After Atalanta

Wow. I mean, seriously, I am nearly speechless after seeing this ad campaign , a poster series, for the University of Kentucky men's ice hockey team. Most of us are aware that images of sexy female athletes are used to sell women's sports. Now it seems sexy women generally are being used to sell men's sports. UK hockey (I didn't know they played hockey in Kentucky--which may be the reason why they need such a blatant ad campaign) has featured either a UK alum or Kentucky-bred woman on the posters that list the team's schedule every year since 1998 when they started with Ashley Judd. [I am so dejected that Judd would do something like this. How about helping your alma mater by giving money instead of looking seductive on a poster advertising hockey games, Ashley?] The women wear only hockey jerseys and are posed provacatively. Why can't the male hockey players do their own dirty work and pose without pants on their posters? In case you want to tell the University...

...why NHL games have these "ice girls." Check out this photo . [I wanted so badly to post it but since there is a fairly obvious "just don't even think about reproducing this image" message, I opted not to. I mean if this is what they do to compliant women, imagine what they would do to a rule breaker like me.] What do they do? Why are they girls (as in women--I know why they are referred to as girls) and not boys/men? Why are they dressed up in weird outfits? Does the crowd really appreciate them? If they weren't there would fans stop going to NHL games? It seems so acritical to say it's just "patriarchy." I am constantly reminding my students that patriarchy is not a good answer to the questions we ask about women's oppression; that we must analyze a situation. But this one just is beyond me.

Columnist Marcia Smith, who writes for the OC Register, may get this week's Debbie Downer award for her piece on the regression of women's sports. She bemoans the lack of attention (unless it's bad a la Marion Jones) female athletes are getting, the relative obscurity they are competing in--including American Paula Creamer, second on the LPGA money list, the lack of women's professional teams, and their overall "niche status." It may not be very positive, but Smith is not entirely wrong. I have spent much of February reading about the hundreds of celebrations of women and girls in sports. Last year there was considerable coverage of the 35th anniversary of Title IX. Celebrating is good. Some of the events geared towards getting girls active and interested early are great. But Smith is right when she references the glass ceiling in women's sports. That Candace Parker, who in in her last season at Tennessee, will get less press, less television coverage whe...

The articles about the fight by female ski jumpers and their allies to get the IOC to include their event in the 2010 Vancouver games may not be coming as fast and furious as a few weeks ago but that does not mean the fight is over. This week in the Canadian legislature there will be some political wranglings (that's my very imprecise term because I don't quite understand what they are actually planning on doing) to try to pressure the IOC to change its mind. And in case anyone in Canada does not know about the campaign, the organizers have bought space on two billboards in the Vancouver area that say "Let Women Ski Jump 2010" and include this phrase from the Olympic charter: Implementing the principle of equality of men and women. One of the billboards is located just across the street from the Vancouver Olympic Committee's headquarters. And there was a rally this past Sunday in Vancouver at which both American and Canadian jumpers and supporters spoke to try t...

of female athletes posing in a sexual manner I thought I would comment on this article that came out about a month ago in an Australian paper. It's about female golfers selling themselves and their sport by selling sex. And it focuses on one of the original purveyors of sexy golf: Jan Stephenson who is arguably more well-known for a picture of her naked in a tub of golf balls than for her actual golfing abilities--even though she won three majors and is considered one of the best Australian golfers alongside Karrie Webb. Here is what Stephenson has to say about sex and sports more than twenty years later: "You still have to market with sex appeal. It's not just women's golf. All sports are marketed with sex appeal. Until women support women's sport, for sport - and it's still 70% watched by men - men are visual. It's true!" Yikes! She doesn't really mean "all sports are marketed with sex appeal." She means all women's sports. And then...

Talking about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, that is. It came out over a week ago but I just don't know what to say about it--that hasn't been said before about it anyway. A colleague of mine emailed to say she looked it over and that her dissertation research on the issue--she looked at every single one!--just gets reinforced every year she picks up another edition. And sure, they've started to put actual female athletes in the issues (but we all know how I feel about female athletes a la Amanda Beard and Amy Atkins posing) but that doesn't make it any more palatable. This year was Danica Patrick's turn. She is actually the only athlete in the swimsuit issue this time around. (Thankfully the cadre of professional football cheerleaders who posed for the issue were not termed athletes and I can avoid getting into the discussion.) So JB, who tipped me off to Patrick's appearance, asked if Patrick was an athlete or a model. The quick and dirty answer is: sh...

...for bringing up this issue again but the controversy engendered by the "rules" at St. Mary's Academy in Kansas (sorry for the initial mistake placing this event in Missouri--the taglines all cited Missouri) just keeps growing. My students brought it up in class last night and they thought it was pretty ridiculous (even the one who was raised and went to a conservative Catholic high school herself) that St. Mary's would not let a woman referee a boys' game. But the news of the discrimination--the illegal kind, not the discrimination that is a matter of taste or preference--has gone overseas. This article is actually helpful in providing more information about what happened in 2004 when St. Mary's refused to play a high school team whose roster included a young woman. It also shares that the game in which Michelle Campbell was not allowed to ref due only to her gender was completed with a school administrator serving as the ref. Not sure what the Kansas State...

