulky shoulders that can clinch championships make athletes look 'unfeminine' in the eyes of the world. And that can be a difficult reality for many women."

Nasty as it was, Serena's tantrum at the US Open isn't as troubling as what she says about her arms in an interview for People: "I think they're too muscular. They're too thick," tennis champion Serena Williams said of her ripped arms in an Aug. 27 interview with People Magazine. "I know that toned arms are in now. Look at Michelle Obama. ... I'm like, 'keep wearing strapless dresses!' But I don't like mine."

Serena's is merely a representative case. The problem is in fact societal. That Serena sees her muscular physique as something better shunned isn't unusual. But when one of the world's most accomplished female athletes, ever, says as much in public, the fallacy is perpetuated—given life anew to burden the next generation of female athletes.

Sad it is to think that Serena apparently cannot reconcile her muscles with the women's fineries she sells on HSN; the same muscles, to continue the paradox theme, that helped make her a famous athlete, famous enough to have her own line of merchandise to peddle on a shopping network.