AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2004 > September > 03 > Entry
Should a female Olympian undress and cash in?
Diane Glass, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Diane Glass, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Should female sports stars expect to get respect if they walk around in their skivvies? Or perhaps nothing at all, like the Olympic hopefuls who posed for Playboy’s Olympic babe edition.
It is more than disappointing to see female sports stars pose nude in Playboy or even scantily clad in Maxim magazine. Not because I’m a prude (okay, maybe I am) but because women in sports have fought so hard to be taken seriously that posing as sexual objects belittles their achievements and distills them all into one big lump where all women inevitably are boiled down – sexual objects and eye candy.
I can understand the impulse. Money, money, money. The sporting life is as fleeting as fame. Age is a huge factor in sports. The older you are the more likely your days are numbered, and your salary likely goes down. Strike while the iron is hot — and you’re a hottie — for some extra cash down the road. But I can’t help equating such grabbing of cash to peddling your body on a street corner. Call me a prude, but if you’re selling your body it is a not so fine a line. Female sports stars who pose nude lose the esteem of their fans and weaken the strides Title IX and women athletes have played so hard to gain.
I’d like to join the throngs and thongs and rally behind the behinds that I see. I just can’t. So you say: Why can’t women be strong and sexy? It’s empowering! It’s the new feminism. Well, it may seem empowering to get money and attention but women have been sexually objectified for centuries. Can’t they think of something to accomplish that is, well, not so cheap and easy? There is something called the high road.
When I watch the Olympics I want to see wide-eyed athletes who’ve worked hard to get where they are, who are honest and pure of heart. Should it have been a surprise that swimmer Amanda Beard models in seductive photo shoots? Or that a number of female athletes posed in Playboy magazine? Probably not. Yet I want to root for someone all-American. Someone who represents me, not someone who panders to the baser of American values (we’re a country of puritans, why should I be any different?).
I guess when it comes down to it, I expect Olympic hopefuls to represent everything good about America, however unrealistic my expectation may be. The allure of Hollywood glamour and selling oneself to get it isn’t one of the American virtues I want to see televised around the world. I still believe in the American spirit, untarnished by fame and the seduction of money, a reality that seems to be fading into a landscape of money-grubbing capitalism.
Rebuttal
For once, I wholeheartedly agree with Diane – although (no surprise) for different reasons.
I too want our Olympians to represent everything good about America – but I don’t think my expectations are unrealistic. Whether they like it or not, our Olympic athletes - men and women - are not just finely tuned sports machines. They are ambassadors for our country. When politicians decide to go into public service, they give up a degree of privacy and the right to conduct their own lives in the way they want. In the same way, the moment an athlete is chosen to compete in the Games, he or she agrees to represent us to the rest of the world. How our Olympians conduct themselves is how the rest of the world views Americans.
And this is not the wisest point in history to flaunt our most licentious side.
I could say that our female Olympians who choose to pose in girlie magazines hurt only themselves – but it wouldn’t be true. One of the main reasons Islamist radicals on the other side of the world detest us is their perception of our “depravedâ€? country from American movies — where bed hopping, vanity, materialism and violence are practically their own Olympic sports. I doubt that few of these jihadists are getting a good look at common decency, our compassion or our love for the underdog. With such an inaccurate understanding already dominating the world’s airwaves and the minds of so many in the morally-strict Muslim world, having an American Olympian so readily doff her clothes is practically a national security risk.
I can’t entirely fault the athletes. The U.S. Olympic Committee shares the responsibility. U.S.O.C. rules should err on the side of caution and respect in making clear who is eligible to train for and compete in the Games. While every amateur or professional athlete remains a free adult who can do what they want, they should know that by making certain disreputable choices, they thereby choose to not represent our country.
So here’s my message to our Olympic women – women that, despite these few blips, I am proud to have representing me: American women can indeed be strong and sexy. But being strong and sexy does not mean posing in little or nothing and letting millions of total strangers drool on your picture. It doesn’t mean selling your body (yes, that’s what you are selling) to the highest bidder. It doesn’t mean enslaving yourself to the mass-market demand for more and more depraved forms of gratification that are demeaning to women and dangerous for men. And being strong and sexy certainly doesn’t mean sabotaging the effort of those women who have gone before you, to get you to this point of being taken seriously in sports.
