Final Reflection

Before taking this class, I viewed United States sports culture very similarly, I think, to the ways a majority of people see it: Entertaining, lively, sometimes heartbreaking, and definitely operative as a business above all else. Throughout the semester, my perceptions of sporting culture changed in the sense that I am now much more comfortable with recognizing and identifying the inequalities that permeate our "merit based" sporting landscape. For example, I never really sat down and thought about the ways that being a white, middle class male operate as a factor for success in sports due to an increase in opportunities (especially because, as it stands, the major sports in the US are so blatantly racialized).
The discussion of violence in sports really stood out to me. It's obvious that hegemonic masculinity is an ideal within the confines of American society, but it was very interesting-- and a little bit alarming-- to see just how far some people are willing to go to assert their strength and dominance.
Asking more questions about cultural constructions seems to be a common outcome of classes that are based in sociology or the social sciences, and this class is no exception. It's hard to keep living life the way you were before having your eyes opened-- ignorance is bliss, is it not?
As an athlete, I would certainly recommend this class to my friends and teammates-- it made me not only conscious of the way that sports influence society (and vice versa), but also made me very aware of the ways that my behaviors in a team context (over adhering to the sports ethic, etc) impact the rest of the women that I row with. It would be interesting to see how athletics and the sporting world would be reformed if all athletes and coaches were exposed to a class like this.

The University of Colorado Women's Crew Team (Spring 2014) after a great day of racing
(I'm in the obnoxious blue shoes)

Why the 'Mans Mans' Game is an Insult to Men

Michael Sam is probably not what you picture
when you picture a gay man-- why not? 

The film Training Rules follows the story of Rene Portland, former women's basketball head coach at Penn State, who instated a series of "training rules" for her team. This in and of itself is not the problem, most teams have some sort of set of rules in place to ensure that not only are athletes performing to their highest potential, but they're also aware of the standards to which they are being held. However, among the common "no drinking, no drugs" rules that most teams tend to enforce in some capacity, Portland had her own addition: No lesbians. This blatant form of discrimination was virtually disregarded, glossed over in Portland's triumphant 25 seasons at Penn State. Though her rules seem despicable to the outside observer (and, don't get me wrong, they are actually genuinely horrible), Portland was able to use her "anti-gay clause" as a selling point for playing women's basketball at Penn State as opposed to virtually any other NCAA DI school-- by painting lesbians as the ultimate corrupt individuals, Portland created an atmosphere that was fundamentally unsafe for gay athletes.

Rene Portland isn't the only person in the sports world promoting a homophobic agenda-- far from it. Though assertions of a progressive society are all over the place in United States culture, the fact of the matter is that our national societal ideals are still largely rooted in religious traditions that were especially widely accepted as normative in the 19th century. What I mean by that is that our culture, at its most basic level, is fundamentally still very conservative. This is manifest most obviously in sports, wherein it is certainly non-normative (and potentially dangerous, even) to be a homosexual and exist in that world. Many sports are loaded with homosexual stigma: women's softball and basketball are written off immediately as being loaded with lesbians. Men's sports don't really carry the same stigma: in a culture that bases people's inherent value on heteronormative ideals, men being strong and competitive and athletic is normal, for women, it counts as a form of deviance (unless, you know, you play a pretty girl sport, like volleyball).

For the sports culture here to become more inclusive, people as a whole need to make a paradigm shift-- sports is an exaggerated stage for the demonstration of cultural ideals, and until our culture focuses significantly less time and energy on tearing people down for their sexual orientations (or even caring about other people's significant other preferences), sports will continue to shine a light on the shortcomings in our social constructions.

Darwin's Athletes: Problematizing Race in Sports

Last week, the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (yes, competitive poetry) was hosted at CU Boulder: Students from all around the country came to represent their schools by throwing down some absolutely gut-wrenchingly beautiful works of art. A majority of the students represented were African American, and one of my teammates on our (all white) team exclaimed, "I don't think there has ever been so much non-athletic racial diversity on CU's campus." While this is perhaps not the most articulate sentiment, it certainly holds some ground. People often joke that when they see an African American student on campus, the first things they wonder is what sport said student plays. Especially in Boulder, there's a certain assumption surrounding the African American population and their participation in sports.
As evidenced in the movie Hoop Dreams, many African American youths view a career in professional athletics as their main path to social mobility, though it's very likely that the actual number of African American students who view sports as their proverbial "passport from the projects" is hugely skewed by US media and the stories that sell.

