The sexy pictures are part of a newly-launched campaign designed to appeal to both potential FSU basketball players and fans. The new website for the FSU team features many pictures like the one above. In the "meet the team" section, each player has her own profile page, which is overwhelmingly dominated by a shot of the athlete dressed in a satin dress, exiting a limo. Although some clutch basketballs - the only nod to the fact that these are basketball players, not debutantes - others are straight up glamor shots (the most obvious example is the image of Kayli Keough, guard/forward). The main page shows the entire team in a limo, perfectly coiffed and smiling at the camera. Yes, they look great. They fully live up to their claim of "Confidence. Strength. Beauty. We've got it all." But it is hard not to wonder, what does beauty have to do with anything?

This is the question posed by Jayda Evans. In her column for the Seattle Times, Evans examines the re-designed site for the No. 15 team, ultimately coming to the conclusion that the emphasis on femininity and beauty indicates an underlying fear of being viewed as anything other than straight. She mentions the documentary Training Rules, about former Penn State coach Rene Portland, who allegedly had just three rules for her players: No drinking, no drugs, and absolutely no lesbians. Portland may have been more explicit about her homophobia, but the FSU website reveals a certain desire to move away from the actual game - where players are sweaty, strong and accomplished, perhaps frighteningly so - towards a much more polished image of female athletes as celebrities first, players second. Evans points out that attempt to make female athletes appear "powerful, beautiful, strong and accomplished" is just another way to gloss over the fact that they are being overtly feminized. For Evans, "beautiful" is translated as "attractive to men," and implicitly, heterosexual.

In a press release for the newly launched website, FSU coach Sue Semrau explains their decision to depict their players en route to some fancy shindig: "We feel it is important to set ourselves apart as much as we can... We wanted to have a product that would stand out to the people we are trying to reach." The "product" being not only the game, but the individual players. At Carnal San Francisco, editor Tim McElreavy suggests that Semrau's attempt to "sell" the game reveals a disheartening focus on the bottom line: "While it would be naïve to believe that college sports isn't or shouldn't be concerned with the bottom line, such words, especially from a coach, really seem to instrumentalize the players' achievements. Add to this business rhetoric the stereotype of the pretty woman, and women's sports marketing moves further and further away from the actual sport," he writes.

And to drive home this point, take a look at the website for the FSU men's team, where the players are portrayed in a rather different light. There is no doubt that this is about the "actual sport." Their website features pictures of the players in action. Their faces are contorted into grimaces of concentration while sweat pours off their bodies. Okay, it's not unattractive, but it's also not purposefully sexy. The emphasis is on the game, not the dolled-up players. While FSU women have to be "sold" and "appeal" to the public, the men's team can safely coast on the knowledge that people watch them play for reasons other than their sex appeal.

Women's Hoops Media Guides And Web Sites Getting Sexier [Seattle Times]
Glam Photos Show The Ugly Side Of Women's Basketball [Carnal San Francisco]
Glammed Up B'Ball Stars Spark Uproar [Newser]
Florida State University Women's Basketball [Official Site]

Lambert is a member of the University of New Mexico's women's soccer team. The game in question was against Brigham Young University, as part of the Mountain West semifinals. She has been placed on indefinite suspension for her actions, which include punching another player in the back, possibly throwing a punch at the back of an opponent's head, several instances of elbowing and tripping, and most notably, grabbing the ponytail of a BYU player and yanking her toward the ground. There is no doubt that Lambert's behavior was unsportswomanlike, and she admitted as much in a statement: "I let my emotions get the best of me in a heated situation. I take full responsibility for my actions and accept any punishment felt necessary."

Lambert tells the Times that, after watching the video of the game, she can't believe she acted so violently. "I look at it and I'm like, ‘That is not me,'" she says. "I have so much regret. I can't believe I did that." She goes on to note that some of her actions were taken out of context in the condensed video that was aired on ESPN (available here) and that the incident garnered more attention because it occurred at a women's game:

"I definitely feel because I am a female it did bring about a lot more attention than if a male were to do it," Lambert said. "It's more expected for men to go out there and be rough. The female, we're still looked at as, Oh, we kick the ball around and score a goal. But it's not. We train very hard to reach the highest level we can get to. The physical aspect has maybe increased over the years. I'm not saying it's for the bad or it's been too overly aggressive. It's a game. Sports are physical."

Lambert has a point. Even the ESPN anchor introduces his segment by remarking: "What is rare is when women athletes are involved in any of this type of behavior." Indeed, Lambert's case is remarkable partially because we don't expect women to be as violent or as aggressive as men.

Even more telling is the response Lambert has received from some of her new "fans." She says she has been taken aback by some of the attention, which focuses on how "hot" she comes across in the video, and reduces her very real acts of violence to "catfighting." "That appalled me," Lambert says. "A lot of people think I have a lot of sexual aggression. I was like, ‘Whoa, no, I don't feel that way at all.' That's bizarre and shocking to me."

