After Atalanta

I tuned in to both the National Pro Fastpitch championship games between the ChicagoBandits and the Akron Racers AND the All-Star game that followed eager to hear the commentators' takes on the release of the IOC vote which ousted softball from the 2012 Olympic Games. All throughout the Little League World Championships and, prior to that, the coverage of the World Cup, commentators spoke about the importance of fighting to reinstate the game, the numbers of the girls who would be without a dream if it got taken away, and the fervor of the fan response to the vote. I mean one vote!! And the rumor of confusion over what delegates were voting for and that the abstention was Jim Easton , chairman of Easton sports, the baseball/softball equipment supplier who abstained because of conflict of interest. (Turns out he recused himself prior to voting--he was not the delegate whgo abstained.) What fodder for the commentators. And yet not a word was spoken. How can this be? I asked myself (...

Being able to blog about commercials that are aried during women's sports events combines my most favorite subjects for analysis: women's sports and pop culture. So two commercials struck me while I was watching today's coverage of the Wendy's Championship for Children . One was for the home security system ADP (which also sponsors rookie Paula Creamer) and the other for DSW, which is a big sponsor of women's golf and several, at least, of its players. The ADP commercial has a faux reenactment of a very suburban-looking woman (who is providing the voice-over) waking up in the middle of the night to her ADP alarm going off. Everything is fine, of course, because she has ADP and we see her huddling her children close to her, assuring them everything is going to be fine. What is conspicuously missing is the man, as in her husband, not the ADP guy who answers the phone. We don't know why there is no man: is she a divorcee, widow, wife of frequently traveling busines...

Though my primary interest in gender and sports lies with athletes and often the organizing bodies to which they are beholden, I also pay some attention to the gendered aspects of sports leadership/administration, including the cause of sports officials (referees, umpires, etc.) an issue I have highlighted in previous blog entries . In part, my interest is in the overall lack of interest this issue receives, so often overshadowed by the equity issues among athletes that predominate the discussion. But even the casual observer (OK maybe you have to have a general awareness of gender equity issues at-large) can see that men officiate men's games/matches/events and most often do so in women's events too. I don't remember seeing one female umpire at the Little League Softball World Series. This practice is also very engrained in professional tennis. While women do serve as linespeople in both men's and women's matches, they are rarely in the chair as the match umpire an...

I have tried to distance myself from the debate over the sexualization of female athletes primarily because I am just not sure where I stand on it. Historically, the fear of sexualization of female athletes, especially young females athletes, has been used to limit women's sporting opportunities. The argument that men would leer and lust after girls in skirts playing basketball (when they wore skirts to do so) didn't seem to me a very good reason to keep girls from playing--I think paternalistic is the right word here. Allowing girls to play might actually demonstrate that they are more than sex objects; or at least make the leering men forget that for 40 minutes or so. But while opportunities have increased (because of legislation mostly) the leering men seem to still be around. So the strategy that showing the world that women are athletes has not successfully mitigated their status as sex objects. Part of my ambiguity over the debate though stems from the fact that many of t...

As I mentioned below, I caught some of the women's AVP final at Manahattan Beach this weekend where Kerri Walsh and Misty May won something like their 7th title of the year. Congrats are in order of course. But I just wouldn't be my analytical/critical self if I didn't find something about gender/cultural norms that arose to blog about. There seems to be some confusion about what Misty's name is. She did get married and is apparently going by May Treanor. The commentators called her Misty May and the graphics lacked consistency showing her as May Treanor as well as just May. I could go on and on (and on) about women changing their names when they marry and the huge problems with that practice but that's not really what this blog about. So instead I will just focus on the huge problems I have when famous female athletes change their names. Sure there's the cultural reasons all marrying women face but because these athletes have already established themselves in t...

I caught some of the beach volleyball finals at Manhattan Beach this weekend. I saw the amount of money that women's winners May and Walsh won (around $28,000 which they have to split) but didn't watch the men's award ceremony. So I went looking around to see if beach volleyball has the same sometimes problem that professional tennis has: unequal prize money in some tournaments. It was a difficult search (which blows my theory that google can solve any problem) but I finally found an article specific to the Manhattan Beach tournament which stated that the founder believed in equality between men and women. Good news of course. But I am still not sure that it is a universal standard. Anyway this got me thinking about the reasoning behind differential prize money. In tennis the argument has been that 1) men play longer (3 out of 5 sets vs. 2 of 3 for women) and 2) that more people want to watch men. The problem with the first reason is that only in the grand slams do men play...

As a brief addendum to my observations about the lack of discussion about larger softball players I add this tidbit: While glancing up briefly to the Little League World Series (baseball, not softball) as it was playing in the background, I noticed an interesting discrepancy in the personal "stats" displayed on the screen. When a player is up at bat, on the screen appears the player's name, age, height, some personal fact or interest (favorite team, actor, movie, etc.) and weight . Weight was missing from the stats shown during the L.L. Softball World Series. Why is this? Are we worried about scarring girls by displaying their weight on national television? If so, why doesn't that same concern apply to boys? In a warped form of "equality," we see incidences of eating disorders rising among boys and men. Of course the issues can differ. Though larger boys might feel embarassed by possible excess weight (or the percpetion of excess), it seems more likely that...