The Blind Side poster art

In Hollywood, it's easy to guess the premise of a sports film as soon as your eyes land on the poster art: a brooding, handsome AThe Blind Side, the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African American boy who is adopted into the loving, middle class caucasian arms of Sandra Bullock's character, the proverbial white person as savior. It's interesting to see how problematized the role of race is in Hollywood with regards to film in general: When casting directors are looking for someone to play their down-and-out African American protagonist, they often go with newcomers to the film scene and juxtapose their character with a big ticket celebrity (In the case of The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock and Lily Collins).
frican American man is often superimposed over the horizon, and the expression in his eyes illustrates immediately that he is poised for status as legend. The most obvious contemporary example of this overt racialized sports film is

Stories like The Blind Side get copious amounts of attention because everyone loves an underdog narrative, and really, who's more of an underdog than an impoverished African American with inexplicably fine-tuned athletic abilities. Of course, this is also a problem, because it propagates the idea of racial superiority when it comes to certain races and their participation in certain sports. Stereotypes about race (including but certainly not limited to participation in certain athletics) only serve to maintain the already obvious cycle of preconceived notions. The impacts of these notions shouldn't be written off as quickly as they are: After all, Hollywood is raking in cash based on cultural assumptions and appreciations about racialized sporting narratives.

Sports, (Wo)Men, and the Gender Order

The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) recently released an advertising campaign declaring that "Strong is Beautiful," which sounds like a progressive movement at first-- after all, it's a campaign devoted to recognizing that the women who compete in tennis at a professional level (as well as women in athletics in general-- strong women) are beautiful in a way that is rooted in their trained strength. But somehow, instead of encouraging women to get active and competitive regardless of, for example, how they look, these ads are further problematizing the role of female athletes.

"Strong is Beautiful" is a great sentiment, but the fact of the matter is that as long as the term "beautiful" is being used in advertising for women's athletics, no real progress is being made. Instead of focusing on the athletic abilities of these women, it's focusing on their physicality, as though this advertisement is making it okay for a woman to be multifaceted, like before this ad revolutionized women's athletics, strong and beautiful existed in binary opposition and it was impossible for a woman to be both. 

Model Athlete? Or Model, Athlete?
(Tyra Banks would be so proud of that smize)

Then there's the ad itself: Petra Kvlotva is swinging a tennis racquet, but in a pose that looks more like a ballerina than a professional tennis player. Her hair is curled to perfection, down and flowing, her face is perhaps more pallid and serene than the Virgin Mary, and that dress. Petra Kvlotva is pictured-- strength and beauty personified-- in a flowing red high-low number that belongs in an episode of America's Next Top Model over an advertisement that teaches girls and women that they can be pretty and athletic. The background of the ad fades from purple to orange, bathing Kvlotva in a flattering sunsetty glow. She is the very picture of beauty, looking more like a Greek Goddess awkwardly holding a tennis racquet than an athlete awkwardly forced to take a swing in an outfit that's even impractical by tennis standards. 

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In stark juxtaposition to this photo, the ATP World Tour advertisement shows three tennis greats, all men, swinging their racquets, muscles tensed, faces barred into expressions of concentration and intensity. The caption on their photo isn't an encouraging sentiment about how being strong can also be pretty, it's two words, pure and simple, all caps: BEAT THIS. The advertisement exudes athleticism--

look at their muscles, look at their workout clothes, look at the action lines superimposed over the picture so the viewer can see exactly where their swing came from, the full range of motion. They don't have to justify themselves in sport by being pretty, because they're not supposed to.

Men in sports are intense, focused, determined. Women are all of those things, too, it's just covered up by lip gloss and curled hair, plastered to sunsetty backgrounds of ads that oversexualize athleticism. The contrast between these two blatantly gendered advertisements not only propagates gendered stereotypes  within the sporting realm, but also in general. Women are culturally expected to be delicate, fragile, graceful and beautiful, whereas hegemonic masculinity mandates that men be strong and rugged and determined. If these ads don't epitomize gender in sports, I don't know what does.

Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining gender (and race?) representation in Sports Illustrated

According to Sports Illustrated, 2013 was a great year for sports. Or at least that's the image projected: nearly every cover of the magazine last year depicts a sports hero in action, sliding into home, narrowly avoiding a tackle, gearing up to throw a pass that will inevitably reach its target. These magazine covers make it look like 2013 was The Year of the Sports Hero. So when is the year of the woman? Obviously not 2013.

