Extracurriculars

The Amateur International Boxing Association is now saying skirts are optional for competitors in the first women’s Olympic boxing tournament in London.

Another first-world crisis has been averted.

This optional position is probably the best, given the mixed opinions from the boxers. Some were incensed about what might have become compulsory; others were not.

In free Western societies this shouldn’t regarded as be the greatest indignity, although there has been plenty of serious squawking from the usual suspects about this affront to equality.

For female athletes in Afghanistan, just getting in the ring is a miracle. Especially those few participating in combat sports who are defying the remnants of harsh Taliban proscriptions against their very participation in society.

Sadaf Rahimi, 17, is training for the London Games near a stadium in Kabul where women were once stoned for adultery:

“I hope the Taliban don’t come back and take over. But if they do, I urge them to let women engage in sports and go to school.”

There’s no mention what she was wearing. As if that mattered. But it’s not hard to guess.

This week I’m bringing back some of my favorite posts from the year, and especially those that generated some good conversation. Issue pieces in sports always seem to do the trick, and these were no different.

In June I posted a 10-part series I called “Women’s Sports Without Illusions,” a critical examination of the movement and where it stands as Title IX turned 39.

For years I have found much of the dogma coming out of the gender equity establishment to be indignant and tone deaf to the world that women athletes live in today. It’s as if activists refuse to leave the 1970s, which thankfully have ended. We might have gone from disco to hip-hop, but I’m more concerned about the cultural grievances that many of these so-called “experts” hold that are out of step with the reality on the ground.

Especially when the slow progress for women in sports over the decades can’t always be chalked up to men.

I offered some starting points for revising the Title IX sports regulations that are outdated, and not surprisingly they drew most of the reader comments.

Also not surprisingly, most of the readers were men, and not women who side with the Title IX diehards. This blog is part of the Women Talk Sports network that includes the Title IX Blog and two sex-and-gender standbys, After Atalanta and One Sport Voice. There was virtually no reaction. We’re talking about people who don’t like their ideas challenged, some to the extent that they don’t permit comments on their blogs at all.

What’s more troubling are the grudges that some hold against football and how they rail against portrayals of women athletes in magazines and elsewhere that the athletes themselves see very differently.

These cultural grievances form the spine of an expanded writing project, based on this series, that I will complete in early 2012. It’s less about Title IX and the controversies over compliance with the law and more about the future of women’s sports, and how such absolutist views disrespect the individual choices of girls and women and are out of step with the mainstream.

I’ll have more details about that project shortly. All I’ll say for now is that if you’ve got a problem with the Women’s Tennis Association’s “Strong is Beautiful” presentation, then take it up with Billie Jean.

I’ve been putting this off for a couple of weeks now but can’t wait any longer: I’m taking a bit of a break from most of my online activity, including this blog.

There’s so much I wanted to write about here before I stepped away, including the end of The New York Times’ series on gender equity (and the departure of the writer from the sports desk); a lawsuit challenging the Title IX 3-part test at the high school level; and a new era for the U.S. men’s soccer national team with the appointment of Juergen Klinsmann as head coach.

But I’ve got plenty of offline writing and reading I want to get to in the next few weeks that I have been delaying for far too long. And like anyone who spends an increasing amount of time on the Web, I just need to get away from it for a while. It’s hard to unplug and even harder to stay unplugged because you’re afraid you’re going to miss something, especially on social media.

From my series on women’s sports to blogging about the Women’s World Cup and a few other things, it’s been a blast digging deep into subjects I care about, and that readers have been responding to. I want to resume all that soon, but I desperately need to recharge, refresh and relax.

So I’m spending the rest of August tackling those projects, and enjoying what’s left of the summer.

See you in September, and thanks for being a reader.

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.

A question often raised about women’s athletics — and it’s usually posed as a rhetorical one — resurfaced recently following a suggestion from a WNBA coach that her players might just be too “nice” when the reality of competitive sports gets a little nasty:

“Could women’s sports use some bad girls?”

The attempt at an answer revolved around the usual ingredients: Among women athletes in general, there are much lower instances of self-absorbed, narcissistic comportment during games and controversial personae away from them. Rare is the story of a female athlete in trouble with the law.

The writer above, Chicago Daily Herald columnist Patricia Babcock McGraw, a former basketball player at Northwestern, is clearly on the side of better behavior, but she is also careful to repeat the all-important mantra that female athletes ought to serve as “role models” (plenty more on that in a bit).

Yet there’s still this nagging question that she seems to understand works against her preference:

“Would women’s sports get more of a following if the athletes were edgier, more outspoken, more brash?”

In praise of the human carnival

The answer may have been provided on Sunday during the U.S. women’s soccer team’s epic victory over Brazil in the quarterfinal of the Women’s World Cup.

What was on display — in addition to Abby Wambach’s ferocious extra-time equalizer — was the stuff that makes sports so compelling for fans: High drama, intrigue, controversy, dubious sports(wo)manship and ultimately, a comeback for the ages.

This involved all females, including the Australian referee, in a sport about which Americans are generally indifferent.

It was pure spectacle, with a healthy dose of American sports patriotism/exceptionalism thrown in, as is the case during the Olympics.

