After Atalanta

1. I knew there were a lot of regulations around the size of women's bathing suits in beach volleyball and also where logos can be placed, how big, etc. I did not know though that six centimeters is the maximum height for the sides of the bikini bottoms. Guess shorts--of any length--just are not an option even if it's a chilly day at the beach. Guesses on the maximum length of the men's suits??? 2. It was not until 1998 that a revision of the Amateur Sports Act (originally passed in 1978) forced the United States Olympic Committee to fund Paralympic athletes. When I went to Salt Lake in 2002 there was a lot of advertising of the Paralympic Games that were to follow the Olympics. I witnessed what I thought was a strong commitment to encouraging spectators to attend. For some reason I thought this had always been the case. Guess I was a little naive. Also, it seems that the IOC doesn't just dislike the gays using their name. The IOC has forced the Paralympics to change ...

The other day a friend who plays on a rec league women's ice hockey team showed me an email she had received from a fellow teammate. Part of the email referenced their coach's upcoming birthday. The team is trying to come up with something to give him. This was the suggestion of the player (I have edited out the names): As for [coach's] birthday, I think all the youngsters (X, Y, Z, etc) could give him sex. She goes on to explain how this would be a treat for the coach and also for his wife, another player, apparently so she could be relieved of her duty to "give him sex." I probably don't have to explain that my reaction was marked by extreme disgust and disappointment. My reaction was also likely made somewhat more severe by the sports sociology class I have been auditing this semester. It has been a very odd experience for me, coming from a women's studies background, to be in a class where my radical feminist views are in the minority. (I realize of c...

Sports scholar Jo Ann Buysse continues, in the issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online that I have been discussing here to employ the metaphor Catherine Stimpson created in her address that prompted this journal to devote the issue to The Cultural Value of Sport: Title IX and Beyond. I have, as I mentioned previously, enjoyed the way Stimpson’s respondents have taken her creation of the Atalanta Syndrome and expanded the mythological metaphor in productive and meaningful ways. Buysse is no exception. The Atalantan distraction, i.e. the golden apple that entices the contemporary female athlete, Buysee argues is the highly gendered—or femininized—“heterosexy” images of female athletes. Athletes see them but are, of course, also their subject. Buysse does not interrogate this latter aspect, the female athletes who pose for these images, which disappointed me some. I realize the term “choice” become a little blurry when we discuss whether female athletes, who have far less earning power t...

I received an email yesterday afternoon from a teammates seeking a sub for doubles last night. The reason: "My husband is working late and I don't want to leave the kids home alone on a school night." Studies show that women's participation in sports drops off significantly when they enter adulthood. Why? Because of husbands and kids. This is especially true when the women are in a lower socioeconomic class. (Not the situation of my teammate, however.) I am not blaming the husband or the kids or my teammate here. But it's important to remember that despite the enormous growth of women's sports, things haven't changed all that much in other realms of society that enable all women to participate freely.

This past weekend there was some naughty behavior on a football field down in Florida. No, not the usual bad behavior and unsportsmanlike conduct that is ubiquitous on football fields. In the game between University of Miami and Florida International a bench-clearing brawl--ok not everyone was involved in it-- more typical of baseball or hockey, broke out when UM took a 14-0 lead in the game. Surprisingly (well I was surprised anyway) the game was only interrupted briefly while "order" was restored. But the severity of the actions of the players involved drew one-game suspensions from the ACC commissioner. Later the punishments got a bit more severe with some players being suspended indefinitely. I don't know the timeline of the events but I suspect that the reasoning by the powers-that-be went something like this: bad behavior by football players in a public setting demands action but not too much action because this is a Div. I football program after all so one-game sus...

Watching the final round of the Samsung World Championship yesterday afternoon I realized that the commentators do not talk about the personal lives of the golfers all that much. I never hear anything about Annika Sorenstam's of the course life. Even when she was going through her divorce the commentators were very respectful of her personal privacy. Usually we hear about a player's siblings and parents, where they went to college (if they did so), and where they live and practice. I am not really advocating for more discussion about player's lives during tournament coverage, I am just surprised that there is so little. Why am I surprised? Because tennis commentators, who enjoy talking non-stop and unlike golf commentators, they cannot seem to stick to the game at hand. For example, every time Maria Sharapova plays one can hear the story of her childhood: her immigration from Siberia, the mother she left behind, showing up at Bollettieri's with her father and no money. ...

