Wait... You chaised girls with a wooden stick while playing soccer?!

Former street vendor huh? She ought to replace the "starving baby with vulture" African poster child that's run rampant for decades.

I love playing sports, I love watching sports, and the more violent, the better. On both counts. It's cathartic.

blonde? That confused me at first, making me think it was the woman on the right... (until I clicked some of those links and saw other photos of Esther)

She rocks! :)

Can we start a Jezebel lacrosse or field hockey team? I'm down for volleyball also.

What if you hate sports and even more can't stand the fucked-if-you-do, fucked-if-you-don't aesthetic of either being super thin and leisurely or super buff and jacked? What if you like, um, reading books, and you're shitty at sports, and you still need to fix your body image? I'm glad I was on swim team, but I'm tired of feeling like a bad person because I hate team sports and physical competitiveness.

I hate watching sports, too. Why don't we not encourage women to become professional athletes, but instead encourage them to engage in sports as a lifetime leisure activity--and then ALSO encourage men to do it?

this is 12 shades of awesome.

sports don't always help with body image. one of my best friends was a runner in high school and she developed an eating disorder because she wanted to be in the best possible shape and she was super thin (maybe if she was lighter she ran faster?) i never understood this, but yeah.

@senzaflash: i hate sports and physical cometitiveness as well, but seeing as I'm thin I just have to deal with being told that i'm not a real woman, and constantly telling people that NO i dont have an eating disorder. im fucked, i guess.

This article was great. Not only did it make me feel powerful for being a woman, it also made me feel like punching someone! Thanks Jezebel, for giving me the best of both worlds!

Imagine my delight at discovering that lady cage-fighting is gaining in popularity!

[www.fatalfemmesfighting.com]

I feel strongly that we can ALL enjoy this.

I think there was some minor scandal after the Nebraska football team dressed up as the Nebraska women's (kick-ass multiple national champs)volleyball team for a party or some shit like that.

I hate watching sports; I ran cross country and loved it. But all of the girls on the varsity team except for myself and two other girls (about 7 out of 11) had an eating disorder at some point during high school. The less you weigh, the faster you can run! It was really sad. You can't run fast if you don't take care of yourself.

This is totally fuel for that fundie site to write another article about how we don't just hit men, we hit each other too! Cue tiny American flags...

@ineffable.me: Should have refreshed; I think this is scarily common among runners and probably some other sports, too.
Also @KnitSandwich: that would be 8 out of 11.

@Skinny Bone Jones: I have a good friend who is into Ultimate Fighting and she's about the most fierce and awesome girl I know. She keeps pushing me to try it, and I'm totally considering it.

At my university, the guys' basketball team was always a middling underachiever while the women's team was a perennial contender. It was way more fun rooting for the women's team.

Go Lady Devils!

i, too, love participating in sports and exercising, but you will NEVER find me watching it on tv ... i find it all kinds of boring to watch ... what a relief, i thought that i was the only one who felt this way

So true...It wasn't till I stopped playing soccer in college that I began to work-out for aesthetic purposes as opposed to kick-ass purposes. Thankfully I've regognized this and now work-out for strength and endurance instead of countering calories.

@mocena: I went to high school with a girl who I saw several years ago boxing on tv. I was glad she was nice to me in HS because she was one serious fighter!

Wait, are we talking about watching sports in general or women's sports specifically? If generally, most women don't like watching sports, I gather, b/c most of us don't see ourselves in the athletes (men). If you put talented female athletes on the screen then we'd watch. Think: the '99 Women's World Cup.

@Andalucía: Forget the first two sentences.

ZAMBIA REPRESENT!!! I'm now proud to say I am half-Zambian... I mean I wasn't not proud before... but I avoided bringing it up... I wish there were more main stream womens sports, aside from like.. figure skating (which is really more 50/50 then a womens sport) and like... good Canadian Hockey.

@Andalucía: Oh, and the sport had exciting personalities and great marketing. I keep forgetting sports is a business.

@Piecesofpi: Cool. I was there for a few weeks a couple of years ago, so I consider myself a complete expert on Zambia now. Well, not really, but I had fun.

"The University of Iowa painted the locker room for visiting teams pink, allegedly to make their opponents "feel like sissies.""

Er. Is that anti-woman or anti-pink? It seems to take for granted that pink is a sissy color because it's associated with women. Which is, just, all sorts of stupid. I mean, fratboys wear those stupid pink shirts everywhere nowadays to 'proclaim' how straight they are.

@LollyPops: No, no, field hockey wielding the stick. I played for a season (my great foray into team sports...yuck). I enjoyed playing but I'm just not that competitive. I like to do more solitary activities (hike, trail run, etc.).

The sports where women actually do get butts in the seats are successful college women's basketball teams (UCONN, Tenn for example), the Olympics sports during Olympic years (gymnastics, figure skating) and tennis. I think figure skating, which I love, is marketed for shit. Raise your hand if you knew it was a US woman who won Worlds in 2006. And Kimmie Meissner is a fun, TV friendly teenager! OTOH, USFSA loves to ignore ways to make money and expand the market, and I'll stop now.

@mocena: OMG, where are you? Where is she?! I NEED TO MEET HER. And you. Like, now. Can I bring my GF? Drink vodkas?

