{"id":513,"date":"2004-01-20T20:47:14","date_gmt":"2004-01-21T00:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/01\/20\/got-daughters-got-sports-get-bikini\/"},"modified":"2007-02-16T00:36:02","modified_gmt":"2007-02-16T04:36:02","slug":"got-daughters-got-sports-get-bikini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/01\/20\/got-daughters-got-sports-get-bikini\/","title":{"rendered":"Got Daughters? Got Sports? Get Bikini …"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> Until 1968, women were required to prove their female sex by walking naked before a panel of male judges in order to compete in the Olympics, [Laura Robinson] reported.<\/em> [More…<\/a>] Another great CBC Sounds Like Canada<\/a> find: Laura Robinson speaking about her recent book, Black Tights: Women, Sport and Sexuality<\/a>. Lisa Bavington<\/a>, a champion body-builder, quotes the following passage from Robinson’s book:<\/p>\n

During the buildup to the Sydney Olympics, several women\u2019s teams posed in the nude to raise some of the significant amounts of money need to compete internationally today. First it was the Australian soccer team when its members put together a calendar with full-frontal nudity. Then it was New Zealand\u2019s eight in rowing.
\nNot to be left out in the cold, the members of the Canadian women\u2019s Nordic ski team soon decided to produce their own nude calendar. The Nordic ski team may be go-getters when it comes to raising funds, but only when they sell a version of womanhood that in no way threatens traditional patriarchal values, and only when the money goes to them and their sport. Unfortunately, there are only so many sponsorship dollars, and as long as women athletes continue to promote themselves according to the narrow definition of how women are supposed to look and act, many others will lose out.
\nWhen I spoke to Jamie Fortier, in the fall of 2000, she had the following to say: \u201cI\u2019m a very strong anti-feminist. I think a lot of them have gone too far. I\u2019m looking out for myself and I\u2019m thinking for myself. We definitely were not told to do this calendar. We decided for ourselves.\u201d
\nThere\u2019s a tremendous irony in Fortier\u2019s remarks, of course, Women\u2019s Nordic skiing was added to the Olympics only in 1964, and even then, it was only because women fought for its inclusion. It wasn\u2019t until 1984 that women were allowed to ski any farther than 10 kilometers. Fortier calls herself \u201ca very strong anti-feminist,\u201d but without feminism, not only would she not have an Olympic event to compete in, she wouldn\u2019t have the vote, the right to own property or hold public office, or the freedom to work at the job of her choice and be properly paid for it. She wouldn\u2019t be able to go to university, and she would have to quit her job-if she\u2019d been lucky enough in the first place-when she got married. In fact, it was because of feminists in 1929 that women legally became people in Canada, so I had to wonder what exactly did Fortier not like about the legacy she\u2019d been left. <\/em> [More…<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bavington adds<\/a> her thoughts, too: What exactly is it about feminism that evokes so many women to openly dismiss any association with being identified with the cause?<\/em> I only managed to hear a fragment of the interview with Laura Robinson on CBC, but what struck me was her historical knowledge. She pinpointed precise years and events when things changed for women in terms of spectacle<\/em>: the 14-year old gymnast (was it Nadia from Romania?) in the early 70s, whose successes and feats changed the body type of the ideal gymnast from “woman” to “girl,” the move, from that point on, for Olympic photographers to focus on “crotch shots,” and the regulations regarding dress (or lack thereof): did you know that women volleyball players are allowed a maximum<\/strong> of 7 cm (about 2.75″) of lycra covering their hips, while the men have to have a minimum<\/strong> of 20 cm covering theirs? Or that the women have to ask for official permission to put on a sweatshirt?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until 1968, women were required to prove their female sex by walking naked before a panel of male judges in order to compete in the Olympics, [Laura Robinson] reported. [More…] Another great CBC Sounds Like Canada find: Laura Robinson speaking about her recent book, Black Tights: Women, Sport and Sexuality. Lisa Bavington, a champion body-builder, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}