Yeah, I am not actually going to answer that question using my own personal thoughts on the matter. I remain pretty ambivalent about the debate. But the issue has come up again. This time in Darien, Connecticut which recently underwent a review by the Office of Civil Rights because a Title IX complaint was filed by a parent of a female swimmer alleging inequity in participation numbers and scheduling (the latter was deemed unfounded by OCR). OCR found a 1.9 percent discrepancy in examining the ratio of females in the district/female athletes and boys/male athletes. This is pretty small. Feeling the need to explain, the superintendent of schools said that if cheerleaders had been counted, the district would have achieved proportionality--one test (out of three) for measuring compliance. But cheerleaders are not counted. Darien is not alone in this. Many institutions would meet the proportionality prong if cheerleaders could be counted. So is cheerleading a sport? According to the articl...

Words uttered by...guesses? Some misogynist male perhaps? A man in power trying to assert his masculinity? Nope--it was our female coxswain who said this to our boat this morning during what otherwise was a quite enjoyable row on a very serene and mild morning. Yes, on our last push back to the dock we were instructed to "send this bitch"--the bitch being the boat I would assume. I couldn't think too long about it at the time because despite the ability of many Olympic-level crews to make it look nearly effortless, it actually requires an amazing amount of concentration--no matter what level. Thinking about it after I got out of the boat, I remained somewhat shocked, slightly offended and generally perturbed. I think it has something to do with the sexually charged atmosphere of sports. I had, until this point, not experienced crew as sexually charged but I figured that was because I escaped some of this because I am in a community rowing program. Our coxswain does both c...

This post is part of a "series" I am doing in which I comment on some of the articles in the most recent edition of The Scholar and Feminist Online whose theme was The Cultural Value of Sport: Title IX and Beyond. In my first post , I commented on Catherine Stimpson's address about the Atalanta Syndrome. In this one I turn to the essay by Margaret Carlisle Duncan entitled "The Promise of Artemis." I have liked that many of the authors have continued to employ mythological analogies as they respond to Stimpson's lecture. Duncan invokes Artemis, the woman/goddess who raised Atalanta after her father ditched her in the woods. Artemis taught Atalanta the skills--mental and physical--that she took back with her to her father's kingdom where she engaged in the foot races for which she is best known. (Alas Artemis did not teach her how to avoid the temptation of the golden apple--apples seem to be the downfall of many a woman in pagan and Christian mythology.)...

Anyone think that maybe the discussion about eating disorders needs to expand beyond the sports of gymnastics and figure skating? Hantuchova, who admitted to have some weight issues (I don't think I ever heard the words "eating" and "disorder" in the same sentence--I believe it was explained as a sort of accident--oops, look I forgot to eat while I was training intensely), looks pretty thin again. And I don't know Morigami so I can't compare this picture with anything, but she looks fairly frail as well. Besides Hantuchova's weight loss the only other time I heard about anorexia on the tour was a brief mention about Carling Bassett-Seguso (blast from the past, eh?) and I believe she mentioned it after her professional career had ended. (Here is an interview with Bassett-Seguso and Nick Bollettieri about Hantuchova's weight loss. I don't see it as a rampant problem, but still these women do not look healthy to me.

As I have mentioned previously, I recently joined a women's USTA league team. We haven't started playing matches yet but the schedule just came out which was the topic of convseration at an after-practice dinner the other night. The schedule is always a source of complaint. We have a long season (October to May) but there are only 8 matches because the USTA regional coordinator has divided us into two "flights" rather than having all 14 teams play one another. This is annoying but not especially egregious or gender-related, as far as we can tell anyway, at least not in comparison to the days and times we play. Our matches are all on Sundays usually in the late mornings or afternoons. Match scheduling has been an issue in the past. The women in the league do not always like playing on Sundays. The men play Saturdays--why? Because the men have to watch football on Sundays. This is ridiculous for so many reasons. First, all men and only men watch football? Second, you ca...