Peyton Manning's 2013
Sportsman of the Year  cover:
Rugged, intense, oozing
masculinity, and absolutely no
cleavage in sight.

Of the sixty issues of Sports Illustrated printed last year, only two of them featured women on the covers. That's only 3.3% of the covers; 96.7% of Sports Illustrated covers in 2013 were male athletes. You may say, "Emily, I get it, and it's cute that you did some math, but shouldn't women just be happy that female athletes are represented on two of the Sports Illustrated covers?" Oh, Dear Reader, I wish that two female athletes were represented on the covers. But please notice that I never said the glossy women on the glossy covers of these glossy sports pages were athletes, though one of them is in uniform. 

Sigmund Freud would have something to say
about this cover (Sports Illustrated, 10/07/2013)

"Please, Emily," You may say, "Stop with the facetiousness and just get on with it." Well, if you insist. The woman in uniform is not an athlete. She is not muscular or sweaty or depicted in a position of power or glory. No. The woman in uniform is none other than America's lingerie-clad Sweetheart, Kate Upton. She's wearing a fitted version of an Atlanta Braves uniform and is casually perched on the shoulders of two African-American Braves players. So what does it say, then, that in this circumstance, sex is absolutely being used to sell magazines? Still not sold on this idea? There is a hot white woman, blonde hair and blue eyes, the epitome of Aryan ideologies, posed suggestively on the broad shoulders of two African American men. Upton is wearing her signature "come-hither" expression, and the men are both grinning and leaning towards her. Problematic? Absolutely. By positioning Upton above the two African-American athletes, not only is this cover propagating the idea of a sexualized image of women in sports, it's also presenting a very interesting and fundamentally important race dichotomy. Placing Upton physically above the men illustrates the race/gender binary that is to this day at odds in American society-- she is superior to them, an insinuation that is implicit in her physical positioning, but also in her pigmentation. Though I feel uncomfortable treading into slavery territory, there's a status that Upton, as an attractive white female, has acquired that these male athletes have not. 

Another interesting way that sex is being utilized in this cover is the positioning of the men's baseball bats. Freud would absolutely love the phallocentric nature of this magazine cover. I mean for goodness sakes, both of the men are holding their big, hard, wooden (yeah, I went there) baseball bats between their legs. Sports Illustrated is an excellent manifestation of Freud's theory of the phallus as it appears in American Culture. When addressed in his texts, Freud addresses the phallus as an obsession, something that permeates the subconscious of every individual, so to have something so blatant as two men with literal rods between their legs isn't subtle, or particularly clever, but seems to be an effective marketing tool. The crotch-bats (of these two African American men, no less) and a hot blonde  propagates basically every stereotypical American male wet dream ever, and very clearly illustrate the hyper-sexualization of US sporting culture.

Kate Upton's 2013 SI Swimsuit Cover

"Whoa, Emily." You're probably thinking, blushing, "You are really making a lot of really bold assertions. I'm sure Sports Illustrated isn't intentionally objectifying women." You're right. You are totally right. I'm sure that it's an accident, then, that the other Sports Illustrated cover that features a woman is the infamous Swimsuit Issue. And it's totally a coincidence that we have the return of the Prodigal Model. Yes, that's right, it's Kate Upton again. Still hot, still blonde, still portraying unrealistic American standards of beauty to everyone who looks at the cover. You know, all in a day's work. 

I'm not attacking Upton for her chosen career, or the fact that she's blonde and has boobs. That's all great. More power to her. But the way those things are portrayed by the sporting industry is in need of a major makeover. Female athletes will never get the respect that they work for as long as magazines like Sports Illustrated keep presenting women as nothing but a pretty face and their nice assets (pun intended; not only is Upton well endowed, she's also got quite a financial endowment due to her father… word play is the best). But for that to happen, there needs to be a shift in consumer culture, as well. Magazines keep printing pictures of men being rugged and chiseled and women being sexy and naked because people keep buying it. Though our culture has made great strides towards gender equality, magazines like Sports Illustrated are perfect examples of how far we still have to go. Where was Becky Hammon's Sports Illustrated cover? Where are the photos of Eli Manning in body paint smoldering at the camera? I'm not saying boycott all magazines and go live in a hole until people are miraculously equal. In fact, if buying the Swimsuit Issue makes you happy, Dear Reader, then by all means, do it. Just be aware of the inequalities in your consumption.

Sources:

http://cnnsi.com/vault/cover/select/2013-01-01/2013-12-31/dd/1/index.htm

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/freud.html

Reflecting on the Shame of College Sports: Should NCAA Div 1 Basketball and Football players get paid?