I encourage any American athlete considering this choice to look at the consequences and do the true strong and sexy thing, which is to hold to the American ideals she is attempting to represent.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Kool Kathy
September 6, 2004 12:31 PM | Link to this
Of course we want our Olympians to be the picture of virtue and modesty. If they want to bare everything in magazines, they don’t have to go far from the volley ball game. One broken string and the other two strings of their clothing would have fallen. Then again, they are right in step with the times. But let’s not get pessimistic. Most Olympians got there with hard work and high ideals. Let us keep that image before us.
By lyrazel
September 7, 2004 09:06 AM | Link to this
Sad isnt it? Girls get nudie photos offers and guys get endorsement deals. Shows me the Olympics are just another sexist organization on a global scale.
By Tymothe
September 7, 2004 10:39 AM | Link to this
Nudity is not nasty. Our minds are nasty. The Olympians used to perform nude. The “uniforms” they wear cover enough to keep the FCC satisfied. We are repressed as a nation regarding the human body.
Allow me to pose this question, is it the medium of photgraphy that makes the picture nasty & degrading? If so, old painted pictures of naked people is Art. New photographs of naked people is porn & degrading.
We need to calm down a bit, relax and stop worrying about the small stuff. Admiring beautiful nude bodies is natural as the awe and wonder of seeing a rainbow, raindrops on a flower, lightening cracking through the darkened sky.
By Ronald Millsaps
September 7, 2004 01:10 PM | Link to this
People are overlooking the moral side to it all. There’s a reason why we wear clothes. In response to the statement that we’re repressed sexually, look around our culture today and see if you can repeat that with a straight face.
By Angie N
September 7, 2004 02:13 PM | Link to this
I agree with another writer that stated men get offered endorsements and women get offered nudie spreads. But what do you expect when every gas station in our country sells nudie mags and every city has nudie bars. I can’t got to the grocery store without a tabloid in my face showing a woman in revealing clothing!
When will women and girls realize that these things belittle us not empower us. It makes all women appear to have no values whatsoever. Uncovering your body for the right amount of money is no different than prostitution. The acts may be slightly different but the low morals factor is the same.
What do you think young girls are learning from all of this? Everytime I go to buy clothes for my son and I see the clothes they are making for young girls I am amazed! Are these clothes for 8 year old girls or for Britney Spears’ backup singers??? The short short skirts and tight skimpy jeans! Why would you send your little girl out dressed like that? What kind of attention do you think she will get? We’re talking about little 8 year old girls here.The message it sends to the next generation of women is appauling.
Respect yourself, your body and your morals. Don’t sell it out to the highest bidder.
By Kenneth B.
September 7, 2004 04:15 PM | Link to this
Thus far, the only sensible comment I’ve seen was from Tymothe. To Mr. Milsaps, I point out that neither he or anybody else said we were repressed sexually. What Tymothe said was that we have some real hang-ups about the human body. And he’s right, we do, especially since everyone else (INCLUDING Ms. Glass and Ms. Feldhahn) seems to think it’s all about sex. Granted, these young lady athletes did not choose the most tasteful outlets to display themselves, which would suggest that it’s actually about the money. (So maybe the prostitution comment is not that far off the mark.) I would’ve suggested that they consider Domai.com, which offers the kind of tasteful photographs that I’m sure people like Tymothe would appreciate. To qoute from the Website: “Are nude photos immoral? No, we think nude photos are natural. Nude photos are not even necessarily sexual, nude photos simply show humans in their natural state.” To Ms. Feldhahn, I will admit that Domai’s philosophy (which can also be found on their Website) probably would not convince the Islamists, (or some others I could think of) but their minds already seem to be made up and will not be changed by little inconvenientcies like the facts
By Ronald Millsaps
September 8, 2004 09:13 AM | Link to this
Kenneth B.’s comments are just a typical copout.
By Tymothe
September 8, 2004 09:49 AM | Link to this
Okay, I have to jump back in here. No one is copping out. I believe that we are all offering opinions in an intelligent debate. Each person’s opinion is unique in it’s own merit. Each person is entitled to disagree with one another. In order to measure any situation in life it must be viewed from all sides. The verities in life are few but succint.