Above all, it was entertainment. Incredibly memorable entertainment.

That’s a word that rarely crops up in discussions about women’s sports, especially at the professional level. Even in the 15-year-old WNBA, the default mode for talking about how to broaden its audience revolves around the “role model” ideal. New WNBA president Laurel Richie mentions this repeatedly as she makes her way to all 12 league cities this summer.

While watching Minnesota Lynx rookie Maya Moore torch the Connecticut Sun for 26 points over the weekend, Richie rattled through the same litany of praise during a telecast on NBA TV. Yes, Moore is humble and is the perfect emobidment of what Richie and others in women’s sports desire above all: A great player who’s also a “good girl.”

But as I watched Moore, all I could blurt out was: “This woman’s going to tear this league apart. Absolutely destroy it.”

Her entertainment value is undeniable because of the way she plays the game. Moore’s blend of supreme skill and burning desire have already rendered her one of the best players in the history of women’s college basketball. She’ll likely have the same impact as a pro and as an Olympian. She is a basketball purist’s dream.

Yet somehow that’s not enough.

For the “role model” burden is a product of a women’s sports movement that preaches the urgency of teaching young girls well, in hopes that they will soon follow along. And further the claim that they can provide a morally superior alternative to the male sports culture feminists loathe.

While it is a good thing to exhibit good behavior and teamwork, respect for opponents and the games they play, the extent to which this demand is made also has the effect of making women athletes one-dimensional characters. It denies the reality that they are human beings, filled with the same contradictions, grievances, anger and unbecoming traits as men. Women may act out them out differently, and I’ll set aside for now the issue of whether that’s due to real gender distinctions or social conditioning, or some of both.

Role models or robots?

What is noticeable is how the desire to be “good girls” is a strong notion among many female athletes. They’ve learned well the lessons of their foremothers about being wholesome role models, instead of scantily-clad models in racy magazine pictorials emphasizing looks over athletic talent.

The rare cases of bad deeds off the court get a good denunciation within The Sisterhood as well. When WNBA star Diana Taurasi was charged with DUI two years ago, ESPN.com columnist MeChelle Voepel was especially harsh, suggesting Taurasi should be banned from the league’s all-star game. This is more than just another case of a sportswriter preaching morality at an athlete. Taurasi’s offense apparently was against not only the Phoenix community, but her team, league and sport as well:

“She is the first truly high-profile WNBA player to get in any serious legal trouble.

“Considering what a popular, visible and vocal presence she is for her franchise, the league and the sport of women’s basketball, this is as much a worst-case scenario as the WNBA hopes it ever has to deal with.”

Taurasi’s brash style is comparable to that of U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo, whose outburst after being benched in the 2007 Women’s World Cup semifinals catapulted her into a different kind of female athletic notoreity.

As Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl examined prior to the 2008 Olympics, Solo was frozen out by her teammates, not allowed to be in uniform or on the bench for the third place game and even the team’s flight home from China. He addresses the sisterly bonding established by the celebrated 1999 U.S. Women’s World Cup team that the fiercely independent Solo breached:

“No episode in U.S. women’s soccer history has convulsed the team more than the Solo saga, which has strained friendships and sparked fundamental questions about the nature of women’s sports. Did Solo’s outburst violate a team-first ethos that was a cornerstone of the U.S. women’s appeal and success, or was that mentality naive in the first place? Did her punishment fit the crime? And would it even have been imposed on a men’s team? ‘In England guys get in fights and arguments all the time, and usually within an hour or by the next day everything’s fine,’ says former U.S. men’s keeper Kasey Keller, who has played 17 seasons in Europe. ‘But to be completely ostracized? I’ve never heard of anything like that.’ “

And yet the meme of innate female virtue persists. In last Sunday’s game, Brazilian defender Erika feigned an injury that ironically might have yielded the Americans enough stoppage time to score. In The New York Times this morning, Jeré Longman referred to recent research claiming that women do things like this very rarely, as compared to male soccer players. Former U.S. captain Julie Foudy, now ESPN’s lead Women’s World Cup commentator:

“Men have a tendency to draw the foul much better than women. They know and understand pressure, when to go down even though they’re not hit hard. Some are brilliant at it. Women play far too honest sometimes. They take the hit, ride the tackle and stay on their feet. I do think that will change.”

Just let them be

Ironically, one of the teammates most adamant about banishing Solo in 2007 was Wambach. After beating Brazil, they appeared together on the ESPN Women’s World Cup set from Germany, talking about the mutual respect they had developed.

They’ve shared the same amount of sporting hell and now glory together, the staples of all great compelling sports entertainment. Braced around Wambach’s heroics were Solo’s moments: She saved a second-half penalty kick, only to have Brazil given a retake because of an encroachment call that has not been fully explained; in the penalty kick phase she made the clinching save.

This is the sort of thing that draws people to sports. Too see athletes struggle, and lift themselves back up, and the way the American team did, and not just against Brazil, but over the last four years, has been mesmerizing.

While I was covering the 1999 Women’s World Cup — still the best gig I’ve ever had — the euphoria of an unexpected moment was intoxicating. So was the too-good-to-be-true saga of the girls next door, hoisted as perfect “role models” for all the little girls of America and beyond.

