Comments on: Loving the look, ignoring the sport: some thoughts on Allison Stokke: UPDATED

By: Lynn Gazis-Sax

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:42:16 +0000

We look at beautiful women in magazines, in films, on TV.

I really think that commenting on the attractiveness of adult men and women who are playing movie roles where part of their job as romantic leads is to convey sexual chemistry is a different thing from adult men remarking on the fuckability of female high school athletes.

By: mythago

mythago — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:22:40 +0000

What you want to do is deny anybody pleasure is looking at a beautiful girl.

See, Hugo, this is the mentality you’re dealing with: women’s first and only job is to be sexy, and any suggestion that they have other virtues–especially ones more important than their fuckability–is a direct assault on the God-given right to ogle.

By: Hugo Schwyzer

Hugo Schwyzer — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 18:09:14 +0000

Whateh, there’s all the difference in the world between aesthetic appreciation and sexual desire. And desire that objectifies, that takes little interest in the entire human person but instead focuses intensely on an image, is always problematic — when it’s done by adults to kids in high school, it’s ugly.

I’m not lying, I’m not gay, and when I look at Allison Stokke, I see a girl — a GIRL — who is not yet an adult, who is more than two decades my junior. (I also see a future Cal Bear, which makes me happy.) Is she pretty? Of course. Do I have a sexual response to that prettiness? No.

By: Whateh

Whateh — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:24:35 +0000

What you want to do is deny anybody pleasure is looking at a beautiful girl. What is so utterly wrong with that? Talent and beauty are not mutually exclusive.
We look at beautiful women in magazines, in films, on TV. What makes athletics and sports so different? And why is it demeaning? We can appreciate a person by looks or talent or both. Again, not mutually exclusive.
You say “I’m also angry about the way in which we legitimize the eroticising of adolescents”
Why? do you think they are not sexual creatures? Are they asexual? or do they suddenly switch from 17 “oh my god it’s disgusting to look at her in a sexual way, you must be a paedo” to 18 “Gorgeous, yep, she’s fair game”
I would challenge any hot blooded guy to deny she is a absolute scorcher. If he did, i would either say he is gay or lying. It is what it is, and if she ever makes it into the big league her looks will more than work in her favour.

By: DWM

DWM — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:37:12 +0000

“We live in a culture that tends to erotically fixate on tall, slender, pretty white girls ”

Only in America ;)!

True, other countries drag them out of their huts and stone them to death in the streets…

By: jeanne

jeanne — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:06:20 +0000

I read this yesterday before comments were up, and I guess I’m always amazed that it’s somehow OK with a sector of society for older men to salivate and get boners over beautiful young women young enough to be their daughters (I suppose that sector of society would call them “hot young chicks”). And the excuse is always “men are just that way.” While a strong response to visual stimulus is hard-wired into the brain, we also have the frontal lobes of our brains to exercise some judgement, acknowlege the response, and then check it. If people are going to say that men respond that way because of their biology, then they should also recognize that there’s something else in our brains (injury, dementia or developmental disabilities aside) that tells us we know better. I know it’s not that simple, but the “men are just that way” excuse annoys the crap out of me, and there are plenty of men out there who do know better and don’t act out on what a more primal part of their brain tells them to do.

I liked Twisty’s comments, but I also think that your comments regarding race were important. Since you brought up Anna Kournikova, I’ll stay on the tennis topic and mention I have heard men say more hideously cruel and racist things about Venus and Serena Williams than I care to mention, and it usually has to do with the way that they look. I never heard such nasty things said about white female tennis players, no matter how traditionally pretty or not pretty they were.

By: Katie

Katie — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:25:50 +0000

You can blame that expression on the fact that I was swamped at work yesterday, Hugo. I’m a Midwesterner by birth, anyway:) Although, I have heard my Rhode Islander grandmother use that expression a few times here and there.

By: Hugo Schwyzer

Hugo Schwyzer — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:32:16 +0000

My objection to Kournikova was the way in which she gleefully participated in her own commodification (remember the Yahoo ads she did). And while all athletes are worthy of respect, it’s nonsensical to spend most of your media attention on a mid-tier player at the expense of the far more skilled but less visually appealing top-tier ones.

By: John G. Spragge

John G. Spragge — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 09:56:57 +0000

I share your concerns about adults objectifying high school athletes. I question the values implied by the following statement:

To be fair, Stokke is no Anna Kournikova, the Russian tennis player who never won a significant tournament but made a fortune off her looks…

This raises three questions for me:

What right do we have to make an observation of this sort? Most tennis players never win a major tournament. Many people who find themselves in the public eye because people like their looks never win any kind of sports title. On what basis do we make Anna Kournikova out as “less” of an athlete because she didn’t win, or because having not won she attracted the attention of photographers?

How do we differentiate the aspects of an athlete’s body that make for success at the most competitive levels, and the aspects of the body that make for sexual attraction? The conflation of athletic performance, beauty and sensuality has a long history in our culture.

How does the disdain for people who “never won a significant tournament” relate to the disposal of young athletes who never made the “cut” in many sports? A pole vaulter with a straight ‘A’ average probably does not expect or need to make a long term living from athletics, but plenty of sport, for plenty of people, offer a gate to the world of opportunity, but only for the very few who measure up to professional sports standards. To what extent do the values expressed by your off-hand comment about Anna Kournikova indicate an acceptance of that system? How much money and celebrity can you mix with the pursuit of excellence through the body in sports, before it turns into another exploitative, objectifying part of the entertainment industry, grinding up aspiring stars?

By: Helena

Helena — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:50:51 +0000

I’m with cold. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a major crush on an athlete, thinking their hot and fantasizing about them. I’ve got weird taste, but I’ve got Allen Iverson on my exemption list, meaning my bf will let me sleep with him if I get the chance. I like basketball, but the hotness of certain players is inextricable from the enjoyment of the game.

I find it hard to believe that forty year old men like you, Hugo, are really so evolved that they experience no sexual attraction to hottie like Stokkie. You might not act on it, you won’t admit to it, but I find it hard to believe you don’t think about her body in a sexual way when you look at her.

I’m sure I’ll get a story about how you simply retrain your mind not to think those thoughts. And maybe you have done it, and you’ve gone to some ethereal plane of existence where the rest of us mortals can’t get to. But while I am also a bit creeped out by some of what has been said about Stokkie by her fans, I think you are, as usual, too brutally judgmental on the men and boys and girls and women who sometimes just want to see some spandex-clad hotness.

Then again, I’d rather have you coaching my daughter then some of these other bozos.