...where can you? A Californian man had his trial gym membership revoked when he wore a t-shirt that read "I need a man or a date" and printed his phone number on it. It's bold but I've heard a lot of stories about all sorts of queer behavior in the gym and frankly this seems tame. I mean he isn't coming on to anybody--he's waiting for someone to come to him. Most of us are performing something in the gym--masculinity, femininity, butchness, femmeness--because we know we're being watched (and we know that because we're doing some of the watching). David Kano was just being a little more obvious than most and that is what upsets people. Of course, he did join a gym called the California Family Fitness Center. Not that I am excusing the gym's actions but any place that has the word Family in it might not be the best place to pick up dates if you're a gay man looking for another single gay man. [The Family Fitness Center didn't seem to be too...

Well now I am really confused. In my last post I noted that Cal-Berkeley's Feb 16th game against Arizona was also a GLBT Pride Day event. Women's Hoops Blog did note the event though I suspect someone tipped them off to it because it was posted a little late (Sunday) and didn't say anything new such as how the event actually went off. I went to the Cal Bears website looking for a mention of it and found only, in a pre-game press release, an announcement that Saturday's game was a Kids' Day event where children get in for a reduced admission price and can participate in pre-game activities. Not that they shouldn't or couldn't have a Kids' Day and Pride Day run concurrently but I would think there would be some objection to it that Cal may just not want to deal with. No word of the event in Cal's own post-game coverage (they won 66-45 by the way). And I found nothing in any of the game recaps including the article in The Daily Californian . One could a...

A few days ago I said I would address the Think Pink thing--again. That was kind of a lie. Not just because the post was supposed to be up two days ago (I got caught up in breaking news) but because I am not going to go on another tirade about all these breast cancer events and how they are tied to women's sports and all that. Nope, I am going to talk about another event in women's basketball that shows some teams aren't just thinking pink--they're thinking in rainbows. Today at UC-Berkeley the women's basketball team takes on the University of Arizona and today's game is not a Think Pink event--it's GLBT Pride Day. Pat Griffin over at her blog, It Takes a Team!, writes about the event , its significance and her belief that this is first of its kind in intercollegiate athletics. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find any press about it and the link Griffin provides to the media poster at the Cal site isn't working for me. But I am eager to read the coverage...

The title is a little general and I am sure does not apply to all Catholic institutions everywhere but I think this story* about a Catholic academy's refusal to let a woman referee a boys' basketball game speaks volumes; mostly about the strong connection--one we often refuse to see unless it smacks us in the face--between religion and sport. Well this one was of the smacking variety. The school, St. Mary's Academy in Kansas City, MO (apparently it's okay to name your school after a woman so long as no actual, living women are able to exert too much power within it) would not speak to reporters about why they would not let referee Michelle Campbell work the game but according to other referees a woman in a position of authority over boys was against the academy's beliefs. [The story notes that this is not your run-of-the-mill Catholic school; they adhere to older (read more discriminatory and reactionary) versions of Catholicism and are run by the Society of St. Piu...

I started this post a few weeks ago and just hadn't finished it. But Justine Henin's recent comments about politics and sport got me back to it. This article was focused on her complaint lodged with the WTA over Yuri Sharapov's cutting of the throat gesture during Henin's match against Maria Sharapova. Interesting story in itself though it seems nothing will come of it--officially that is. Though I have to imagine that Larry Scott WTA CEO will be having a chat with Sharapov about his courtside behavior. But the second half is about Henin's recent comments that Olympics athletes should not involve themselves with the debate over human rights issues in China. "Politics and sport must remain separate" she said. She said she will be focusing on defending her gold medal and other Olympians should be equally focused on the "job" at hand which is being an athlete. What kind of blinders are athletes wearing that allows them not to see how thoroughly entw...

There have been a barrage of Think Pink events coming across my email (more on that tomorrow) so I have not been paying all that much attention. So that's why I kind of overlooked the press release I received about the 11th annual celebration of Women's Sports Day at St. Johns University.* That is until I saw who was the keynote speaker: Lisa Leslie-Lockwood. Wait, who is this Leslie-Lockwood? I honestly thought there was someone out there--not the WNBA star--who was named Lisa Leslie-Lockwood. Because I know who Lisa Leslie is. I hope most people do. But in case you don't, the press release provides this description: Lisa Leslie-Lockwood, a WNBA all-star known for championing women's issues, will mark Women in Sports Day at St. John's with a presentation on the importance of early screening and detection. Obviously one of those women's issues is not the importance of challenging historic constructions and present-day manifestations of women as the property of m...

