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The
New Female Athlete
Part
3
"I
think especially on the college level, there's the stereotype
that women athletes are lesbians."
Suzanne
Anthony found a way to overcome this dilemma. "If you talk
about the typical field hockey body, your quads get huge
and your butt gets huge, because your squatting down the
whole time, and the lifting we do is to build those muscles,"
she said. "Everyone on the team jokes about how when we
start lifting again, we can't fit into our pants. Our coaches
yell at us and tell us you have to push yourselves and not
worry that your butt is going to get too big."
At
a very practical level, the upsurge in popularity of women's
sports has widened acceptance of various body types. "Now
there are role models who are the antithesis of Kate Moss,
women with muscles, women with power," said Hugo Schwyzer,
a professor of history and gender at Pasadena City College
in California. "They literally know how to throw their weight
around."
Schwyzer
adds that one of the most controversial issues in women's
basketball right now surrounds "the dunk." Very few women
traditionally have had the physical ability to slam dunk.
But in the newest generation of female athletes, there are
more and more young women who can defy gravity. "The dunk
has always been seen as a particularly aggressive move,
a way of saying, 'look what I can do,'" says Schwyzer. He
says that for women's basketball in particular, there's
an assumption that women are going to be more sportsmanlike,
better at passing, and less concerned with individual statistics
and more concerned with a cooperative approach. "To some
extent, that may be true," he adds, "but some of that may
also reflect certain sexist assumptions about women's nature."
Katie
Corey of the Emmanuel College in Boston basketball team
finds the tendency to make presumptions about women athletes
frustrating. "I think especially on the college level, there's
the stereotype that women athletes are lesbians," said Corey,
flipping her long blonde hair out of her eyes. "I think
that a lot of people think that just because you're underneath
the boards, dribbling, playing your ass off.
Schwyzer
thinks it's important to "break down the connection between
female aggression and lack of femininity," he says, because
a woman can be both. Schwyzer thinks what is clear is that
men are ambivalent. While a lot of men support women's sports,
they also see it as a potential threat. The woman whose
life involves sports is less likely to be dominated by a
man, both physically and emotionally. Kane believes one
of the reasons why there's so much resistance to women's
participation in sport and often a backlash against it,
is that it is an arena that is so liberating for women.
"It potentially is a site where all of the traditional stereotypes
and practices of gender can be undermined, challenged, sabotaged,"
she said.
| "Society
has traditionally said girls don't play sports and guys
don't like girls who play sports." |
Andrea
Lytle, who plays water polo for Boston College, says that
while she thinks a guy wants a girl who is into sports,
she thinks he would be threatened if the girl knows more
about the subject or is a stronger player. "I've generally
found that I date guys who play a different sport than me
because there isn't that competitive edge to [the relationship],"
she said.
Penny
Vastakis, who ran track for Rensselear Polytechnic Institute,
says she has always associated female strength with sexual
attractiveness."I use my body to perform, to run, to jump,
to fly," she said, adding that her boyfriend loves the fact
that she is athletic. "He never encouraged me to look like
all those anorexic models," says Vastakis. "Let's just say
he liked the fact that I was fit."
Vastakis,
on one hand, feels proud to be among the many females who
are pioneers of post-Title IX sports, but still feels exasperated
by the struggle. "You'd think, by now, we wouldn't have
to have bake sales and sponsor dances to rent the bus for
our away meets or buy new uniforms," she says.
NEXT:
It was worse in Donna Kauchak's day>>
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