This was employed to create the first fully professional women’s soccer league in the world. Longman again, following the demise of Women’s United Soccer Association, with blunt post-mortems from sports marketers:

“In other words, if the league had played down ’sugar and spice’ wholesomeness campaigns meant to attract 8- to 12-year-olds, and sold the concept of the players as strong women, the W.U.S.A. could have kept the youth audience and also made itself relevant to a much wider group of adolescent girls and young women.”

When WUSA’s successor, Women’s Professional Soccer, had barely gotten underway in 2009, there were calls to draw paying spectators with an appeal to social activism. Having covered the WUSA, I responded very emphatically that this wasn’t going to cut it either. Women’s sports has got to stop being about a cause, and at the pro level needs to be treated as a business. The business of sports entertainment.

What’s going to sell women’s sports in the long haul will not be an incessant appeal to virtue but rather to sparkling, dramatic entertainment that attracts adults and youngsters alike. As a female marketing friend who’s a fan of women’s sports often tells me, people don’t watch or buy tickets to sporting events to see role models. They want to be entertained.

It’s not a matter of needing more “bad girls” but rather allowing women athletes to be the fully human, adult creatures they are.

(This is a topic I wanted to examine in my recent series “Women’s Sports Without Illusions,” especially after a perceptive reader brought it up. I pledged to address it in a new phase of my inquiry that continues on this blog and elsewhere. So here’s a little bonus coverage.)

* * * * * * * *

SLAM Online contributor Clay Kallam points to some uncomfortable biological truths about women athletes when ruminating off the likely season-ending injuries to Candace Parker (knee) and Lauren Jackson (hip), two of the WNBA’s most visible stars:

“The rate of ACL tears, arguably the most devastating knee injury and arguably the one with the greatest chance to have long-term impacts on knee health, is four times greater for women than men. Anyone involved in the sport for any length of time has seen far too many players go down in pain, from WNBA all-stars to freshman girls trying the game for the first time.

“And at some point, we all have to come to terms with this painful sacrifice that so many women and girls make for the sport. Yes, women are tough and strong, but it’s also true that a variety of factors make them much more vulnerable to crushing, debilitating injuries.”

Kallam, who has coached girls high school basketball in California for many years, is raising a taboo that women’s sports would rather not acknowledge, and that author Michael Sokolove found quite revealing while researching “Warrior Girls,” his 2008 book about female youth sports injuries. (Here’s the article in The New York Times Magazine that led to the book.)

Difference = Unequal?

For example, Sokolove was surprised to discover that the Women’s Sports Foundation did no physiological research into the topic. The WSF has since teamed up with the University of Michigan to create the Sports, Health and Research Policy Center that will open this fall. Its mission is to “generate interdisciplinary research on issues related to women’s sports, health, gender issues and kinesiology.” And here’s the real kicker:

“As a result of the collaboration, the new center will generate a variety of information and tools central to the foundation and university’s educational role of supporting evidence-based public debate that informs public policy and encourages elimination of the obstacles girls and women face in sports participation.”

That last part is a reference to legal, sociological and cultural barriers that figure to prompt calls for more gender equity measures; there’s no specific mention of female sports injuries being part of SHARP’s research efforts that I could find. This think tank will be housed within Michigan’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender, so there you go.

(Update: In this recent interview with espnW, WSF chief executive officer Kathryn Olson said the SHARP Center will indeed address injuries, including ACLs and concussions. This is encouraging; and it bears watching as the center holds a conference next spring.)

But the real heat Sokolove received for his book came from sports feminist academics at the University of Minnesota who went on an all-out offensive to refute his claims.

The Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport entitled its response “Anatomy Isn’t Destiny,” marshalling perspectives from the public health, sports medicine, orthopedic surgery, sports psychology and sociology faculties at the university. Read as one, this is an attempt to diminish real physical differences that get in the way of larger political gender equity aims:

“Sokolove skillfully links the sport ethic—striving for distinction, accepting risks, playing through pain and not accepting barriers in the pursuit of goals—with a Mars-Venus dichotomy whereby females are routinely portrayed as different from (and inherently inferior to) males. He seems determined to create a moral panic for already overly concerned sport parents who are understandably trying to do what is best for their daughters.”

The Tucker Center was decent enough to give Sokolove space to reply to its criticisms, which he keenly understands:

“The overall concern of your scholars seems to be that my book – as well as any overt discussion about injuries among women athletes – is going to drive women off the playing field. I’d say it is injuries that takes athletes off the field – not information and discussion. And not one of the hundreds of emails I’ve received from female athletes, or parents of athletes, have said the book had induced anyone to leave their sport.”

But wait, there’s more:

“There’s a problem out there, and I believe that advocates of women’s sports – those at the Tucker Center and elsewhere who have done important work in advocating for Title IX and its rigorous enforcement – have a responsibility to take it on as a cause.”

Bemoaning the body electric

The Tucker Center does indeed look into these matters, but it hardly amounts to a cause. Tucker Center associate director Nicole LaVoi, one of Sokolove’s biggest critics, spends far more time writing for the center and on her blog about the “sexualization” of female athletes in media, almost to the point of obsession. Last week, Time magazine quoted her in a story about the Women’s Tennis Association’s latest provocative portrayal of its most attractive players, and comments like this have become her stock-in-trade:

“Yes, these women are beautiful, but we see lots of cleavage and legs, and it’s set to music that is reminiscent of soft-core porn. That might be interesting and titillating, but it isn’t going to make me turn on Wimbledon.”

So will only Whistler’s Mother do?

I shouldn’t revive the old saw about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, nor should I elaborate that this isn’t about what LaVoi would watch. But I just did by way of arguing that there’s nothing tasteless in any of this. She apparently wants her muscle without even a hint of glamour (a staple of women’s tennis since the marvelous Suzanne Lenglen dared to bob her hair, among other 1920s taboos). This is typical of the legion of sports feminists who disdain any association between female athleticism and aesthetics. As I wrote in my women’s sports series, they prefer an androgynous ideal that trumps sex in favor of gender. We all know which is more fun, and which is decidedly not.

In the same Time piece, Penn State sports journalism professor Marie Hardin complains that such imagery revolves around homophobia:

“There’s this idea of the lesbian bogeywoman, the predatory lesbian in sports. Unfortunately there’s a real fear mongering that doesn’t help women’s sports at all.”

But her rhetoric actually marginalizes women’s sports, especially by implying that women athletes shouldn’t get all Hester Prynne about themselves:

“There’s a real tension there. What female athletes choose to do to empower themselves personally does often times chip away at the collective power of female athletes and of women’s sports.”

Is this what she teaches her journalism students? That women athletes should not make their own choices if those choices offend The Sisterhood?

“The collective power of female athletes” is the abiding cause of sports feminists, and anything that interferes with that objective as they define it is emphatically denounced or shunted aside. Individual preferences or experiences do not fit in this dogmatic, airtight narrative, as I also wrote.

If LaVoi, Hardin, et al, were less concerned about how women athletes look in pictorials than with what happens when they get hurt, they might better justify their credentials as “experts” on topics about which contrary points of view are rarely allowed to enter the public discourse.

You don’t have to be an academic to understand that what they’re postulating isn’t scholarship, but pure advocacy.

I do promise to make this brief, because I’ve already unpacked a lot over these last two weeks about women’s sports, and more precisely, the movement behind them for the last four decades.

All the links in the “Women’s Sports Without Illusions” series can be found here. And just a few other things to point out as I wrap this up:

What are the illusions?

I’ve referred to this in my series title, but didn’t allude to them specifically as I went along. The illusions, as I’ve examined them, are:

• That the women’s sports “revolution” is still young: Actually, it’s in fine middle age, as am I, and that’s a place that ought to be relished. The heavy lifting of getting girls and women in the game — the most arduous task — is over. Girls and women have won, resoundingly. But the “evolution” continues, especially in areas that Title IX cannot touch.

• That women and men are equally interested in sports: This is a major bone of contention that animates so much of the Title IX battle. But that’s not the right statement. As women have had more choices and options open to them — largely because of Title IX — we’re seeing that their interests are more wide-ranging than men.

• That the male sports culture must change: Title IX isn’t enough for some women’s advocates. But most institutions in American society and American society itself have undergone dramatic change by opening doors to those who’ve been left out: African-Americans, immigrants, women, gays and others. Their fuller participation in society, over time, results in those institutions and society changing, not clarion calls for a cultural revolution. This evolution with women in sports is well underway.

• That women athletes are helplessly “sexualized:” There is a difference between gratuitous displays of “babes” who play sports and portrayals of a healthy, mature and adult female athletic eroticism. Some women’s advocates refuse to make a distinction, complaining that women athletes are being “exploited” by a media culture bent on reinforcing heterosexual “stereotypes.” Gay male admirers of male athletes have no such hangups; they gaze, unabashedly, and so do more than a few women at women athletes. Male and female athletes use their bodies to compete. Regardless of orientation, it’s impossible not to notice the sexual element in all this, and absurd to insist that we shouldn’t.

• That girls and women “need” sports: I can’t imagine not having sports in my life. But the truth is that a vast majority of girls and women, even four decades after Title IX, are happy, healthy and well-adjusted without sports in their lives at all. They’ve used Title IX to dominate college undergraduate enrollments, and many post-graduate and professional programs as well.

Mea culpas

I didn’t get to a few subjects I intended to address in depth, but they are priorities in the near future:

• Cheerleading and “Bambi” sports: Competitive cheer is gaining traction as a possible varsity sport at the college level, but there is resistance.

• International and youth sports: The development of sports in other countries and at the community level in the United States, where Title IX does not apply, fascinate me and I really do want to explore these issues more here, and elsewhere.

• Media, marketing and business: Complaints about a lack of media coverage for women’s sports, struggles to improve corporate sponsorships, endorsements and expand wider commercial viability did not get proper examination here. Some of my previous thoughts on media are here.