[with thanks to amateur for finding this article for me] While this particular event/incident is a little outdated, having occurred at the summer games in Athens last year, I think the issue is still relevant. And since I am still on my bring-softball-back soapbox, I will relate the issue of cheerleaders to softball. You just wait and see... So last year at the Olypics the FIVB, the international governing body of volleyball, hired a team of cheerleaders (actually they were referred to as a dance team) to perform at the men's and women's beach volleyball matches. And of course this caused controversy--and rightly so I may add. I am not going to enter into a debate on whether cheerleading is a sport or not--not yet anyway. But I am going to argue some of the points presented in the article which claims that the women were there to keep the crowd entertained between points. Umm...I am not an avid volleyball watcher but I think the time between points is pretty short. And they ga...

As I write I am watching the championship game of the Little League Softball World Series (special thanks to houseguest Kevin for hooking up the wireless at our house to enable this multi-tasking). So here are some of the things I have learned so far. 1. There might not be crying in baseball but there is some crying in softball. The starting pitcher for the CT team got a little weepy when she was pulled in the second inning. But the point is that crying can be a good thing. The pitcher went to first base and has played well since. In such a high pressure game maybe a few tears are a good release. A few years ago at the French Open American Ashley Harkelroad had a commanding lead in the final set and let it slip until the set was even. A dejected Harkelroad, during the changeover, had a good cry in her towel and then came back to win the match. 2. That as much as I hate the hyperbole about little girls' dreams being dashed by the removal of softball from the Olympic games, this ser...

It's not a stretch to say that we (society/media) have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with female athletes' bodies. I feel I don't even have to give the myriad of examples here (though I will upon request). So as I have been watching softball this spring and summer I have been fascinated by the lack of discussion about the larger women who are the big hitters on a team. They have a body shape that in any other context would be deemed overweight but use their size to their advantage in hitting and frequently play first base. When they get on base after a hit they are immediately replaced by pinch runners. In watching the Little League Softball World Series I see the trend exists even at the youth level. I guess what I am wondering is why, in our thin&fit-obsessed society is this phenomenon not discussed. And what is the effect on these girls/women? I imagine there must be some kind of double consciousness. On the field these girls are often the heroes of the game or at t...

Well I came back from vacation just in time to catch the final rounds of the Little League Softball World Championships. But I apparently missed some controversy. During tonight's game pitting the Asia-Pacific team against the East team (from Orange, CT) commentators mentioned and cameras panned to East team's centerfielder, Taylor Sullo, who had been suspended for a game. But no one would say why. After much searching (starting with the tournament's own web page which is useless--do I really have to go on a tangent about the need for quality communications/media in women's/girls' sports?) I found my answer : East champion Orange will be without center fielder Taylor Sullo, who must sit out a game after being ejected Sunday in a 2-1 victory over Cedar Mill because she rolled up her shorts at the waist after her team had been warned not to violate the uniform rule. I probably should not be the one to question this ruling given that my sport of choice, tennis, still h...

OK--I'm not really going to the compare the two players in any substantial way as I know little about the mechanics of golf and only slightly more about their lives. But I know that Pressel, also an amateur, does not get nearly the amount of attention that Wie gets yet it seems Pressel has been more consistent. Pressel, of course, is not out there trying to break down the gender barriers that exist in professional (and amateur) golf. [SMALL TANGENT: Though I question if that is what Michelle Wie is really trying to do. I don't think she is attempting to make the game more accessible for other women players. I believe she is trying to make herself a more outstanding player. This is not unlike other athletes and I try to suppress the essentialist inclinations that sometimes creep in that suggest that Wie, and other female athletes, should be helping their sport and their fellow women players. I get especially angry when people like Frank Deford suggest that Wie is hurting women...

Since I just recently complained (using a newly released study) about the lack of coverage of women's sports in the United States I thought I would share some news from around the world. I am not suggesting that other countries pay more attention to their women's sports--these articles certainly do not sugest any type of trend. But given that so many of us--myself included--forget in these non-Olympic yeas that there are millions of women worldwide playing sports at some level, I thought I would create this sort of transnational reminder. This first story is about the women's national Pakistani tennis championships. While Western news images of women in veils in hot, arid climates flood our senses, it's good to see the Pakistani Daily News promoting women's sports and offering a counter image. China View has a brief story on the Chinese women's volleyball team defeating Jordan in the regional World Championships match. Again, we think of Jordan, we think of the ...

First apologies for the sporadic posts of late (and a pre-apology as it continues to be a pattern, or rather non-pattern); I am on vacation. Woo-hoo! And so having just played tennis for the first time in 2+ months I was somewhat inspired by this very old Slate column about women's tennis skirts . First of all, I am still somewhat skeptical that talking about skirts is the real issue behind the gender inequality in sport. But I do find it fascinating. And I have heard some interesting research on the history of women's uniforms. That having been said, I feel the need to talk about my theories and observations on the tennis skirt. I like them. I won't apologize for it. While I did occasionally don shorts during matches, most of the time I wore skirts. Because I really do think they comfortable, despite the Slate columnist's (Eliza Truitt) claims to the contrary. With skirts there is no tugging between your thighs for the bunched up fabric that sometimes accumulates or ri...