Jezebel 
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New York, 5:33 PM
Fri Nov 27
15 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/25/09
The 'no lesbians' thing is another issue entirely. (Coz the girl in the pic? Could pass for a hot butch, imo.) It's SOP in sports that athletes be a clean, all-American bunch. There's no gay people in baseball!
11/24/09
It's an ongoing issue in the field of women's athletics, and one I could talk about for hours and hours. Title IX may have paved the way for women to take to the fields and the courts, but the rest of our society has a fuck load of catching up to do.
11/24/09
This is definitely not the first time it's been done tho, it happens all the time. on the rare occasion that a woman graces the pages of sports illustrated, it's much more likely that you'll see her off the court/field/water/etc, and instead sitting naked outside of the arena with strategically placed equipmen. While showing female athletes in outside their sport is fine, it shouldn't be the only way they are appearing in a SPORTS magazine. and most of the time, it is.
But among college athletes at least, i've seen that when there is a reputation or rumor or homosexuality, a lot of the women feel they must combat it with a strong showing of heteronormative behavior. a few of my teammates actually gained reputations in the other direction (called sluts) because of the way they reacted to the pressures to be 'feminine' or hetero.
11/24/09
As much as we as a society talk a good game about women and girls who play sports, the fact is people still find it transgressive. Hence all the pressure for female athletes to be pretty and ladylike and polite and wear dresses and pose in string bikinis. They can be competitive but not too competitive, aggressive but not that aggressive. Otherwise they are being unfeminine, and we can't have that, not at all.
11/24/09
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11/24/09
Also:
"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."
Why are we assuming the "people we are trying to reach" only includes (male) ticket-buyers, when it could also include the kinds of athletes they are trying to recruit? I think that's way more interesting than reducing this to a "they're courting the Male Gaze" discussion.
11/24/09
I LOVE your framing of this issue.
11/24/09
My home city poured tons of money into the creation of a "sister" WNBA team that played in the same arena as our men's team, and it shut down after only two seasons because no one went to the games.
11/24/09
But I can also see the argument that male athletes are often sexualized in such shots, too; I'd at most argue that male athletes are still typically depicted within the activities of their sport, rather than as movie stars of the like.
11/24/09
Not only does it implicitly reinforce the ideas that (a) lesbians are all butch and (b) if you are queer, you are not a "real" man or woman, but it ignores what I think is the more important issue -- which is, as I mentioned above, that women are expected to be sexually attractive and available (it doesn't matter to whom) at all times. This is why we have the beauty industry, this is why we have rape culture, this is why we have so many problems, and it affects all women, across all sexualities. (And, in fact, is even at the root of the idea that if you're queer, you're not a "real" woman or man.) Why aren't we talking about that?
11/24/09
11/24/09
It's weird, but this critique of heteornormativity strikes me as... heteronormative.
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11/24/09
But it sure as hell makes you more palatable to straight people everywhere.
I think the real issue here is gender policing, not homophobia (although there is overlap).
11/24/09
11/24/09
Personally, I think they're trying to show that they are multi-dimensional. Fantastic athletes, yes, but more than that. What's wrong with adding personality to the sport?
11/24/09
11/24/09
As far as comparing the men's team, maybe the women wanted fancy pictures and the men didn't. It doesn't necessarily have to mean anything deeper than that.
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11/24/09
My issue is not with the players wearing dresses - it's with the team promoters deciding this is how a sports team should be publicized vs. promoting the actual sport.
11/24/09
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11/24/09
Well we do have this where I live.
I don't see a single soccer ball in this ad.
11/24/09
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11/24/09
ha
I live in Italy. These billboards were everywhere during the last World Cup.
11/24/09
But it is the National team and this is only one in a series so I would say they are promoting the team along with the fact that Dolce and Gabbana designed their official uniforms.
However, I can see how it is different for a school promoting their athletes vs. a professional team.
I wonder how the women felt about the photo shoot?
I played sports. It is possible to be a fierce competitor and like lipstick.
11/24/09
10/21/09
I've made this point here before, but it tooks decades for the major male professional leagues to catch hold, with some of the same "are they doomed" talk at the time. But, because they weren't part of the 24-hour news cycle, everything must turn an immediate profit world of today they were given the time and nurturing to grow a fan base. Sometimes I think the WNBA tried to start too big, it's needs time to grow in a natural way. Many of the women who play in the league were major starts in college (such as Candace Parker and the now-retired Rebecca Lobo), it would be a shame if they wouldn't be able to play after graduation. It's also too bad that women's professional sports haven't been able to captitalize on Olympics momentum. The US is dominant in women's basketball, soccer and softball--why can't the excitment of 2 weeks every 4 years spill over into being able to see these ladies play all the time? #wnba
10/21/09
/Not the point. But it is kind of hard to take the whole "just take what you have" argument, rather than men ever being expected to change their ways to lead to more inclusive environments (within and beyond athletics) for women. #wnba