@edwu: Me too. I love competing, and I love watching a home team play or watch a sport I know a lot about, but it seems more of a male thing to watch random teams playing random sports.

Mostly, I watch bull-riding, UFCs, football and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Tryouts (what, it's a sport! it's a sport!) with my GF.

Yea for sports helping body image! Except it's weird because for me sports have gone hand-in-hand with self image lately. I never played sports until college, and now I'm on the Ultimate team and work out 2-4 times a week at practice & conditioning. Never really payed great attention to my looks, but all of a sudden I've noticed that working out this much awesome has been really good for me physically. Which basically kicks ass, but it means that for the rest of my life I'll probably feel like I need to work out because I now know what my body could potentially look like if I'm working out.

This is kinda on the same topic...but does anyone else have a "Sports Cuts" in their city? It's this salon that has a sports theme and plays nothing but sports on TV for the male oriented client. However, only women work there...think it's because they like sports that much?

Yay, sand volleyball! And not Gabriel Reese sand volleyball, but middle age ladies who lose if games are scheduled after margarita happy hour, because drunken chatting is much better than watching a volleyball come at your head. Also, croquet and frisbee golf. With booze. Which may explain my current level of fitness.

Yay, I'm off to ballet class. I'm not sure how I changed from being a soccer-playing, skiing tomboy in high school, to a girlie ballerina in my old age, but I'm glad it didn't happen the other way around. I'm too lazy to become anorexic or hide shards of glass in the other women's slippers now.

I LOVE sports! I played soccer in high school, was on the crew team for a year in college and now run a lot. I can't imagine a life without running!! It is so nice to shift the focus from what my body looks like to what it can do.

I like watching too - college bball, college/pro football, tennis and soccer.

The marketing of women's sports has gone down the Maxim route, overtly sexualing athletes. Danika Patrick, Amanda Beard, etc. Women's tennis has morphed into the selling of Anna Kournikovas (w/ talent, of course). So even if women's sports does succeed financially, I don't know if it's ability to help perpetuate a positive body image or self-esteem will be as strong as it should be.

Shame on you @PiecesofPi! I hope that you were kidding. You should always be proud of your country regardless of the BS that is written/published about it. At least once a week, I read something negative about the DRC, but you bet your jezebel ass I claim/defend the DRC anytime someone has anything negative to say about the Congo. OOh and African Women have been kicking ass since the beginning of time. Shit my grandmothers carried water/wood on their head while walking long distances and pregnant!!

@Andalucía: Thanks - excellent post! Tennis stars like Amelie Mauresmo and Justin Henin don't get the attention Maria Sharapova gets even though they're every bit as good (and better). It drives me bananas to see female athletes forced to sex it up for endorsements and press coverage.

In fact, this is what pissed me off about the Don Imus thing. It wasn't racism and sexism of "nappy headed hos" so much as it was the criticism of those women's appearances, which nobody even mentioned. They're athletes, not models or pageant contestants. Simply being female and appearing in public is not an invitation for comments on our looks.

@RainbowBrite: So true. Regarding tennis: the selling of an underage, scantily-clad Ana Ivanovic is what got me (she's 20 now). And the way they marketed Daniela Hantuchová, I think, helped push her off the rails a few years back.

On a positive note regarding female athletes: Gro Hammerseng, a Norwegian handball player (I know, random; my friends got me into it) has avoided the whole sexualization route, is a great role model, and quite popular in her sport. However, the media are a bit voyeuristic towards her personal life (she's gay).

Seriously, I couldn't think of another active female athlete off the top of my head who's managed to be talented, financially successful, popular, and not overtly sexualized.

@Andalucía: I have to say, that's one plus for figure skating, since they don't really sexualize the women skaters. I mean, yes, Tanith Belbin (ice dance) was ESPN's sexiest female athlete one year, but that wasn't USFSA or ISU's choosing and they did nothing at all to capitalize on it.

I was gonna say, as well: *female athlete off the top of my head who's managed to be talented, financially successful, popular, and not overtly sexualized.* - except for the active part, I'd say Michelle Kwan.

Women athletes are wonderful and sexy. This woman is a great inspiration.

... I have to say that I LOVE watching sports. So much so that I get out of bed early on the weekends for college/ pro football (starts early because of the time change) waaaay before my boyfriend even stirs. I'm the one that drags him to Monday Night Football and reads the sports first thing in the morning. It's quite liberating, although sometimes it annoys him like he is having sex with one of his drinking buddies.

Deadspin is my *second* fav blog.

I suck at (most (if you consider paintball a sport)) sports actually. But do enjoy watching many of them.

And about athletic women, most of the medals that Mexico wins come from women, for some reason they have way more success than men. They make me proud, and hell yes you can be sure they have a tougher time than men, just an example, people pull out stories debating if they are lesbians (like wtf, what does that have to do with anything?!?), sort of like finding something "bad" with women who have success, doesn't surprise me tho, and they are helluva strong to be better at their careers than men while putting up with crap like that.

Do us Africans a favor and start using the specific country when available. That means stating: Awesome Zambian Athlete Reminds Us That Women Can Kick Ass.

Africa is not a country. It is a continent and all its parts have unique features. I basically decided that this needs to change after hearing several people, including Paul Schaffer of Letterman, state it's a country.

Schaffer stated that on Celeb Jeopardy btw