As a teenage girl growing up in country Victoria, I was an avid reader of The Age. It inspired in me a passion for journalism. I did work experience on the local paper and went on to study journalism at RMIT. I scored a cadetship and began my life as a working journalist. A few years later I was awarded a scholarship to study journalism in the U.S. While in the States I submitted my first feature piece to Rosemary West then editor of the Age ‘Accent’ section. She ran it. I returned and began writing freelance. Now I’ve been given a gig as a columnist with Fairfax including The Age. My columns will appear every fortnight. Here’s the first, which appeared on Sunday.
Women judged to not possess hot bodies, or who fail to exude sex appeal to the ogling masses, are unworthy of sporting pursuits.This is the verdict of many voyeuristic spectators who saw French player Marion Bartoli win the Wimbledon women’s singles trophy last weekend. Her skill on the court was irrelevant. Bartoli didn’t conform to the sexy sporting babe norm. How dare she even show up with a racquet?
Worse still, this ”oily-faced bitch”, without the requisite sexy body, defeated a tall ”good-looking” blonde, Germany’s Sabine Lisicki. This was treated as a crime against humanity. Bartoli was subjected to a public shaming – a stream of eviscerating cyber disparagement for her appearance. Comments included Ellis Keddie’s: ”How is bartoli a professional athlete and fat as f—?” and London’s Stifler: ”Bartoli you fat shit. I don’t want an ugly bitch to win.”
Yet another described Bartoli as ”too ugly to be raped”. She was ridiculed as a lesbian and told to have her penis removed – ”see if she’d win then”.
In the global eroticisation of women in sport, what’s the point of a woman competing if she can’t provide eye candy to the men?
Has a male tennis player ever been subjected to such mob vilification for not conforming to a sexualised beauty? Do men endure such excessive focus on their bodies?
Shortly after Bartoli won, BBC Radio 5 commentator John Inverdale said: ”I just wonder if her dad … did say to her when she was 12, 13, 14 maybe, ‘Listen, you are never going to be, you know, a looker. You are never going to be somebody like a [Maria] Sharapova, you’re never going to be five feet 11, you’re never going to be somebody with long legs, so you have to compensate for that.
”’You are going to have to be the most dogged, determined fighter that anyone has ever seen on the tennis court if you are going to make it,’ and she kind of is.”
Bartoli bravely dismissed the comments: ”It doesn’t matter, honestly. I am not blonde, yes. That is a fact. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. I’m sorry,” she said. ”But have I dreamt about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes … and I am so proud of it.”
The hypersexualisation of female athletes means a woman’s strengths are ignored. Reinforcing appearance over talent means sportswomen are openly abused in the public space.
Remember when swimmer Leisel Jones’ body shape was pilloried during the 2012 Olympics? Jones, the first Australian swimmer to compete at four Olympics, was judged out of shape (read ”fat”). English weightlifter Zoe Smith was labelled a ”bloke” and a ”lesbian” on Twitter. She went on to break the British record for the clean and jerk. American gymnast Gabby Douglas was criticised for her hairstyle. She won two gold medals.
In this appearance-based culture, girls get the message that to play sport, especially at high level, is to be subjected to judgment. Only certain body types need apply. This is reinforced by the Roxy Pro surfing promotion featuring a slim blonde in something akin to a lingerie shoot.
Hawaiian surfer Keala Kennelly wrote on Facebook that she thought the promo looked like an ad for a gentleman’s club or escort service. ”It says to me, ‘Who you are as an athlete is not important, what is important is that you have a hot little rig guys can perv on. As somebody that has fought so hard all my life to be respected in the surfing industry for talent not tits, its [sic] just really frustrating to see Women’s Surfing going in this direction.”
In Huck magazine, surfer Cori Schumacher wrote: ”I hoped that they would be able to focus more on their surfing ability rather than being burdened by a sexually available, blonde, fit image that took much time and money to maintain. But … the trend of focusing on the bodies and sexuality of female surfers seems to have grown worse.”
Girls need to be inspired by representations of women mobilising their gifts and abilities to reach their goals in sport and life. But, by age 14, girls are dropping out of sports at twice the rate of boys, according to the US Women’s Sports Foundation.
The Roxy and Wimbledon examples won’t inspire girls to take up sport. If you don’t look ”hot”, you may as well sit on the sidelines. And that’s the last place we need our girls to be.
4 Responses
As a surfer (and a father of a young daughter) I thought that Roxy video was pathetic. There was nothing about the grace and beauty of the sport itself or the power and athleticism that women such as Stephanie Gilmour, Tyler Wright and others have brought to the competition. At a time when more girls are paddling out than ever before, this is when old stereotypes about Girls In The Water could be jettisoned for good. Wishful thinking, I suppose No wonder so many of the older surf brands are in such dire straits.
I hope that my daughter in due course will take up my love of surfing as I think it is a lot of fun, great excercise, and a sport where gender differences should be almost negligible (as Reflexes and Timing are much more important than Strength). But the surfing industry (and surfers themselves) have to wake up to the fact that surfing has a Sexist Image and this needs to change. I have not personally seen sexism in the water, but fact that there are still comparatively few women out in the lineup suggests that either it is happening when there is little chance of the offender being called out on it, or that girls are afraid to put themselves in an environment where they fear discrimination. My gut feeling is that it is probably both.
