I’m pondering how it is that the Sydney Morning Herald decided to run this piece yesterday headed ‘True to form the drama queens have been holding court again.’
Robert Grant, for AAP – a news service I usually respect – describes how female players really aren’t very good. They are boring to watch, their matches ‘dreary’, but their off-court actions make it all worthwhile. In fact, it is their drama queen behaviour which justifies them being allowed to play at all.
But the women fully deserve their place in the game because they provide off-court entertainment that the men seem intent on avoiding. And they have proved that, while the matches might be a dreary string of error-ridden statistics, women have given us wonderful tales.
Grant then goes onto list all these off-court antics, seemingly oblivious to male players like John McEnroe and others whose behaviour has been far from immaculate over the years.
And what’s with including Kim Clijsters in the drama queen roll call? Clijsters was not being a drama queen when she exposed Channel 7’s Australian Open commentator Todd Woodbridge for his texts to a former number one woman player, in which he said he thought Clijsters was pregnant because she seemed grumpy and her ‘boobs looked bigger’.
Why is he checking out her breasts in the first place?
What Clijsters did deserves to be commended not made fun of in a mocking article. She nailed Woodbridge with style, grace, and humour.
This is how Clijster’s actions were characterised on the Ms blog:
Just after tennis player Kim Clijsters beat her opponent in the Australian Open, she scored a major victory for the women of the world. Read the rest here.
She did.
But it’s the 21st century and we’re still putting up with true to form articles like that by Robert Grant.
7 Responses
I’m so glad you wrote this post Melinda. Yesterday I wrote a letter to the editor about the first article you mentioned (the one that said ‘women’s tennis is boring’.) I’m glad I’m not the only person to this think is dreadful. In the same SMH edition, on the previous page to this article was a story about an amazing wheelchair tennis player, Esther Vergeer. The photo accompanying the story was one of her posing nude. Here is the letter I submitted:
The sports section has outdone itself today (27/1/11) with its sexist reporting. On page 14, Peter Hanlon has a written a reasonably good piece about Esther Vergeer, the wheelchair tennis player. But what photo has been chosen to represent her career? One of her posing naked. Of all the photos available, to choose this one diminishes her capabilities as an athlete and is completely sexist. Where are the near-nude pictures of the so-called Spanish Armada, of Nadal and co? Why don’t I ever see those photos accompanying stories about Nadal, Verdasco or Ferrer?
On pg 15, Robert Grant serves up a brand of sexism that I had hoped had disappeared by now. ‘Women’s tennis is boring’ he claims. People find things boring when they don’t have an understanding or an appreciation of them. I find cricket, every code of football and most other sports boring. Sure, women’s tennis can be boring. So can men’s. The sort of sexism in Grant’s article is really appalling and points to the need for SMH to hire more women sports journalists and get them reporting seriously on women’s sport.
Today I receieved a response from the (female) deputy sports editor. I was impressed that she bothered to respond. I don’t think it’s ethical of me to post her response here, but she attempted to defend the paper. I am in the midst of writing a response. I’m going to point her to this blog post so she knows I’m not the only one disgusted.
Well said Melinda. How disappointing that arguably the nation’s most respected masthead should print such sexist tripe. And I thought Kim Clijsters was pure class in her reprimand of Woodbridge. She would have had every right to make an official complaint but chose not to – possibly because she knew she’d be criticised by the media for not having a sense of humour. “Style, grace and humour”: Robert Grant could learn a thing or two from her.
I am quite surprised that an article like that would be written this day and age. It just adds fuel to the fire to all those sexist men who already think this way.
I do, however, think you have gone a little far in writing “Why is he checking out her breasts in the first place?” You can’t assume all men are evil. It’s not a crime to think you see changes in someone that would indicate pregnancy. He didn’t say “my aren’t they looking lovely” or anything of a sexual nature. Can we just stick to the terrible messages that Robert Grant is sending to the public?
Faith, I’m not sure how making a point about this man checking out her breasts – to such an extent that he claims to have noticed a change in size, and then thought it important enough to send a text message about it – therefore means Melinda is assuming all men are evil? That seems to be quite a leap you’re making there and really misses the point she was making.
It is completely inappropriate for men to comment on women’s bodies in this way and to assume that women are at the mercy of their hormones regarding moods and behaviour. Even more inappropriate to be sending text messages about it.
To add to all those points Melinda and the other commenters made (minus Faith’s ‘evil men’ breast protest), sexist comments like these are only the tip of the iceberg.
The real sexism in sports reporting is the all-pervasiveness of male sports coverage and the near invisibility of women’s sport. Every night the main news bulletins take about 12 minutes out of every 30-minute broadcast to painstakingly examine virtually every male footy or cricket game played around the nation and the world, from lowly suburban matches right up to international competition.
By the same token, an Australian national women’s sporting team might have won a world cup final somewhere and the victory would be lucky to receive a 5-second soundbite just before the weather. Even though female sports presenters have been a common sight on TV news bulletins for at least 20 years (since Debbie Spillane broke that particular glass ceiling), coverage of women’s sport is still 50 years behind the times.
Is it any wonder that male sports commentators can still feel freee to publicly express dinosaur sexist views about women in sport?
Too right, Justine and there’s no ‘might have won’ about it. Did you know that the Australian women’s team WON the Ashes (cricket for the non sports-minded)? That’s right. The blokes apparently couldn’t work out which end of the bat was which and our women WON but did they get any TV coverage of the games? In a way, this appalling mysoginistic nonsense in the SMH serves a purpose, in exposing clearly the underlying assumptions about women’s sport that govern what we are allowed to see by the male programmers.
I read that article dimly hoping for a punchline which would reveal the sexist, anachronistic comments of the author to be some kind of satirical comment on the way the media treats female athletes… No such luck. At least I ended up with a mildly amusing mental image of a cranky old sports reporter pining for the days when women stayed in the kitchen (where their place is far better earned, right?) and out of his way.
As for Todd Woodbridge, I think he got his comeuppance for his tasteless texts. What gets me is that even as he was being shown for a fool he had the complete lack of grace to go on and expect Kim Clijsters to discuss her reproductive health with him on international television. I know the context was a pretty friendly conversation, but what an invasive question to ask in such a public context – and right after you’ve been shown up for more of the same. What an utter lack of respect. I’d like to hope that Woodbridge got an earful from Channel 7 management but I’m not going to hold my breath.