The third part of my new book “Beyond Title IX: The Cultural Laments of Women’s Sports” deals with what I refer to as the “representation obsessions” of so-called women’s sports advocates, and the portrayal of female athletes in the media.

When women athletes pose suggestively in magazines, with or without clothing, some of these ultra-feminist “sport media scholars” sound like your grouchy Aunt Betty. One such “expert,” espnW adviser Mary Jo Kane, is convinced that a 2010 Sports Illustrated Olympic preview cover photo of Lindsey Vonn etches out the shape of a male penis and somehow this is being done to objectify women athletes. I wrote:

“Now, I’m like a lot of Americans in that I don’t watch skiing except every four years at the Olympics. All I know about kinesiology is that it is the scientific study of human movement, a field in which Kane is a trained academic and a former department head.

“But as Vonn and other skiers flew down the Olympic courses of Whistler, all of them - female and male - were crouched just as she had been for Sports Illustrated with, to paraphrase Kane, their posteriors protruding and backsides arched. This was the gender-neutral, aerodynamically correct expression of the sport.

“This probably didn’t occur to Kane, who might as well have been Whistler’s Mother, feverishly imagining sexually incorrect poses whenever a female athlete is involved. Her reaction was not surprising, but hardly empirical.

“A male sportswriter friend said to me upon reading this excerpt: ‘Maybe my mind just isn’t dirty enough, but what does she see that I don’t?’

“Exactly.

“When a strident academic feminist can detect the male sex organ in a photo of a female athlete, fully-attired in the regalia of her sport, and an average guy cannot, then it’s entirely fair to wonder what’s really on her brain.”

This is part of a larger argument that Kane and like-minded advocates make that women athletes are being duped into disrobing for men and to make themselves “heterosexy” for general public consumption.

When they’re not condemning grown-up female athletic champions like Brandi Chastain and Amy Acuff they’re blasting the media for portraying Candace Parker and Katarina Witt in traditionally feminine ways.

But this isn’t a gender thing, as male athletes like Mark Spitz, Shep Messing and David Beckham can attest. They’re in this part of the book, too.

In another chapter, I take issue with another “sport media scholar” who insists that media coverage of the feats of female athletes is worse than ever.

As I explain, women athletes in America are on television and enjoy more high-profile status now than at any previous time (magazine spreads aside), and that emerging forms of digital media will be a boon for coverage of their exploits.

On Tuesday I excerpted from the first part of the book, “The Paradox of Equality,” which delves into Title IX matters, and on Wednesday it was all about “Tales from the Pink Locker Room.” On Friday, I’ll introduce you to advocates who want to break down the lines of sex-segregated sports, all in the name of equality.

If you like what you’ve read here, or the sample that’s on Amazon, you can buy the whole book for $3.99. If you’re an Amazon Prime user, it’s yours for no cost. I’d be honored if you give it a read, and I’d love to know what you think.

In my recent series on women’s sports, I introduced readers to the work of a self-identified “sport media scholar” who is anything but.

Mary Jo Kane of the University of Minnesota is one of the more relentless and joyless critics of portrayals of female athletes by the media, especially when they’re not wearing much clothes.

But even when they’re covered from head to toe, Kane sees things she thinks undermine the cause of women’s sports that virtually nobody else does. (Don’t forget that for people like her, women’s sports will always be a cause that must be fought with a trenchlike-notion of warfare.)

When she and her fellow feminist sports researchers at Minnesota’s Tucker Center that she directs got riled up over the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 2010 Winter Olympics preview, it became the latest — and most embarrassing — episode in their crusade to rid the sports media world of supposedly “degrading” portrayals of female athletes.

Do you see what I see?

In The Nation’s recent issue devoted mostly to sports, Kane rehashes the tired diatribe that “Sex Sells Sex, Not Women’s Sports.” (The identical article also is linked here by NPR.) As usual, she misses the point of why athletes — male and female — aren’t as afraid to display their bodies as Kane is to have to “analyze” them through her narrow and peculiar lens.