Not good enough, fellas!
Men constantly claim we don’t live in a rape culture and yet another male considers it is his right to decide to subject Marion Bartoli to sadistic male sexual violence! This male publicly declares he hates women and considers it his right to rape any woman any time if he chooses.
This is what men enact whenever they perceive their male power and male rights are being threatened by women and girls. Female athletes continue to power ahead proving sport is not ‘a masculine activity’ but rather is one wherein sex of the athlete is irrelevant. What is important is a person’s skills and abilities – because no male was born with innate athletic skills but men continue to claim this is true and men always tell the truth do they not?
However, any female athlete males perceive as challenging and/or beating male athletes is threatening to men’s rigid and draconian sex role system. This is why men are collectively engaging in publicly uttering and promoting male hatred/male contempt for female athletes, because the aim is to force female athletes to give up participating in sport. This includes professional sport because no female must be allowed into the boys’ club!
Instead a women and girls are expected to be clones, wherein every female is identical in body shape and sexual hotness to men. In other words ‘robots’ because men are easily frightened of any enactment of female autonomy and refusal to be submissive to the supposedly default human who is always male.
This is why men en masse are now proving they are all misogynists who hate/hold women in contempt and yet still women continue to bury their heads in the sand and believe mens’ lies that they don’t hate women.
The facts are females are just as good as males as regards sporting activities and the myth males are the only ones who are good at sport is a centuries old misogynsitic lie. However, this lie has to be maintained otherwise mens’ claim they are innately superior to women will be seen for what it is – another male created lie.
This is also how male power operates because no male has yet been charged with promoting/condoning male sexual violence against women and girls and no male has yet been charged with promoting male hatred of women! Yet males who utter racist insults are immediately denounced and/or prosecuted. Ah yes males are accorded fundamental rights such as right of being accorded dignity and respect – but women – well men continue to believe their lie that women aren’t human but merely exist to serve men 24/7.
An excellent book which debunks mens’ lies concerning boys’ and mens’ sports is ‘Playing With the Boys: Why Separate Is Not Equal In Sports, by Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano, published by Oxford University Press, USA. Mens’ dirty political activities concerning their attempts to keep women and girls out of so-called ‘male only sports’ is rife and pseudo science continues to be used to justify mens’ claims only a male can undertake ‘real sporting activities!’
Men athletes, and men in any field, are never subjected to such mean comments about their appearance for daring to take space in the public realm showing their abilities. A short comment may be made about the look of a particularly good-looking man (and some people will use that in order to claim that everything is equal) but a man will never be vilified for not conforming to a narrow, mandatory, standard of ‘sexiness’. Women on the other hand appear to have this obligation to be ‘sexy’ and it is perceived as a crime almost when they dare not caring about this imposed duty men have put on them. How does this state of affairs advantage women? It doesn’t. Except for a few who might temporarily financially benefit for having a photoshoot for some glamour/men’s magazines, it benefits men and disadvantages women as a group. It always ends up limiting women and discrediting those who are good at what they do on the basis of concerns only relevant to the ‘male gaze’. Can women exist outside of the ‘male (sexualized) gaze’ ever? It is suffocating! I want the same freedom for women and girls that men have; the freedom from being reduced to a sexual commodity. We need more Bartoli to shift the balance, more women’s support, more denouncing of men’s sexist comments. Thank you Melinda.
Clearly the vitriol directed at Bartoli was disgusting and has no place in sport. Unfortunately female athletes are now subject to some of the worst and more cowardly aspects of anonymous internet commentary.
The ugly truth is that the majority of women’s sport doesn’t sell. Their are some exceptions, women’s tennis, some female olympic/ com games sports, and the developing trans tasmin netball competition come to mind. Women’s sport has to compete in an open market for paying spectators with more spectacular and more established men’s sports. There will always be sports tragics like myself who happily barrack at the tv loudly when various women’s sporting events are on, but the majority of the time I am the exception. As a result many female athletes resort to selling sexualised images or ad campaigns to supplement their income.
The hyperbolic rant from Hecuba above (and ones like it) are pretty unhelpful. The tone is very aggressive and off putting, and the content is pretty incoherent. Apart from anything else, getting into a simplistic “women are as good as men at sport” debate is just dumb. There’s a reason we have separate competitions: in the vast majority of sports (anything with a speed or power component) women are not competitive with men. This doesn’t make the sport inferior, rather, the separate competitions should be viewed like weight divisions in boxing or weight lifting. Unfortunately when you are looking for spectator and subsequent sponsorship dollars it does put female sport at a financial disadvantage. Those spectators interested in ‘higher, faster, stronger, further etc’ will gravitate towards male competition.
I would also note, that in many sports what we call the ‘mens’ competition is not actually limited to men, it’s an open competition (it’s just that no women qualify or attempt to qualify). These sports have a separate division limited to females.