Abby Wambach breaks my heart

Two days in a row Abby Wambach has disappointed me. First she comments on how athletes should not be responsible for knowing about the political situations in the countries in which the travel and compete (a la China this summer). And now she has given a brief interview in a Colorado paper in which she says some not so enlightened things.

First, she almost contradicts her statement about athletes and their responsibilities when she goes on about how much she enjoys getting to "expand as a human by doing community work, by really helping the cause and the movement of women's sports. It's not a burden of professional athletes, it's a responsibility. It's not easy getting on a plane and having to go do something, especially sometimes if you're a rookie and you're not getting paid."

Apparently her idea of community does not include those outside the US or even those outside of sport.

But what really broke my feminist heart was this answer in response to a question about the forthcoming Women's Professional Soccer league: We don't want to be like any other league. We want something to be special and touch people in a way that is not the same as the NFL or Major League Baseball. Time will tell and patience will be the key. Which women are almost more suited for.

It is not in Wambach's, or any female athlete's, best interest to engage in such essentialist thinking. After all, once upon a (not too long ago) time people thought women just weren't cut out for sports. It wasn't in their nature.

Yes, they should

TIME magazine came out with an article at the beginning of the month entitled "Should US Olympians Speak Out?" Well, yes, they should.

Of course the article was published before the recent earthquake which makes it difficult to critique China--the whole kicking someone while they're down kind of thing.

But let's compartmentalize a little bit and not forget the myriad of egregious policies and behaviors enacted by China that did have everyone talking not so very long ago.

Well everyone except maybe, many--or most perhaps--athletes who are either being told not to speak their opinions about the situation(s) or don't care much at all about what has been going on.

Quite annoying have been the responses of some American athletes including Paul Hamm who believes it is up to the politicians to work this one out. Well no one is asking Hamm (who has already been that the center of quite a bit of Olympic controversy, why shy away now?) to solve the problem. It would just be nice to be informed. Because it would be nice if everyone was informed--not just athletes. And athletes don't get a special pass because they are athletes.

So when Abby Wambach says "That's a lot of responsibility, to ask an athlete to not only represent your country and perform and try to win a gold meal, and to have a political view," I just cringe. (I may need to ditch that Abby Wambach t-shirt I got for Christmas this year--oh that's right--no one answered my request for an Abby Wambach t-shirt. I guess it's a good thing. I need to stop having crushes on athletes--they only disappoint me.)

Abby Wambach, you too are a citizen of the world. Get informed. Being a soccer superstar means being a role model--which I know you know--and being a good role model means being politically informed.

This article was particularly poignant in light of one of the questions I asked on my sport soc final last week: what are the obstacles to athletes being agents of change?
Well lack of interest in knowing anything about anything outside of sport. But also there is pressure from above--sponsors, governing bodies, agents, etc.--who effectively shush athletes. That hasn't stopped athletes like Joey Cheek and Jessica Mendoza though who have both not only gotten informed about world events but spoken out about them. They are, though, just a few of the mere handful of American athletes who have taken it upon themselves to do so.

Sadness

So RP calls this afternoon and says, "have you heard the BIG tennis news?" And I say "no, when did it break?" (I had been away from my computer for a few hours). But no, it was hours and hours ago that Justine Henin announced her immediate retirement. R says, well they say she's been in a slump. Yeah, a slump that any other player would kill for. She goes out on top--the only woman to ever retire in the #1 position.
As much as I thought Henin subverted some of the dominant paradigms of the game, and as much as I liked her backhand, and as much as I like saying that I remember her when she was just starting to become something other than an unknown (I saw her upset Kournikova at the US Open on Arthur Ashe many years ago when she was still wearing Le Coq Sportif*), I was never really a true fan. I never thought she was a true sportswoman and I think the whole hand up not ready yet signal at Roland Garros against Serena Williams incident really tainted her in my mind.
So that sadness referenced in this post's title is really about Annika Sorenstam's retirement--not effective immediately but coming soon--the end of the season. So me the tennis player says to RP the golfer, "Well, did YOU hear about the big news in golf?" She hadn't.
Anyway I am quite sad Sorenstam is retiring. I try not to get too attached to tennis players because sometimes they can have very short careers. (I am actually currently preparing myself mentally for Amelie Mauresmo's retirement which I feel is not that far away--though her career was certainly quite a bit longer than Henin's.) But golfers I feel stick it out for a while. It seems easier for them to cut back on their schedule if they want to reduce their travel and general wear and tear. And I mean, come on, it's Annika. Tournaments are going to let her in. But she wants to retire, clean break, and get married (again) and do other things like cook (isn't that what Babe Didrickson told the press when she needed to convince people she wasn't a lesbian?) and build golf courses and run academies and make millions and millions off her legacy. Fine. She deserves it. But I am sad that I never got to see her play in person.


*Whatever happened to Le Coq Sportif anyway? They were so hip and French and trendy for a while.

Will the new WNBA campaign work?

Doubtful. If it's aim is really to draw in male fans by pointing out to them how stupid their own comments on the women's game are (like there's no action, the league is stale, women are not physical enough, etc.) my suggestion is to try again. Not that all the reasons why men don't watch women's basketball are not completely ridiculous. They are.
But getting the WNBA's stars to verbalize them in the new ad campaign, called Think Great, probably isn't going to make many men--or many people who are not already fans--stop and say "gee, they're right. Women can take charges and play a physical and exciting game." Some of us already think women's basketball is great. And those who do not are not likely to be convinced.
The ads themselves do not especially bother me. I think they should have more action shots in them. I think when a player says "women can't take a charge" the ad should cut immediately to a player taking a charge. There are action shots but they are at the end which emphasizes the players talking and not the players playing.
Of course this seems to be in keeping with the WNBA's tactics. Focus on the players; how nice they look, how well they speak, how well they learned to apply that eye shadow in rookie training camp--and people will come out to see them play. Um, no. People will go on the internet if they are truly only interested in how a player looks. Otherwise all this preening and presentation serves as further fodder for the naysayers: how serious can a basketball player be if she's thinking about makeup all the time? (And I am sure there are many different versions of this sentiment.)
I feel for the WNBA--it's a lousy catch-22-like position to be in. But they need to figure out a better way.

Good college, bad college

Nope, I'm not talking about all the sanctions the NCAA levied on DI teams this week based on academic performance (or lack thereof). I am talking about the decisions made this time of year by colleges and universities about which famous persons will receive honorary degrees and awards.
Bad decision: Washington University in St. Louis has decided to give Phyllis Schlafly an honorary doctorate. I won't go down the list of all the anti-feminist ideas she advocates (including marital rape!) because Katha Pollitt did a great job doing so in her piece in The Nation. Needless to say, it was a bad decision. I haven't seen anything specific but I am pretty sure, given her anti-ERA campaign, she's not a fan of Title IX. (I had to throw that in because this is blog about sports and I realized that my post yesterday wasn't really about sports at all.)
Good decision: Barnard College will award Billie Jean King the Barnard Medal of Distinction this month. The award is the highest honor the college gives out.
I'm not saying that these things even out--because they don't. But I am pleased with Barnard and I am holding out hope that Washington U comes to its senses--well that ship may have sailed. I am hoping that all the pressure on them forces a reconsideration.

By the way, today the Sports Museum of American opened in NYC. King, who as a wing named after her--the Billie Jean King International Women's Sports Center, was there for the event.

Discrimination beyond the numbers

University of Colorado has made some big news over the past few years. Controversies at the school have been in abundance, including--and maybe especially--the lengthy Title IX suit brought by former students sexually assaulted by football recruits and players. That case got settled--finally--last year. And part of the settlement included the hiring of a Title IX coordinator.
And CU made big news again when they hired Title IX expert and law professor Nancy Hogshead-Makar for the position. The move, announced a few months ago now, indicates that CU is serious about changing its image and changing its campus climate (the cynic in me believes that the changes are in that order but as long as there actually is change I am not going pick nits).
But a Colorado citizen can't seem to see the discrimination because the numbers just don't add up for him.
The undergrad population at CU is 48 percent women and nationwide women comprise the clear majority in undergraduate classes, the author points out. And female instructors, he states, comprise 51 percent of those in teaching positions at the university.
Here's what the numbers don't reveal: the percentage of women who experience sexual harassment and assault; the number of women among those 51 percent of instructors who do not have tenure. Women still are denied tenure at a disproportionately higher rate than their male colleagues and are often filling adjunct or instructor positions which provide far less pay and little or no benefits longer and in greater numbers than men.
Mere majorities--which hardly even exist at CU, do not change the climate; they do not change people's ideas about women; they do not seem to reduce incidents of abuse and harassment; they do not equal anything resembling equal treatment.

Just stuff

1. If you live in Maine--well Maine is a big state--if you live near Waterville, ME, I should say, then go tomorrow at noon to The Center to see a screening of the documentary Kick Like a Girl and a chance to hear and talk to co-producer Jennifer Jordon.
It's not that I think I have a great following in Maine, this news item was just a good chance and a reminder to me that I needed to mention and extol the virtues of this film which I ordered myself and watched over a month ago.
The documentary was directed and shot (largely) by Jenny Mackenzie who is the coach of her daughter Lizzie's soccer team in Salt Lake City. The team, after beating soundly every team in their league one year decided to try their luck in the boys' division. The film chronicles their season.
And it's very compelling. I showed it in my sport sociology class and we were running out of class time and no one was moving. I turned it off when class time was up and I actually heard complaints: "But I want to see what happens. What happens?" One student actually borrowed it from me so he could write a paper on it for another class.
My only concern came at the end when the girls on the team say what they learned from playing with boys and how they adjusted and most of them just reified the idea that girls are more passive and there is less competition in an all-girls league. In other words, these girls are anomalies. But in general, the film implies, girls do not have the aggression and competitive drive to compete with boys. This serves to reinforce the status quo. Yes, some girls are good but the majority are not. The potential threat to the social order that girls may present is thus contained. Some of this gets lost among the overall feel-goodedness and the compelling commentary from the players, the parents, and the boys the girls beat along the way.
2. So in case anyone didn't see the feel-good story of the week month year (?) check out (this link is to a brief video) how some softball players helped a member of the opposing team around the bases after she hit her only career home run but tore her ACL rounding first. The sportswomanship has been lauded on blogs and in the news--national news. Of course there are those that like to point out that such a thing would never happen in men's sports and that what the women did wasn't really sportsmanship (sic) because there is nothing in that ethic that requires such efforts. Whatever. Maybe it goes beyond sports--maybe it was just a good thing to do--to help someone succeed, to reach a goal.
3. (With thanks to JB for passing this info along.) So Sports Illustrated began the swimsuit issue to fill some proverbial dead air: "it seemed like a better idea than the dog shows and winter sports in Russia we were covering," said Mark Ford, an SI exec. And they have made billions off it. So while they could have been covering women's sports--something they clearly didn't even consider, they opted instead to buy into--and profit off of--the objectification of women.