Same Old Issues, New Nude Appearance

In reading Leslie Heywood and Shari L. Dworkin’s, “Built to Win” this week, one thing in particular stuck out to me. Though the article makes many good points, I think perhaps the most poignant point was the fact that in posing nude and seductively (where intentional or not) women athletes raise money and posing nude is a sexist, patriarchal’s construction to keep women subordinated or you agree with the “new age feminists” view that it is empowering for women athletes to display their bodies at their own wills, the bigger issue is why women athletes feel it will bring attention to themselves and their sports to do so. Why is it, that in the second decade of the 21^st century, women’s sports are still as unfunded and, to some extent, ignored as legitimate sports as they were forty years ago?

Though, I’m not arguing that there haven’t been great leaps in the field of women’s sports. At least now, as opposed to fifty years ago, there are women’s sports teams in schools and women actually have the chance to become athletes. Yet, just because women’s sports appear equal to men’s sports, on the surface, there is a definitive gap between the women’s sports and men’s sports. In not attracting as much attention and devotion as many male-based teams, women’s sports teams not only have to justify themselves as legitimate athletic forces, but they also have to vie more aggressively for money to sustain themselves.

So, as the article pointed out, women athletes who pose nude are usually not concerned on whether or not they are playing into a sexist society’s standard of a woman, instead they are more concerned with getting recognition for themselves and for their sports. Whether or not a woman athlete is further empowering women or taking the feminist cause back a step is a legitimate concern, as well as is the debate on which group (“camp A and camp B” as the article calls them) of feminists has the right idea (can’t they both be kind of right?) but these concerns should be secondary. The first question we should be asking ourselves (as also pointed out in the article and of which I took as the most important part) is why the woman have to pose nude to attract attention to themselves as legitimate, hardworking, well deserved athletes. This question is similar to others we have approached throughout the semester, such as when we were reading Farrell’s Fat Shame and we wondered why society blamed individuals for being fat instead of question the foundations on which that hatred in society was built.

The answer is plain in simple. In a world where women are now able to join sports teams and make careers out of being athletically talented, we have, as a whole, unequivocally ignored the actual belief that women athletes are just as good as men. Because of that, because we are still harboring the same sexist values as we did centuries ago (albeit with an appearance of progressiveness and differentness) women athletes are forced to appear as more than just athletes who should be praised for their talents: they are forced to sell their sport in any way they can. And because all know the saying, “sex sells” women athletes who take off their clothes to attract attention are, essentially (although not in every case, as some women might just want to look sexy on the cover of a magazine,) attempting to legitimize their sport and keep its existence from fading into obscurity.

But, how do we change this? How do we get people to see that the issue lies in the little funding and little appreciation of women as athletes as opposed to how they get their teams recognized?