Naturally, I was surprised to see this article begin with a quote from a former women’s pro soccer player in a story I wrote while I was at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I had almost forgotten about this, but Kane’s use of this I think is to illustrate her gripes that both women athletes and journalists are implicit in perpetuating “stereotypes” about sex appeal and sports. And then she renews her apoplexy over the Vonn cover:

“Even Sports Illustrated—notorious for its lack of coverage of women’s sports—couldn’t ignore this historic moment and devoted its cover to Vonn. SI’s cover, however, blatantly portrayed Vonn as a sex object and spoke volumes about the rampant sexual depictions of women athletes. Rather than emphasize her singular athletic talent, the magazine depicted Vonn in a posed photograph, smiling at the camera in her ski regalia. What was most noticeable—and controversial—about the pose was its phallic nature: Vonn’s backside was arched at a forty-five-degree angle while superimposed over a mountain peak.”

Now I’m like a lot of Americans in that I don’t watch skiing except every four years at the Olympics, so I’m not terribly well-schooled about the aesthetics of the sport. But when I did watch Vonn and other skiers fly down the mountains of Whistler, I noticed that every single one of them — male and female — was crouched just as Vonn was for Sports Illustrated, with their butts sticking out and their backs positioned as Kane describes. But this probably didn’t occur to Kane, who might as well have been Whistler’s Mother about all this.

A phallocentric pose?

When I linked to Kane’s tedious twaddle on my Twitter account this week, several males said to me: Maybe my mind just isn’t dirty enough, but exactly where is the phallic imagery here?

Exactly.

The laws of physics — another subject that generally goes over my head — applied to the fundamentals of the sport of skiing have much to do with why these athletes crouch the way they do. Shouldn’t the director of Minnesota’s school of kinesiology, which Kane also is, understand this? She ignores the “study of human movement” because of her fanaticism.

Nor did I do well in biology and anatomy classes in college, but I’d like to know if Kane is aware that actual human penises, regardless of the state of engorgement, don’t really resemble crouching skiers (as we’ll “see” below).

When a strident academic feminist can detect the male sex organ in a photo of a hot babe fully attired in the regalia of her sport and an average guy cannot, then I have to wonder what’s really on her brain.

Another male friend properly took issue with Kane’s contention that Sports Illustrated doesn’t adequately cover women’s sports. It will never be enough for Kane’s liking, but since the early 1970s, from the time Title IX was passed and Billie Jean King hit the scene, that magazine has done more sophisticated and well-produced journalism about women and sports than most media outlets. (This cover piece from 1973 is a classic that helped open up plenty of critical media attention about women’s sports.)

But Kane marches on, because she has a theory to adhere to:

“Offensive as this portrayal may have been, it came as no surprise to sports-media scholars. Over the past three decades we have amassed a large body of empirical evidence demonstrating that sportswomen are significantly more likely to be portrayed in ways that emphasize their femininity and heterosexuality rather than their athletic prowess. Study after study has revealed that newspaper and TV coverage around the globe routinely and systematically focuses on the athletic exploits of male athletes while offering hypersexualized images of their female counterparts.”

“Femininity and heterosexuality.” Bingo. This is really the burr under Kane’s saddle. Her perspective is the product of a feminist/cultural studies mindset that is completely oblivious to the nature of how commercial media works, as well as human nature.

It disregards the reality that some women athletes do not have a problem with these poses (see the video of Vonn at the bottom). Kane is presumptuous in claiming to speak for an entire gender, and in lecturing to women athletes how they should “behave.” As for “hypersexualized” images of athletes, Kane truly is in the dark about how quite a few women and some admiring gay men regard male athletic bodies.

Kane’s references to “study after study” pertain to research that is hardly empirical. Much of what I’ve seen that is available publicly is rigged from the start, especially what she and her colleagues put together at the Tucker Center. Most is found in obscure academic journals that are expensive to access. A discerning reader outside of a university has little opportunity to examine her claims. They must be believed and accepted uncritically.