• Keep it short: I see that I’ve already gone too long summing up this series, for which nearly every post went longer than I planned. My apologies for making too much work for some readers. There has been so much ground to cover, and plenty more beyond what’s been mentioned here. This series ended up being more about catching up with nearly 40 years of women’s advocacy and not enough about looking forward. Maybe there’s another series in that!

Many thanks

There have been terrific comments here and I’m gratified and humbled by the response. Please don’t be strangers; I will be posting here intermittently through the rest of the summer but need to take a couple steps back for the time being. My e-mail address is wendy@wendyparker.org. The best way to stay in touch is to follow me on Twitter. It’s become my online home.

What’s next

I’m absolutely fired up to continue the conversation and expand on these topics. I’ll keep everyone abreast of what happens when I sort out some options I’m pursuing.

A reader asked me if I wanted to “start something,” meaning a group or organization, but I’m not an activist or organizer. While I’m pleased with how this series turned out, my aim has been to be a crusader for a common-sense approach to how we think about women’s sports.

For now, I’m going to watch the Women’s World Cup, catch up on summer reading, and perhaps get to the beach.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

This is the final post in a series entitled “Women’s Sports Without Illusions” that critically examines the nearly four decades of the women’s sports movement, including Title IX, cultural and social developments, the growth of professional and international women’s sports and current challenges and issues.

All posts in this series can be found here.

I’ve been promising the last two weeks to explain what the above racquet is all about as I’ve made a racket about why and how the women’s sports movement lost its way.

The racquet was inspired by one of the creators of that movement who continues to inspire me and many other women today.

I bought it just days after she beat a self-styled male chauvinist pig in one of the greatest sporting spectacles of my lifetime.

It’s a Wilson Billie Jean King Cup racquet, a fabled relic of its day, wooden with a small head and long handle, frayed strings and a crack along the insignia. It’s completely unusable now, of course; when I last took it out a few years ago to see how it felt making contact with a ball, it shimmied like our family’s old 1969 Buick Riviera when I was learning how to drive.

I keep this racquet on the wall above my writing desk, as much a symbol of what King’s example has meant to me as her feat that night in Houston — and in everything else she has done — has meant to literally hundreds of thousands of women.

I had never been so fired up in my life, or since. Finally, I didn’t feel so all alone as a “tomboy.” The word didn’t sting so much any more. Here was a woman who did so much more than beat an old man on a tennis court in the Astrodome. She gave us the heretical idea that we might actually be able to do something in sports after we had grown into women.

I’ve lost so many things in so many moves in all the years since: gloves, cleats, my red, white and blue ABA basketball, a childhood’s collection of baseball cards. But somehow I’ve managed to hang on to the racquet, without really trying. There’s something metaphorical in all that.

In many ways, this racquet also symbolizes what I think the women’s sports movement has become today: Tough but brittle, successful but chastened, worn down but not without the goods, once refreshed, to spark future generations of females all around the world to get in the game, and to stay.

During this series I’ve explained how the noble intentions to live up to Title IX have been accompanied by hard-edged gender identity politics with little sympathy for displaced male athletes, rants against football and sexual expression, and desperate pleas that girls need to be “saved” by sports. Not only do these leaders ignore the notion that women may just choose not to play, they define equality in sports as based on participation numbers and percentages, and think this can be achieved only by their eternal vigilance in the court system.

Reviving the joy of play

The activists claim they’re only trying to make sure Title IX is being enforced, but as I have written in this series, what some truly crave goes far beyond what the law requires, and has ever been about. For them, this isn’t about sports, but to overthrow a dastardly “patriarchy” that haunts their dreams.

Their attempts to impress these notions upon young women hasn’t been as persuasive as it might have been, and I think I know why.

There's crying in basketball.

For years, the Women’s Sports Foundation (that King created), National Women’s Law Center and other advocacy groups serve up a battery of data and studies to illustrate not only how beneficial sports have been to girls and women who participate, but how they must be encouraged for females who have not. Or to underscore the legal rights for females to have equal access as boys to get in the game.

Learning how to compete and cooperate, staying fit and feeling healthy, getting good grades and avoiding teen pregnancy and boosting self-esteem are good things. If young women derive these benefits from sports, fine. If not, that should be fine too. Title IX is the law of the land and should not be repealed. It must be reformed to reflect the times and stop causing harm to men’s teams.

But what’s missing the most from this advocacy is the reason why we flock to sports in the first place.

Instead of being badgered to play for social and career imperatives, or for scholarship offers or fame and fortune on ESPN, both girls and boys need to be reintroduced to the idea of the pure joy of play, perhaps a quaint and even naïve notion in today’s society. It’s the subject of one of my favorite sports books, and it has informed me as I wrote this series.

I’m learning in middle age that extrinsic motivations simply will not work. Corporations keep pushing them on their employees, hoping the offer of a little beer money bonus will prompt more productivity and keep their docile little worker bees in line.

I may be getting older, but I’m no less rebellious about this kind of conformity, and I hate to think that we need to make sports yet another activity marked by duty and obligation, rather than fun and play. And most of all, a passion inspired by people such as Billie Jean King.

But that passion has stir inside the girl, and it has to stir deeply. Nothing else is possible without it.

Imagine

When I stepped inside the lines, the rest of the world melted away.