We are complex sexual beings with the ability to reason. Remember that there is an appropriate venue for all forms of pleasure and entertainment. I think we have a tendency to confuse the issue by responding to the beauty in life. But, on this issue as well as all others it is important to remember that each one of can control what we watch, read, wear & do with our minds & bodies for money. Even artists’ models receive a fee!
By Ronald Millsaps
September 8, 2004 11:22 AM | Link to this
Sure, we all have our own decision-making abilities, so why should we influence negative decisions? This “repressed” society we have is so “repressed” that, as someone commented earlier, racy magazine covers are very common at grocery checkout stands, not to mention billboards, TV ads, etc.. No one has more appreciation for the beauty of women than I do. I also have an appreciation for God. God did not intend for us to flaunt the bodies He has given us.
By lyrazel
September 8, 2004 11:52 AM | Link to this
So why dont female athletes get HUGE endorsement deals like male counterparts? Is it because their bodies are more marketable than their athletic abilities, or because there is still very little value in women athletes? And please dont tell me these will be ART photos because that is comparing a Gaugain nude to centerfold of the month. Is the appropriate response to a woman winning the Olympics, World Cup, Nobel Prize etc. etc. etc. ONLY a nude spread? Is that all her achievement is valued at? Isnt this treating women athletes as less because mens endorsement deals are far more lucrative than a one-time career ending photoshoot? Personally I dont care about the morality of pornography issue, or whether centerfolds are artistic or vulgar.
By mark wood
September 8, 2004 12:31 PM | Link to this
I know I’m three days late and a few dollars short, but Diane and Sahunti, get a life.
Diane, if you haven’t noticed, you live in a country where capitalism is “law.” Posing nude for money is about as American as it gets, like it or not. Fast, easy money.
Shaunti, one Amrican athlete, male or female, no matter their “crime,” will not change a Muslim’s view of Americans. Especially the fanatics. To even mention this, to question a woman’s patriotism for posing nude, is unquestionably one of the silliest, most irrational things I have ever heard. In college, my major, of all things, was political science. My passion, however, was art. I not only painted using nude models, I posed as one regularly. And I am, as anyone who knows me can attest, extremely modest, even bashful. But a nude, if done properly and tastefuly, is offensive only to those with shallow views, whether “political,” “moral,” or any other classification you might choose.
Do you even know money was the motivation? You showed no proof whatsoever. Do you know anything about the politics of the women in question? You showed no proof whatsoever. I know you are editorialists and it is your job to pontificate. But, please do your readers and yourselves a huge favor. Argue something worthwhile and do so without such obviously manufactured reasoning. Angry feminists and moralists are a dime a dozen. To such a degree, their arguments have become virtually meaningless.
If you must get on the soap box, argue something at least remotely subsatantial. On this particular subject, you sound merely like two women too ashamed of, even envious about, what these young athletes did. The high road simply isn’t there. Get over it.
Go on a diet, if that’s what it takes to make you feel better about yourselves. Cosmetic surgery, if your self image is as pathetic as it seems to be. But, for everyone’s sake, please don’t argue such a foolish subject again if you would like to actually be taken even somewhat seriously.
By Tymothe
September 8, 2004 02:02 PM | Link to this
Last time I jump into the fray. We are the market the advertisers respond to. They know what sells. Babies, puppies, women & jocks. All four ususally appear completely or parially “au naturale” in commercial ventures. Sporting women do get endorsement deals with advertisers. They also get a large portion of modeling dollars.
Personally, there are many things that I would perfer not see in a public forum; but, not to the point of censorship or elimination of print. If a person of free will, which is guaranteed by this country and our god, chooses to get paid for a magazine pictorial, then last time I checked, it is OK, not immoral or degrading. Religion can make these issues a little touchy, granted. I don’t really believe in religion. I do believe in god.
I have enjoyed this debate. I lot of good points to consider.
By Ronald Millsaps
September 9, 2004 08:53 AM | Link to this
After reading Mark Wood’s comments, here we go again: more “justification” for personal decisions. If there’s one thing we don’t need any more of, it’s more rationalizing. If someone undresses for money, he/she is selling out. There’s no other way of putting it.