Properly-identified “scholars” do not close down avenues of inquiry with their work; they open them up and invite debate, but Kane is not interested in having her ideas challenged. Sadly, this is a standard operating procedure throughout much of feminist academia, including the study of athletics.

Finally, her argument that “sex doesn’t sell women’s sports, it sells sex,” is simply a flawed way to look at this. It does generate attention and visibility, which in some women’s sports is publicity that cannot otherwise be bought. Women’s sports cannot succeed in being marketed mainly as “wholesome” and “family oriented,” and I’ve long argued that broadening their appeal to adults, including young men, needs to be considered more than it has. If an appeal to sex appeal is part of that consideration, then fine.

Kane also doesn’t get why ESPN shows and promotes women’s college basketball as it does: It sees some commercial viability, however modest, that does not exist for most other women’s sports. To presume that other women’s sports will grow in viewers and corporate sponsors with a similar approach is to misunderstand that commercial media doesn’t create something like this out of the blue. It is a response to fan interest that developed organically, over many grueling decades. There’s something of an audience out there, if only for the Final Four weekend.

But this isn’t just about women.

Viva, viva voom!

In the early 1970s, New York Cosmos goalkeeper Shep Messing uncovered EVERYTHING in a Viva magazine spread aimed at women.

(Beware to feminists of Kane’s ilk: An actual phallus is on display here that leaves nothing to the imagination. You’ve been warned, but because of your delicate sensitivities I will not post any of those photos here. If you care not to peek, ladies, this phallus looks nothing like a skier. Trust me.)

These were the days before Pelé, and the fledgling North American Soccer League was desperate for attention. As he recounted in “Once in a Lifetime,” the terrific documentary based on equally terrific book about the saga of the Cosmos, Messing took it upon himself — literally — to follow his management’s desire to help gain more exposure for his sport.

Even though Messing was first American athlete of either gender to bare all in a mazagine, his contract was terminated because of a morals clause. Once upon a time, they used to have them for male athletes. He returned to the Cosmos two years later at the behest of Pelé, who along with Giorgio Chinaglia and Franz Beckenbauer were the obvious big draws. Messing remained one of the team’s most popular players and was a good goalkeeper. Being a “hottie” and a rare American star in that league ultimately did not work against him.

Nothing that Kane cites in her rant is a raunchy, tasteless portrayal of women athletes. Nothing comes close to the display of full-frontal genitalia in the Messing pictorial. Many of the women athletes she names clearly do not feel the way she does about this issue.

Unfortunately, Kane’s article in The Nation is all readers of that issue will learn about women’s sports. It is a dismal, one-sided screed that does not reflect the true status of women athletes in 2011. Her arguments will not be scrutinized by the same mainstream media that she denounces because it is the same mainstream media that for years has given her ample space to spew her invective. That she’s been an advisor to the new espnW venture is evidence of her entrenched status. I dare espnW or anybody in the media establishment to offer such a dissenting view as mine. I’d love to have the opportunity to engage the public on these subjects on such a high-profile media platform, when Kane clearly wishes to avoid it.

More than anything, it is an embarrassment to women’s sports that individuals such as Kane are regarded as experts on these topics. She gives women’s sports a bad name because she is not a “scholar” but rather an ideologue incensed with photographs that try to gain the attention of heterosexual men.

Another women’s pro soccer team has bitten the dust — a team that just won a league championship, in fact — as that same league maneuvers yet again to stay in business.

But in the land of the Sisters of Perpetual Indignance, where small-bore cultural issues trump all else in women’s sports, the Representation Obsessions of one sorority member have reached a new level of absurdity. If you think I’m exaggerating, check out some of her previous contributions.

According to this school of “thought,” champion, adult female athletes who allow themselves to be portrayed in alluring ways are naïve at best and exploited at the very worst. At the very, very worst, they are undermining their gender and all the hopes and dreams of little athletic-minded girls everywhere. She’s talking about you, Lindsey Vonn!

Remember the children, Lindsey, forget those Sharon Stone delusions, and cover yourself up decently. Fortunately, a timeless role model exists: