Grand Slam

Too often, sports pages and programming are dominated by men -- men reporters and columnists, men  colour commentators, men team owners, men coaches, men players. In fact, if you think about it, you rarely hear the term ''male athlete.'' It's a given.

Meanwhile, when it's a woman at play, it's often qualified with ''female'' or ''women's'' or something similar.

It's never ''men's hockey,'' except maybe at the Olympics. It's always ''women's hockey.''

But, hey, I am all for celebrating women athletes. The more, the better. It's just that, when it's done, it's all about celebrating the good-looking ones, or celebrating them in a sexual way.

Case in point: This lengthy magazine feature in The New York Times, published yesterday. (Reg. req'd)

The article itself, How Power has Transformed Women's Tennis, is a rather dry analysis of how women in the sport today not only have more clout, on and off the court, but also have more physical strength, more muscle, more back in that backhand.

“When Chrissie and Martina were winning 36 majors,” Billie Jean King, the tennis legend, talking pure performance, not personality, recalled of the Chris Evert versus Martina Navratilova rivalry of the late ’70s and early ’80s, “everyone was complaining about only two good players, no depth. Now, that was supposedly the golden age, and there’s no depth and only the Williams sisters today? Give me a break. My lord, what I would give to hit one ball like them.”

So far, so good right?

Except for this, an accompanying video/slide show showing sparkly, flowy,slow-mo shots of tennis champs such as Serena Williams, in action. Now, I am no prude as regular readers know, but I take exception to how these images are more shwing than swing.

Consider the video of Australia's Samatha Stosur. It barely shows her face, but spends plenty of time on her tubetop, in which she is clearly braless. Yes, I know. She chose her own outfit but, like most of the other videos, it has a vaguely soft-porn feel to it.

Would male tennis players get the same treatment?

Do women tennis players still feel they have to sell sexuality along with sport? 

Would a Billy Jean King or Martina Navratilova (pictured up top, right), no matter how pumped up, have a chance in today's tennis world?

Discuss.

H/T to Francesca, who pointed this out to me on Facebook.

Comments

[Francesca]

McEnroe: Ease up on female players
The tennis champ warns that women are being given more court time than they can handle

http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/08/27/mcenroe_women_tennis/index.html

"During a CBS conference call, the U.S. Open champion suggested that female tennis players are "unable to deal with both the physical and mental demands of the game," the Los Angeles Times paraphrases."

[Connie Donoghue]

'Real' clout to my mind, would be if womens' tennis revolutionized the tennis world where more people generally play the game, and where more women can make it to the pro's having started at their local rec centre courts. As far as I know, in Canada more men than women have been able to 'make it' to the tennis big leagues from plebiaen places.

So, the greats of the past would still be champs because the scope womans' tennis world itself overall hasnt changed that much.

Power? Interesting choice of imagery for the Australian player. Not the backbreaking power serve, not the level gaze of the return. But an incrediblyclassic martial pose with a tennis racquet instead of a shield or sword. Her skirt even looks like an ancient war kilt. Alongwith the managably touchable freestyle hair 'commercials', of course.

Male bodies get a similar visual treatment in '300'....saw the last hour of that movie just recently on tv....hate to spend money on those kinda shows.

Aside from the liberty and fight-to-the-death for your homes and families theme that I of course love, I thought it was interesting how the director employed commercial-style imagery and contemporary fashion representational convention to depict ancient social values of expendable people (armies), acceptability (...'I have a hunch about this whole situation here' traitor guy) and valour (..'.I lost my eye and that leader-guy changed my whole perspective on the world!' live-to-fight-another-day-survivor guy).

Maybe it's good to still denote 'womens' activities....I mean look at politics....by now we all thought that there would be equality, justice and no poverty. That the 21st century would be the time to set aside forever the old battlefields and the old struggles and look towards jointly eradicating the ills and plagues of the whole human race. Never in a million years would we have thought that the great hope of feminist politcs would be the wife of a former leader...that the democracy-hardliners would be hellbent on a multigenerational battle against 'big intrusive government lead by a....musilman'. !~?

Ok the teapartyers say Obama's a muslim, but I couldnt resist using the archaic slavic term....seemed fitting....