Those Soccer Plays, In Context [New York Times]

After winning the silver medal in the 800 m at the Asian Championships in July 2006, Soundarajan was asked to undergo sex testing. Soundarajan had won the same medal the previous year, and in college she set the Indian record for the women's 3,000-m steeplechase, but officials were at the Asian Games became suspicious she was using performance enhancing drugs. Soundarajan was tested, and she failed.

Soundarajan was later diagnosed with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), Time magazine reports. People with AIS are genetically male, but their bodies do not recognize the male sex hormones, including testosterone. This leads their bodies to appear externally female, although their chromosomes tell a different story. Soundarajan reportedly attempted suicide after she was stripped of her silver medal, but she denies these allegations. She has, however, quit running, and there is little chance she will ever return to the track. "I am physically and mentally broken," she says.

Soundarajan now works as a coach. "It was difficult but now finally I feel O.K.," she said in a recent interview. "I like to train children who have not much money but lots of talent. I am living my dream through them."

But she hopes that Semenya will fight back where she was could not. "She should not let them take away her medal," Soundarajan says. "She is a woman and that's it, full stop. A gender test cannot take away from you who you are."

Gender And Athletics: India's Own Caster Semenya [Time]

Last week, Caster Semenya's gender identity made big news as people began to question whether a woman, who "looks like a man," as everyone kept reminding us, could really be such a good athlete. It seems that female athletes are either A. too manly, B. sexualized to the point where their athletic prowess no longer matters, or C. portrayed as suffering from the ultimate female problem: how to juggle work and family. In the past year, much of news about women in sports focused on the significance of sex appeal for tennis players, the size of Serena William's butt, Candace Parker's maternity leave, Olympic moms, and of course, Semenya's "manly" body. Of course, there are some sports writers who focus on their achievements, but it is still notable how many profiles of female athletes highlight their uniquely "feminine" struggles.

Compare lines from two articles about women in sports:

First, a quote from this Sunday's New York Times, which begins,

Sybille Bammer always wished to be a mother, but first she wanted to be a tennis star. History and conventional wisdom told her she couldn't be both at the same time.

And an article from the Daily Beast on female surfers, which opens with the subhead:

The women's surf tour has never been more glamorous and the new generation is getting recognition beyond their sport. So why are sponsors bailing? (Plus: A gallery of teen stars.)

And continues with:

"You have to wear brown eyeliner, because the black smears really bad," Sage Erickson explained. And waterproof mascara."

It was a hot, July afternoon in Huntington Beach, California-a.k.a. Surf City, U.S.A.-and Erickson, an 18-year-old pro surfer who was competing in the Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing, had a few things to say before hitting the water. Standing beside her surf board, which she'd personalized with paint pens-a cartoonish Barbie on a cell phone with a dialogue bubble that read: "Blah blah blah."

Each article goes on to portray the strong women interviewed as characters as two-dimensionally cartoonish as the Barbie doodled on Erickson's board. The New York Times is much kinder, yet the focus here is primarily on how she was able to give birth and play tennis. It seems that the answer to this riddle is her supportive boyfriend, who gave up work to support Brammer, and play "Mr. Mom." "So many people made jokes," said Bammer's boyfriend, "I think this was a big deal to them because they think it is not that normal that the man stays home and watches the kid and the woman goes for work." Bammer, ranked No. 29 in the world, is seen as remarkable not just because of her skill, but because she manages to have it all, a child, a boyfriend, and a career.

The Daily Beast draws attention to a different way of selling the female athlete, which we can probably all recognize. The surfer girls in this piece are unmistakably girly—they are young, pretty, "glamorous," and friendly. However, women's surfing is still in trouble. But the new "crop" of women may be able to solve their funding problems with good looks and charm. Hurley International marketer Pat O'Connell sums it up:

"These girls are legitimately amazing surfers," he said. "For me, there's marketability and visibility-I think this new crop has both. They're good-looking girls, they're very likeable, and their ability levels are so high that they're catching everyone's attention."

Throughout her story, writer Nicole LaPorte never lets us forget about this fact, the "effortless sexiness that comes with having a killer bod." For these women to sell, and to be interesting to the general public, they have to be sexy. At least until they give birth, and then we can start puzzling out the difficulties of that equation.

And Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon points out yet another example of female athletes being viewed as somehow dangerously masculine. She quotes the Concerned Women for America website, which features a blurb about the new book God's Girls in Sports:

With the advent of Title Nine, girls have more opportunities than ever to participate in sports. While the social, physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of sports are frequently discussed, Coach and mom Holly Page says there are also pitfalls that are too often overlooked. In her book God's Girls in Sports, Holly discusses hard issues like demanding training schedules that compete with family and church time, male-oriented coaching styles that force more masculine behaviors on girls without meeting girls' needs for relationships, the quest for scholarships, and lesbianism in college-level sports. She also talks about when it may be time to quit. Holly discusses these issues with CWA Policy Analyst Martha Kleder, as well as other ways parents can help their daughters maintain a life balance and get the most out of sports, without sports getting the best of them. (Emphasis Spaulding's)

Women who play sports, and do not conform to either the relate-able modern woman mold of the working mother or fall into the curvy sex pot role, must be either lesbians or secretly male.