According to Taylor Branch's article in The Atlantic, "The Shame of College Sports," the United States is the only country that competes internationally in big name sports at the collegiate level, which immediately presents a bias inherent to the argument of whether or not collegiate athletes should be paid to play-- those Americans and their sporting culture have some backwards priorities. On one hand, representatives from the NCAA argue that the "amateur status" of the athletes operates in direct correlation to the proverbial "sanctity" of the sport in which they participate, and paying the athletes would alter the game, that "commercialism was hurting college sports, and that higher education's historical balance between academics and athletics had been distorted by all the money sloshing around" (Branch). 

The flip side of this argument is presented flawlessly by a New York Times article that explores the sports economy in the United States, specifically the impact of money on college football. The assertion of this article is made blatantly clear within the first paragraph of the piece: "big money has taken over everything else in sports." Poignant? Certainly. Upsetting? Only in its truth. Uniforms, pre and post workout energy drinks, and even stadiums are being stamped with the name of the highest bidder: Duke and Louisville played their Elite Eight game during March Madness 2013 in Lucas Oil Stadium, for goodness sakes. Anyone who argues for the sanctity of sport has obviously not been paying attention to the growing logos on the jerseys of their favorite team or that they all wear the same brand of shoes.

Highest paid public employees by state: Most are college
coaches-- do athletes deserve to benefit from a trickle down effect?

I've thought a lot about whether or not NCAA athletes should get paid for their work, and though it would be nice to get a check every once and a while for entertaining hoards of adoring fans and being a major draw to a specific university, most athletes are getting paid via tuition to attend specific schools. Scholarships are, in a sense, means of getting paid, are they not? Many athletes also receive stipends from their given schools for housing, food and books-- that's another acknowledgement of the efforts being put into the school. But on the other hand, in most states, the highest paid public employees are football coaches (exceptions in North Carolina and Kentucky are basketball coaches), so why wouldn't their players, the ones who execute the actual work, get to reap any of the benefits? I think largely, my stance on the payment of NCAA athletes is centered around the phrase "student athlete." It implies a level of priority, that being a student should come above the sport that said student plays. If they're getting paid for a sport, then suddenly the priority shifts, since the sport, and not the academics, would present a major source of income. Programs all over the nation are already pushing unprepared collegiate athletes through the school for selfish fiscal gain (See also: the University of North Carolina "African Studies" Major that turned out to be a fake department, giving football and basketball players A's in classes that didn't even exist on campus, ever); if athletes were suddenly getting paid for their sport, there would be even more motivation for coaches and athletes to counterfeit their way through education. 

Also, paying college athletes would just cause the current sports paradigm to shift downwards: then high school players would be the new college players, unpaid, full of potential and ready to turn it into a career. And with college athletes being treated like pros, what would that make the professional athletes? Demi gods? 

High School Sport

In the early 1900's, the United States became one of the only nations in the world that funds inter-school athletic programs. According to Coakley, the "idealized" purpose of high school sport is to propagate learning experiences and social identities, as well as educate youth about participating in a team dynamic-- working with a group of people towards a shared common goal is a fundamental skill not only on the basketball court, but also in the workplace, in academic settings, and even interpersonal relationships. Of course, these fundaments of high school sport aren't necessarily objectives that are being met. Instead of simply encouraging students to be more well rounded individuals and team players, high school students are being forced to prioritize between their academics and their athletics, and in this unintentional binary, it's often the education that suffers. 

Demetrius Walker, former child prodigy

Though the intentions of high school sports in an ideal world are fairly pure and simple, sports have become such a large-scale national pastime that the sporting identity becomes one that's difficult to escape from, so students aren't just students, but "student athletes" (and there's a reason that the word "student" comes first). The meeting of these expectations is what's causing issue in American high school sports: instead of just encouraging students to get out, get active, and be part of a team, the obsession with sports in our culture is motivating students to push themselves to absolute limits starting at a very early age. 

As evidenced in the article about Demetrius Walker, an immense amount of pressure is being put on young athletes-- if they don't live up to their projected potential, there's a vast arena for disappointment. 

The main concern with the "student/athlete" identity is the blatant imbalance of priorities: though remaining academically eligible is important when it comes to not getting benched, often student athletes will regard workouts as more important than homework, and their education has the potential to be stunted simply because of their over-adherence to the sporting identity that the United States sports culture seems to want to cultivate from day one.