By mark wood
September 9, 2004 12:20 PM | Link to this
My first question to Ronald Milsap is to whom are they selling out? Big Business? Sexual Deviants? Maybe Hugh Heffner? The infamous “establishment?” Maybe the Taliban? Or Satan himself? These women made a choice as adults. They may have been motivated by money. They may be in cohoots with the enemy. They may be clinically diagnosed exhibitionists. Or they may be young women who grew up thinking it would be “cool” to pose for Playboy magazine. Regardless, the magazine, the choice to pose, are both legal, and, as far as I know, not immoral by today’s standards.
Unfortunately for you, that is how America works. The majority rules. The more accepted opinion dominates. You can argue morality, justification, whatever, until you are blue in the face. But the simple fact remains, at this moment in time, you are wrong. Live with it. If you can’t, I know a few Muslim nations that have similar views about being exposed publicly. They would gladly accept a decadent westerner who willingly came to them. And you might find not only happiness, but something worth fighting for where people actually take you seriously. Anyway, fight the good fight. I think you’re silly, but I do respect the fact you voice your opinion.
By Ronald Millsaps
September 9, 2004 01:37 PM | Link to this
I’m not condemning anybody. This forum posed a question about posing, and I gave my response. So, this sort of thing is, “…not immoral by today’s standards.”, huh? Again, we see the embracing of the belief that we decide what is right and wrong and that each are subject to change over time. Not true. Looks like you want to hold fast to your belief of relativism. Well, I want to hold fast to by belief in the Bible.
By mark wood
September 9, 2004 04:33 PM | Link to this
Read your history. The Bible is reinterpreted with every generation, whether you’re Baptist, Catholic, evangalist, and so on. And every interpretation is based on the foibles of…PEOPLE. Imperfect human beings who make decisions based on the world around them. IT IS ALL RELATIVE. Too claim or even believe one interpretation is correct is folly at best. Certainly, it is hubris.
By Ronald Millsaps
September 10, 2004 09:41 AM | Link to this
If everything’s relative, Mr. Wood, then you and I can disagree and both be right at the same time. I’m not a relativist. You’re not either, actually; you just don’t know it. You can childishly fuss on here if you’d like, but it’s not my fault if your posts contain no credibility whatsoever. As for the Bible, it does not change. Unfortunately, we have denominations who, like you, try to change God, as we see in the Episcopal “Church” having gay bishops, for example. Thankfully, a church’s doctrine can be tested by reading the Bible and seeing if the two are in line. If not, there’s something wrong with the church.
You attack me for opposing people selling their bodies. I suppose you’d also attack me for opposing porn and the rest of the garbage in this world. (Question: What good comes from this kind of action?) It’s not uncommon, though. Many become tense and defensive when they hear God mentioned because it attacks their in-denial state and reminds them that they should change. (The irony here is that God is willing to forgive, and many still choose to live in denial.)
By mark wood
September 10, 2004 09:54 AM | Link to this
I do not oppose you Ronald. I find you amusing. A true Christian who adheres to doctrine would never judge a woman for posing nude, certainly not a gay priest. He would judge noone. It is not his place. Period. It goes against the very basis on which Christianity is based. And, for what it’s worth, the Bible is a symbolic text meant to be interpreted. It was written by men hundreds of years after the death of Christ and his disciples. Oddly enough, it was written for political reasons. Again, Ronald, read you history before you accuse someone of lacking credibility. When you have a better, more thorough understanding of your spirituality, you won’t sound so inane and misinformed.
By Kenneth Blackledge
September 10, 2004 04:13 PM | Link to this
Okay, this is getting slightly off subject, but I just had to respond to Ronald Milsaps’ remarks about people who get defensive when they hear the word “God”. Usually it’s not the concept of God that we’re responing to, but people like Milsaps who protest a little too loudly about what THEY think God would want. They use God as a club against those who they consider “sinners” instead of leaving things for Him to judge. Back in the bad old days when people like Milsaps actually had some power, they’d be lighting the bonfires to burn the “heretics”. It reminds me of the man whose prayer was, “Dear God, please protect me from the people who belive in You.”