Female athletes seem to serve as a never-ending well of material for those obsessed with both the female body and the importance of femininity. There seems to be a real difficulty marketing athletic women to the general public without resorting to these tricks, which continually reiterate that this is about a woman in sports, a female athlete, someone with two X chromosomes. In a way it makes sense that a physical career would lead to coverage that is so heavily centered on the body, but the emphasis on womanly-ness and athleticism undercuts the fact that many women are naturally athletic, that it is not impossible to be both.

Sybille Bammer's Tennis Career Is A Family Affair [New York Times]
Surf Girls: The Next Wave [The Daily Beast]
Concerned Women For America's Oldie Stereotype [Pandagon]

[Bethlehem, July 9. Image via Getty]

BETHLEHEM, PA - JULY 09: Hee Young Park of South Korea watches her tee shot on the 2nd hole during the first round of the 2009 U.S. Women's Open at Saucon Valley Country Club on July 9, 2009 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Double-dutch teams have been created at 10 high schools in predominantly black New York City neighborhoods, according to Salon. Last year, the New York Times reported that the city was introducing varsity double-dutch to address the fact that in city schools only 10 percent of high school students played on sports teams, compared to more than a third in many suburban districts.

Legitimizing the sport, which many girls already participate in when they're young, may be the key to getting them to continue their involvement in sports through high school. A study last year from the Women's Sports Foundation found that inner-city girls of color have some of the lowest rates of sports participation of U.S. teens, according to Women's eNews. Sociologist Don Sabo, the organization's research director says that urban girls tend to start organized sports later and are thus more likely to drop out. He says:

"They haven't learned the fundamentals of how to balance, jump, run, how to be a team member, how to suck it up and play through being tired. They feel foolish," said Sabo ... "When was the last time you tried something you weren't good at and stayed with it for a year?"

Urban girls of color are "hit with a double whammy," says Neena Chaudhry of the National Women's Law Center. Often their communities have less access to open spaces and they face competition for scarce resources at school. Theoretically, Title IX should solve this problem, but unlike in colleges and universities, high schools are not required to report gender breakdowns by sport, resources, and funding. A study by the National Women's Law Center suggested that few urban female athletes were using Title IX to demand equal treatment.

There's a push now to require high schools to report statistics like colleges and universities do to make sure that the schools are complying to Title IX. Last month Senator Olympia Snowe reintroduced a 2004 bill to the Senate called the High School Sports Information Collection Act, which would require high schools to report the gender of student athletes and the financing of sports teams.

Advocates say that enacting Title IX compliance laws would increase sports opportunities for girls and boys across the country. While city officials hope to increase girls' participation in sports especially, the new double-dutch teams in New York are coed. The video below from the annual double dutch tournament held at the Apollo Theater in New York shows the incredible amount of athleticism that competitive double-dutch requires. Since countless studies have shown that student athletes perform better in school and have higher self-esteem, clearly girls across the country would benefit from similar programs.

Double Dutch Bust [Salon]
Double Dutch Gets Status in the Schools [The New York Times]
Girls' Sports Opportunities MIA In City Schools [Women's eNews]

Erden Or, 33, is the development officer for women's soccer. In his attempts to get more people on board with girls playing ball, Or has had to "doll up" the game. New logos for the league feature a hand with painted fingernails cupping a soccer ball, and a stiletto heel slapped on a soccer cleat. And while many women are excited to play, many parents feel like the Odabas, whose daughter Selin plays striker: "we were worried that it would affect her posture, her character, even her sexual orientation. We put her in volleyball, in track, but nothing could stop her." [NYT]

[Image via Washington State Magazine]

But seriously. I started playing soccer at age five, and spent much of my adolescence viciously chasing after other girls on the field hockey pitch, wielding a wooden stick. And through all of that time I was mostly focusing on what my body could do — not what it looked like.
There is nothing in adult life that quite equals the pure elation of scoring a goal, which in itself is a kind of weightlessness. If only American men could support women in sports as the Zambian men are apparently supporting Esther (From the Christian Science Monitor article: "One young Zambian man shouted with a smile upon seeing an American leave Phiri's Saturday night victory - 'Zambia is strong!'")

This is not to claim that Zambia is some hotbed of enlightenment, Esther definitely experienced a lot of road blocks as a female athlete, but American men are particularly dismissive of women in sports. The University of Iowa painted the locker room for visiting teams pink, allegedly to make their opponents "feel like sissies." Meanwhile, the number of female coaches in college sports has reached an all-time low. The WNBA has never had a profitable season, and dudes all over the interwebs deride the league because its members can't slam dunk.

So what's the solution? If women start watching sports in droves, then the advertising dollars would follow, and with the ad $$ comes the power. But fuck, as much as I love playing sports, I hate watching sports. Um, maybe we should just get Venus and Serena Williams to buy us a stadium or something.

In Zambia, Woman Boxer Emerges As A New Role Model [Christian Science Monitor]
Number of female coaches in women's sports shrinks to all-time low [LA Times]