Like opening a book, taking the field and the court was for me an act of the imagination, as well as a means of escape. The world of adults — their rules and demands — could be blown off, at least to some degree.

I could hear coaches and parents cheering, and sometimes yelling, and occasionally I let an umpire have it. I could talk back to a grown-up and get away with it, although I came close on one occasion to getting tossed for my big mouth.

At the age of 12!

I’ve often wondered whether I’d be sore today if had I had more talent and ambition than the limited options offered to me at the time, slow-pitch softball and six-on-six basketball. I participated in what I could, and did the best that I could. Playing for the Atlanta Braves, or being the female Pete Maravich, all the way down to my gray socks, were fanciful notions better left for the dream world inside the lines.

This used to be my playground.

I didn’t have a point of reference for any of this. When Donna Lopiano repeats her oft-told story of being crushed as a young girl to learn why she’d never have a chance to pitch for the New York Yankees, I can relate to that. Although I have always hated the Yankees, and always will.

She ended up being a Softball Hall of Famer, playing for the famous Raybestos Brakettes. I gather this might not have been as satisfying for reasons I came to realize about my own experience: Softball was and is a fine sport, but it just isn’t baseball. If your heart is set on playing baseball, the so-called “female” alternative is really no alternative at all.

(Even more intriguingly, Lopiano never fielded a softball team when she was women’s athletics director at Texas; it was added only after she had become the CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation and her old school was hit with a Title IX suit.)

What I can’t relate to is how Lopiano and other women’s sports advocates have allowed those stymied dreams to animate their activism beyond the simple notion of working to tear down the barriers of participation and competition for girls and women. That certainly was difficult and painful enough to do, and they should be tremendously proud of what they’ve done on behalf of hundreds of thousands of young women.

But to parlay that activism into an angry grievance against the so-called “male sports culture” smacks of an embittered sense of vengeance that’s just unbecoming. Even when it attempts to call out the unbecoming behavior of male athletes. The women’s sports movement was not supposed to have been about reflecting matriarchal attitudes.

Even after I became aware of how truly limited my sports options were because of my gender, I never believed that rectifying that meant others had to pay a price. I didn’t envy or hate boys because football and baseball were all-male pursuits, with their standalone cultures. If anything, I grew to love those sports even more, curiously attracted to the reality that they would always remain mysterious to me.

For me, it was all about getting in the game, and staying there, first as a kid on the sandlots of suburban Atlanta, and later as an adult privileged to write about sports from all over the country and the world for my hometown newspaper.

It ranged from collecting names and times of competitors at a youth track meet to watching Brazil win the World Cup in person. In between were lots of high school and college football and basketball, soccer and Olympic sports and quite a bit of women’s sports.

It was a theatre of dreams that will never die.

Billie Jean showed that it wasn’t a place just for boys.

When I stepped inside the lines, I could dream.

And be.

What’s Next: On Saturday I’ll post a collection of all the individual posts in this series with a few final thoughts, and explain why I wasn’t able to get to everything I intended. It’s been a thrill to do this, and an honor to have some really thought-provoking comments from readers.

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Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series.

This is the eighth in a series entitled “Women’s Sports Without Illusions” that critically examines the nearly four decades of the women’s sports movement, including Title IX, cultural and social developments, the growth of professional and international women’s sports and current challenges and issues.

All posts in this series can be found here.

At about the time young girls in America were beginning to flock to playing fields and other athletic venues in unprecedented numbers, women’s sports leaders in the 1990s began cranking up some new rhetoric about the reasons they should be participating and competing.

This went beyond obtaining an athletic scholarship and a college education in the process, as Title IX was permitting them to do.

As the female experience in sports was poised to make astonishing breakthroughs later in that decade — the Atlanta Olympics, the creation of the WNBA and the Women’s World Cup — a new line in the sports feminist narrative was sounding a bit more stern, even grim: Participating in sports was imperative, for the sake of good health and a prosperous career, among other factors. Former University of Iowa women’s athletics director Christine Grant summed up this sentiment rather famously:

“Girls must play sports. It’s essential for successful people.”

Her sister-in-arms, Donna Lopiano, at the time presiding over the Women’s Sports Foundation, added more details of how girls and women would benefit from sports:

“Greater confidence levels, self-esteem, and a better self image. They are also less likely to be involved in an unintended pregnancy, less likely to take drugs and engage in other high-risk behavior, and more likely to stay in school. The health benefits are tremendous and include a lower risk of breast cancer and osteoporosis.”

It’s hard to dispute that a positive experience in sports can yield these and other benefits, beyond the pleasure of playing. I understood that even as a young girl in pre-Title IX America. Told how unusual it was for a girl to want to play ball as much as I did, I shrugged off such statements, defiant of even polite suggestion of conformity. I was (and remain) stubbornly independent off the field as well, but never in my life did I think the urge to get girls to get in the game would become even more conformist than what I fought against.

Playing for all the wrong reasons

The symbol of this almost desperate attempt to encourage girls to get involved in sports was a 1995 Nike commercial, If You Let Me Play Sports. An influential sports shoe company with a brilliant reputation for powerful marketing and imagery packed more into this 30-second spot than all the pronouncements of sports feminists could manage in 30 years:

This ad certainly felt like a triumphal moment for women’s sports leaders, a cultural watershed in reaching the American public about the values and virtues of sports for girls. Clucked a Nike copywriter:

“It wasn’t advertising. It was the truth.”

