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Popular Culture Review
an act of noncomfonnity to her sport, but she is confonning to expectations and
desires that the female demonstrate attractiveness as well as skill, enacting a
feminine apologetic which also generates ratings and profit for everyone
involved. Whether she wins or loses, her choice of clothes ensures her
commercial endorsements and a spot on the sport segment of the evening news.
In a world where sport has become as much commodity as activity, the market
can be a greater force than idealism about athletics or gender politics.
Many observers would argue that adding a bit of sex and glamour to a
sport is a legitimate, necessary strategy to attract spectators and money in a very
competitive marketplace—and the idea that sport exists for its own pure, noble
sake is simply naive. Better to get the money and the attention than be forced to
give up the game. Witness the enduring problems of women’s basketball and
soccer. Title IX has made all sport far more accessible for girls and women than
ever before, and there are excellent female athletes competing at the highest
levels; but even the biggest women’s team sports cannot compete with men’s
leagues for media attention and fan support (Shields et al. 1). In a maledominated industry, producers, governing bodies, and commentators often argue
that women may be capable of impressive athleticism, but they simply do not
play as fast, aggressively, and skillfully as men. If men will not accept women in
some sports as athletes, then it seems to be a necessary evil to appeal to their
interest and money as sponsors and consumers through sex appeal.
It is hard to argue when the athletes themselves insist that their bodies
are their own, and they can decide freely what to do with them. While feminists
may feel concern for the female athlete’s soul, the athlete herself may feel very
positively about her participation in the spectacle of sport; marketing herself
gives her the ability “to see. . . herself as the origin of meaning and action, a
fiercely individual actor who achieves in. . . her own terms independent of any
larger system of meanings” (Heywood and Dworkin 90). From a certain post
feminist point of view, marketing the athletic female body can be
“empowering. . . allow[ing] women to revalue their own bodies as a source of
pleasure, freedom, and legitimation in their own terms and as a resource for their
own power” (Carty 5). As Olympic track star Amy Acuff has said after posing
provocatively for lad magazine FHM,
“It’s beneficial to me financially to have exposure, to be on
the cover of FHM. .. 1 see the body as a miraculous machine,
and I don’t see sexuality when I see a woman’s body. I see
strength, athleticism, and beauty... I don’t see it as
shameful. . . We’re promoting pride in our bodies”
(Youngblood 3).
But one may be skeptical that these athletes are making their choices in
complete freedom—that their concept of freedom is not in fact one that has
actually been constructed for them in a culture that has tolerated a certain
amount of sexual equality, but which has also found ways to assimilate and