The Olympic Body, The Male Gaze
Are you watching the Beijing Olympics? I’m catching parts of it, and it’s a big watercooler topic here at work. The other day, Joy Nash (among others) posted some photos of Olympians of varying shapes and sizes.
It kinda cracks your head open to realize that each of these people [is] perfect. They’re uniquely suited and perfectly designed to accomplish the feats that they do. And they’re all different. It’s really really stupid that “athletic build” means “shaped like a swimmer or a track star”…
Those stats listed are really incredible: the shotputter’s biceps measure the same as the cyclist’s thighs; the marathoner can only bench press 65 pounds; and I really get a kick that [the 300-pound weightlifter and the 103 pound marathon runner; both women] eat roughly the same amount of calories every day.
The slideshow can be seen here. Today there’s another article in the New York Times, though, by Guy Trebay.
Here are the gnomish female gymnasts, seemingly more compact than ever, more muscularly developed and yet at the same time troublingly arrested, to judge from the lack of secondary sexual characteristics like breasts.
Here is Dara Torres, the 41-year-old swimmer with the blister-pack abs and the padded deltoids, her stupendous physique attained, she says, through Herculean training, and now unquestionably resembling that of a cover boy for Men’s Health.
Here are the sprinters, their muscular bodies so different from those of the whippet-lean athletes of yesteryear. What is it that happened to the human body, one finds oneself asking…
As La Wade saw it, he’s saying that modern female olympians are too buff for his tastes. But he also leads up to the point that “human perfection continues to evolve” in his discussion of changing beauty ideals. Perhaps he isn’t intending to come across as quite so intolerant of muscular women with small breasts. Still, there’s a subtext here. He’s using the Olympics’ historical origins as an excuse for evaluating the “physical beauty” of the athletes, and seemingly finding them wanting. And that’s a little troublesome.
[ETA this post from Ottermatic, about what male vs. female competitive athletes are "allowed" to eat.]
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Celebrities, Exercise, Feminism, Media
My 9 year old noticed this on her own. “Mom, how come the girls playing volleyball are wearing skimpy outfits and the boys get to wear something comfy? Are the girls worried that their butt crack might show on TV? What if it gets cold out?”
Boy, did I not want to tell her the truth: “This is the product of a culture that learned from Sports Illustrated that the place a woman has in sports is anywhere, as long as she’s wearing a bikini.”
To me, there is a powerful correlation to the fact that in certain events — like track and field — women’s times have been getting faster and men’s times haven’t.
Women getting faster, stronger and overall more vital usually results in cosmetic attempts to soften that reality. And to make men look stronger and more poswerful in comparison.
Man Cindy I hate those “softening of reality” attempts. I hate even more that frequently, they’re not just cosmetic. I mean, the attempt to force all women into a 19-year-old, size 00, blonde, small-nosed, silent mode is far from cosmetic — even though the ultimate result might be outwardly described as such.
But you’re right about the correlation being powerful. In a binary system, if one side increases vitality, if the other side doesn’t have the imagination to work out alternative ways to be in the world, you can bet that they’re going to try their d*mndest to force the first side back down where they were.
It sounds like Guy Trebay’s perception of beauty falls in line with that of the mass media. He’s comparing the gymnasts to gnomes and saying the female swimmer looks like a man. Yes, these athletes aren’t stick-figure thin and will not be walking down a runway any time soon. But these are real people who take excellent care of their bodies and haven’t conformed to the ideals that have been shoved down girls’ throats since we were young.
Both people do have points that the bodies of female athletes are different than those of the past. It’s not just the athletes though, women everywhere have bodies that are different than they were decades ago. Love us for who we are :)
In High School, my daughter wanted to be involved in sports in the worst way. So, the first two years, she played basketball and softball. As she is on the short-stocky side (5ft tall), basketball wasn’t a great fit and since this was her first time playing softball, her skill sets were not as developed as the other girls……..so she pretty much rode the bench………..that and the cliques in both sports made her miserable…..
Then, the heavens opened up and she started playing rugby. What a wonderful time she had……….besides being very physical (girls play the same physical games as boys)….what I noticed was that on a rugby team, there is a place for any sized person…..tall, thin, short, fat…….and that those charactoristics were vital to a specific position. It also seemed that the attitudes were a little more down to earth and she had a wonderful time, in fact, it made a big difference in her confidence and her life.
Trudy, that is so great to hear! I remember the girls on our high school field hockey team; they were tough! (The football players were a little intimidated by them.) And they were amazing, confident athletes.
Yeah, male athletes are covering up more, while the women are wearing less and less. It’s pretty disgusting.
The reason that the gymnasts have small breasts is that they haven’t reached puberty yet. (duh)
I wonder what he will think when he is getting his a** handed to him by an elite female athlete.
Why do the vollyball players wear skimpy outfits? Because they’ve worked damn hard on their bodies and they want to show them off. Did your daughter question why Michael Phelps lower his swim suit so low you could almost see his junk? The answer is probably the same. And that’s what I would have told my kids if they would have asked me those questions: They work hard to have such strong bodies and they show them off. Nothing wrong with that!!
@Lynn – for one thing, that may not be entirely accurate. See this page – http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=2066 – and scroll down to comment 2, which shows women’s and men’s Olympic swimsuits.
For another, though – even if they do want to show off their bodies – why is it that the women want to do this? It might be because we constantly receive messages that the best thing we can be is media-image-ideal-attractive – thin and muscley and exposing a lot of skin. These athletes – the best in the world – like women everywhere, hear that what really counts is if they can look how heterosexual white men want them to, and how much booty they’re willing to expose. I think that, even if they do want to show off their boobs and muscles and butts, we should be questioning why this is so – to such a marked degree more for women then men.
I would tell kids, if I had them, that the athletes may be proud of their bodies. But I’d also have a discussion of whether that’s a good thing to be proud of – and how much – and whether the important thing to be proud of is what your body can do, not what it looks like. I’d also talk to them about why the women wear tighter and fewer clothes, and why that bothers me, and what it says to me.
Athletes needs to be in shape because their training accompanies supplements that eventually resulting to their “intimidating” physique.