But was it?

I was initially chilled at seeing this ad when was first unveiled, and my feeling soon switched to horror.

First of all, the title of the ad.

Who was stopping girls from playing? Anywhere in America? In the mid-1990s? This has been part of the sports feminist mantra — that girls and women, even then, were somehow still being prevented from playing, even two full decades into the Title IX era. If not actually on the field, then in a larger cultural context. Except that this was patently untrue.

Secondly, there has been little response to having young girls spout the same talking points of activists, as if they have any idea what they’re really saying. The worst example was the somber girl, sitting on a swing and saying in a monotone that if only she could be allowed to play sports:

“I will be more likely to be leave a man who beats me.”

To have the words of adults come out of the mouths of children is reprehensible, this line above all. There’s an implication here that females must be implored to get into sports, to “become strong,” if for nothing else than to deal with abusive men. Mariah Burton Nelson must have been beaming.

Rarely has the veracity of these statements in this ad, and in the entire “girls must play sports” meme been questioned. What are the sources for these claims? We are never told. This all sounds so right, so they must be true.

It’s OK not to play — really, it is

Yet a flood of books, research and other claims were forthcoming in the wake of the Nike ad, and as social scientists, academics and the larger feminist community issued warning signs about how girls were being “shortchanged” in American society.

A 1998 book, “Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls’ Lives,” plays off these claims, which were expertly demolished by dissident feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.

Now girls needed to be “saved” through sports. But what if they stop playing? This is a terrifying prospect for the well-meaning co-authors, Jean Zimmerman and Gil Reavill, so they devoted a chapter to it. “When Sports Fails Girls” leads where the title suggests. There are lengthy discussions of eating disorders and body image, and of sexual abuse by and relationships with coaches.

Zimmerman and Reavill mention only in passing that girls may become interested in other activities, and even “in boys.” Apparently, “some people” believe this, but they don’t bother to explore that possibility. It is a glaring omission.

Today, as a third generation of young girls and women participate in sports, there is more research being conducted into the topic, and that is being widely hailed in the mainstream media. So is the Nike ad, still uncritically. Chirped The Wall Street Journal:

“A 10 percentage-point rise in girls’ participation in high school sports leads to a 1 percentage point increase in female college attendance and a 1 to 2 percentage point increase in female labor-force participation.

“Maybe athletics should be added to reading, writing and arithmetic.”

Yet women are more than 50 percent of college students today, and are becoming more in demand in a labor force that increasingly favors knowledge- and information-based collaborative skills. Whether or not they played sports does not appear to be a factor. They’re changing the cultures of education and work, indeed, they may be actually shaping it, by the sheer dominance of their numbers. This is hardly being shortchanged.

While these developments are good news, there are other basic questions unanswered. Why, when women are diving deeply into all kinds of academic, athletic and extracurricular activities, is such a disproportionate amount of attention being focused on those who play sports? Stevenson’s research doesn’t address those girls and women who don’t play sports and who aren’t interested in it at all, but are having succesful, happy and healthy lives. What about them? What about those of us who did play, once upon a time, and did drop out, and are just fine?

Yes, Title IX and the women’s sports movement opened the doors of sports to girls and women who might not otherwise have been able to play. But to continue to insist that this must be a top priority, a higher-value choice among many that females now have available because of health, fitness, academic and professional reasons, is to disrespect the fact that not all women will make the same choices. There’s a certain comformity in this notion that I find detestable, given the rebellious roots of my sports experience.

And finally — and I will write about this in more depth in my final post on Friday — all these feel-good stories and studies are missing any examination why those of us who love sports were drawn to it in the first place:

If not for the joy of sports, then for what? What’s the point?

Coming Thursday: As the Title IX establishment celebrates the 39th anniversary of the passage of the law, some envision how the “revolution” might continue. Their ideas subvert the original intent and spirit of that statute and do little to broaden the mainstream appeal of women’s sports. Warning: I may get a little angry about all this.

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Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series.

This is the sixth in a series entitled “Women’s Sports Without Illusions” that critically examines the nearly four decades of the women’s sports movement, including Title IX, cultural and social developments, the growth of professional and international women’s sports and current challenges and issues.

All posts in this series can be found here.

Since I’ve been saying for quite a while that the 3-part test for Title IX sports compliance is flawed, I thought I ought to propose how the law might be improved. I’m not alone in suggesting at least an evaluation of where we are after more than 30 years, but you probably won’t hear much about all that this week, with Thursday’s 39th anniversary of the passage of Title IX approaching. The Sisterhood chanting has already begun. It will be largely uncritical.

The College Sports Council, which has called for changes to Title IX for a number of years, wants to reinstate the interest survey (boosted by the Bush administration in 2005 but booted by the Obama administration in 2009). This is a non-starter for the Title IX diehards, who claim that women are as interested in sports as men. While I generally agree with the CSC on Title IX issues, it offers few other ideas on reforming the law.