I may have been one of the few to criticize Rusty Hardin, Roger Clemens's lawyer, for his remarks likening the allegations against the pitcher to the Duke lacrosse situation. But I am not the only one who finds the things that come out of his mouth inappropriate. Apparently Hardin has not made friends with some of the legislators doing the inquiry into the Mitchell Report because of public statements he made suggesting that if the lead investigator--the same guy who looked into the BALCO scandal--messed with Clemens he would be asking for trouble. Rep. Henry Waxman said that Hardin should be careful as he would not want to be accused of intimidating a federal officer trying to do his job. All the evidence may not be in regarding the extent of steroids in baseball, but there's a whole lot of testosterone flying around right now.

It's been about one year since cheerleaders in New York state have been required to attend both girls' and boys' sporting events. And it seems that people--at least the ones in and around Utica, NY --are getting used to it; they may even like it. According to senior cheerleader Rebecca Kuehnle, "At first, we were all freaked out by it because we were cheering for our own sex, It’s kind of nice to cheer for a winning team, no offense to the boys. It’s fun.” Plus, now that the cheerleaders are not attending away games and getting home super late they have time for their homework. I wonder if any of those assignments are about questioning gender roles in our heteronormative society... Given the initial reaction of Kuehnle's and other cheerleaders and the evidence I see in my own women's studies classes, I don't think such things are being taught in high schools. I recommend a curriculum change so we can avoid future freak-outs.

This morning, NPR's Morning Edition was reporting on the doping in baseball/Mitchell report brouhaha currently starring Roger Clemens and his former athletic trainer, Brian McNamee, and, of course, their respective lawyers. McNamee has produced needles and gauze that he says he used when injecting Clemens with steroids and HGH. He kept them in a Fed Ex box for three years. Ewwww. I thought it would be easy to discredit such evidence. Much easier, than say tennis players and cyclists who cry about sample tampering and improper testing methods during official drug testing. I mean this guy kept needles and bloody gauze in a cardboard box for three years. But apparently I am wrong because NPR called up a law professor at Stanford, presumably one who is an expert in the rules of evidence, and he said a judge would admit it. And this leads now to a battle of reputations as evidenced by Clemens's defamation suit against McNamee where the needles and gauze could come to the defense of ...

Today is National Girls and Women in Sports Day. There are thousands of events going around the country today and in the coming days and weeks as part of the celebration. Organizations like the American Association of University Women and the Women's Sports Foundation, college teams, and local community groups sponsor various activities and speakers or offer admission to games. Before I get critical, I want to say that a lot of these are great events exposing girls to higher levels of competition as well as the different types of sports available. Often events include interaction with older female athletes creating a role model/mentoring relationship. But some of the rhetoric around this day is a little troubling. For example, in Syracuse, NY this weekend the Orange are turning pink . Yep, the women's basketball team to celebrate NGWSD along with engaging in a breast cancer awareness campaign will be wearing pink t-shirts during warm-up and pink shoelaces throughout the game. W...

The University of Colorado recently settled the Title IX lawsuit brought against it by two women who were sexually assaulted at a football recruiting party. The women believed the university had enough knowledge of the situation that they should have done something about it. In other words, powers-that-be knew there was sex and alcohol and general bad behavior and they, at the very least, chose to look the other way and may have even encouraged these parties to some degree. This story was big news for years . It seemed sexual harassment and assault became part of the culture at the institution. Former Rams football player Katie Hnida spoke and wrote about her own such experiences and though she never filed her own lawsuit, she did provide testimony as to the climate at CU and how her situation was ignored by higher ups. Turns out that CU was not the only institution where athletes were getting in trouble and the people in charge were letting it go. According to a recent article in the ...

We don't talk about fat a whole lot in sport, certainly in comparison to other topics. There are discussions about the connection--both real and imagined--between the obesity epidemic and sport/physical activity. It's an interesting silence, or near silence, given our belief that athletes are not fat despite the fact, for example, that over half of the players in the NFL qualify as obese--some of those morbidly so. The issue of weight, though, is becoming much discussed in society in general--again mostly in the context of an obesity epidemic and the negative health consequences of being overweight. Scholars are engaged in fatness studies these days. And it seems appropriate that sport studies is engaging with the issue of weight and fat as well. Last year there was an interesting discussion in women's college basketball about players' weights which started to transcend that particualr sport as we talked about the issue of female athletes being weighed by coaches, disor...

Laura Pappano and Eileen McDonough, authors of the recently released Playing with the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports ,* have an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor this week. They are good writers and they make compelling arguments. But they also make generalizations followed by asterik-like comments that we have to take a little more seriously than they seem to. For example, they go through all the arguments and possibilities for co-ed sporting experiences. And they are right. Professional golf could have co-ed tournaments. It would be good sport and good entertainment to watch the top female and male players go against one another in a pairs competition. (Of course you might actually have to start paying the women similarly which is probably a larger impediment to that prospect than women's alleged physical inferiority.) And it's true that not every man can outperform every woman--no matter the skill in question. But their asterik--that it is likely that th...