I may under the biggest illusion of all in believing that the 3-part test can be replaced with new regulations to fit the times. But I’ll throw out a few ideas that are by no means anything more than that.

But first, here are the three options for Title IX sports compliance that were adopted in 1979:

– The percentage of female and male athletes is substantially proportionate to the percentage of female and male undergraduates, respectively.

– Demonstrate a history of continuing and expanding opportunities for the underrepresented sex (women in virtually every instance).

– “Fully and effectively” accommodate the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex (again, this is almost always females).

Why the 3-part test must go

It’s antiquated. When the HEW policy interpretation cited above went into effect, women were in the distinct minority in college athletic programs, and far below parity in higher education overall. The latter is hardly the case today, with women comprising in many cases 55-60 percent of a college’s undergraduate enrollment.

With regards to the first test, while women are not at 50 percent in most cases in athletic departments, they are surpassing that in some instances, even at programs with large football programs. Example in my backyard: The University of Georgia, where 52 percent of the athletes are women. But because the female undergraduate enrollment is 58 percent, a school with one of the most successful women’s athletics programs in the nation is vulnerable to Title IX litigation.

That’s why UGA likely will add another women’s sport in the near future. Like many schools, it is open to a lawsuit for reasons having nothing to do with sports, but rather how many females, most of whom will never suit up, gain admission through a non-athletic component of the university administration.

It punishes male athletes. Title IX absolutists expect athletic departments to keep up with enrollment patterns, but to reasonable people this truly is the warped logic of proportionality. Georgia hasn’t cut men’s teams to move closer toward complying with the first test, thanks to bulging athletic coffers. But it’s the exception and not the rule.

As for the second test, there’s no seeming end to how long women’s teams may be added. There’s one big problem: There aren’t that many more sports to add. The NCAA’s list of Emerging Sports for Women, which is compiled to assist athletic programs with Title IX compliance, currently has only four sports, and one of them, squash, will be dropped in August.

The other three sports don’t figure to attract a groundswell of support; indeed, both equestrian and sand volleyball were issued reprieves by the NCAA last year after failing to add enough varsity programs to “show promise” of being NCAA-sponsored sports. The other is rugby, which currently has only two varsity women’s teams in the entire nation. If the NCAA can’t find any viable new sports to add then perhaps “emerging” is the wrong choice of words.

Lacrosse, now reaching into the Deep South, may be the only women’s sport left with major growth potential. There’s also the controversial subject of competitive cheerleading, which I’ll discuss in a later post this week.

As for the third test, it’s hard to “accommodate the interests and abilities” of the underrepresented sex if you can’t adequately survey what those interests may be. The Title IX establishment doesn’t trust interest surveys, claiming they could get caught in an e-mail spam filter. It’s more likely they fear the answers that women students may provide won’t jibe with their proportionality ideal. A political favor by the Obama White House has made the activists happy (as conservative interests were pleased with the 2005 Bush policy clarification), and that’s all that matters. This prong has been effectively neutered.

What I’d like to see

The battle to get girls and women in the game has been a resounding success. Shifting the Title IX compliance framework away from participation and toward taking care of what’s been built is a possibility worth pondering.

Another example in my backyard: Two years ago, Georgia Tech — which because of its low female enrollment achieved proportionality years ago — opened a beautiful new on-campus softball stadium for its nationally ranked program. Tech has just seven teams for women, and is the only school in the ACC without a women’s soccer program. Without the pressure of having to add teams, Tech is better resourcing what teams it has, which helps with recruiting and enhances the student-athlete experience.

Throughout the country, there are still are plenty of disparities in facilities, funding, equipment, travel and recruiting budgets and related components of operating a college sports team. This is part of Title IX compliance, too, but it’s overshadowed by the furor over the 3-part test. A recent series of stories in the Ball State student newspaper illustrated what work remains to be done, and it is considerable at that school and many others.

Imagine this: Instead of wasting time and money adding teams in obscure sports that struggle to attract participants, schools could use those dollars on better venues, improve coaching salary scales and create an environment for women athletes that’s truly special. New regulations based around these deficiencies would fulfill the spirit of Title IX better than the current numbers game athletics departments have to play to get right with proportionality.

So much of the money that is spent on women’s sports has often come with little of what I call emotional support, and this might be the biggest shortcoming of all. Too many athletics directors simply throw money at women’s teams because they have to under Title IX, and then go off and deal with football boosters or new arena architects. They don’t want to be bothered.

Far too many women’s teams, especially in basketball, could stand to be better marketed and promoted. There’s plenty of TV exposure in hoops thanks to rich conference multi-sport deals, but a more ground-level marketing wouldn’t hurt. If they’re not going to make money, at least they could draw more of a crowd. Too many schools do too little in this regard, and this change has to start at the top.

On the other hand, women’s sports activists who have won resoundingly in the courts for their cause also have won over few people with their us vs. them, to-the-death tactics. It’s hard to give something emotional support when you might be sued by people who have no interest in persuading you to care.

Coming Tuesday: Why all these ideas — or anyone else’s — are likely to go splat. And why unwedding football from proportionality is a longshot.

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Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series.