It was a busy weekend. My wife and I were able to spend some excellent time together, and on Saturday night — before heading out for some vegan Nepalese — I got some of the live coverage of the California high school track and field championships. I got to see the future Golden Bear running back, Jahvid Best, show some awesome speed in the 200; I got to see the remarkable Jordan Hasay (whose career I’ve been tracking since she was an eighth grader) lap most of the field on her way to another easy victory in the two-mile. Hasay is only a sophomore, and if she keeps her composure and stays injury free, she’s going to be a household name outside of the track world very soon.
Track doesn’t get much coverage in the mainstream press, even in the sports section. But Friday’s LA Times featured a front-page piece on Allison Stokke, a high school pole-vaulter from Orange County. Allison’s a fine vaulter (though she finished fourth at state on Saturday), and I’m happy to say she’s a future Cal athlete. But the article was about the attention Allison has drawn for her looks:
…intelligence and athletic ability aren’t what made her the most-watched athlete at the state high school track and field championships in Sacramento on Friday.
It was the Internet.
Stokke happens to be physically attractive, with shiny dark hair; flawless olive-colored skin; a wide, bright smile; and the toned 5-foot-7 frame of a well-trained athlete — and that’s why her name has become among the most searched on the Internet, making her a flashpoint for debate about 1st Amendment rights and who can post what about whom in cyberspace.
One day she was just another accomplished high school athlete. The next, she was the topic of media reports from London, Spain and Italy; her YouTube video got nearly 200,000 views; and photos of her were posted on college message boards around the country and linked to by bloggers around the world.
Keith Richmond, chief executive of Break.com, has a term he uses for the instantly famous: “e-lebrities.” His site bills itself as an “entertainment channel for guys fueled by user-created media.”
The Times, helpfully for those who don’t follow the sport, offers two pictures of Stokke, one vaulting, one just smiling for the camera. The latter is captioned “head-turner.”
On so many levels, this is so infuriating. For starters, it’s one thing for the Times to report on the unseemly obsession that many men (who probably know damn all about field events, and couldn’t name one of Stokke’s competitors) have with a high-school aged female athlete. It’s another thing for the Times article (written by Diane Pucin) to label Allison a “head-turner” and rhapsodize about her “flawless” skin. A whole lot of folks who didn’t know about Stokke before surely did internet searches for her after reading the paper last Friday. And how the heck can Pucin be sure that Stokke was the one all the fans were focused on? Can she not draw a distinction between drooling middle-aged men on the Internet surfing for T&A and serious aficionados of T&F?
I’m angry about the way in which the attention paid to Stokke marginalizes the many other athletes in the sport. Stokke is a great vaulter, but as any T&F fan will tell you, the best in the country right now is Palo Alto’s marvelous Tori Anthony, who this past weekend became the first high school girl in the United States to clear 14 feet in outdoor competition. Anthony has been consistently ahead of Stokke all year — except in camera attention. (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; a better comparison might be to Maria Sharapova, another Russian player who gets tremendous camera attention for her physical features but who also has two grand slam championships to give heft to her credentials.) Thirty-five years after Title IX, and women’s sports still get far less media attention and financial support than do boys’ athletics. Paying attention to one bright and talented athlete among many, merely because she is judged beautiful, isn’t healthy for women’s sports. And it certainly doesn’t leave many of the women who are competing in track and field feeling good.
I’m also angry about the way in which we legitimize the eroticising of adolescents. I’ve spent a fair amount of time at track and field events over the years, and I’ve noted not insignificant number of creepy lookin’ guys with cameras who seem unduly interested in taking pictures of just one or two female athletes. A few years ago, I was at the big Arcadia Invitational meet, watching the high jumpers. One girl was wearing a particularly tight outfit, and as she flopped over the bar, a man a few rows behind me frantically clicked his camera with its long lens. “Ve-ee–ee–ry ni-ii-ii-ce” he muttered excitedly at one point, studying the digital images he had just taken. Like the guys at football games more interested in snapping a photo of a cheerleader’s kick pants than the action on the field, there’s a small cadre of these characters who make the circuit at track events. They aren’t generally asked to leave unless they make trouble, and most of them don’t. (I’ve gotten into it with one of them, and nearly got myself thrown out of the meet for my trouble). The pictures they take do end up all over the internet, and they are usually much the same. (You can imagine what body parts they like to focus on.)
All things being equal, there are more white girls than young women of color doing vaulting and high jumping. While events like the long jump and the triple jump tend to be dominated by young African-American women, pole vaulters and high jumpers are largely drawn from the ranks of former gymnasts. Gymnastics lessons are priced for the middle and upper-middle classes, of course, and thus there ends up being an economic and even ethnic component to women’s track and field competition. We live in a culture that tends to erotically fixate on tall, slender, pretty white girls — and in track and field, they are disproportionately found in the pole vault and the high jump. Thus, there’s a classist, racist, and sexist element in this focus on Allison Stokke.
I like Allison Stokke. I’m a fan (especially since the smart gal has chosen to go to Berkeley). But I’m also a fan of Tori Anthony. I’m an even bigger fan of Hasay, and of Jamesha Youngblood, who brought home two state titles this past weekend. The latter is probably the most dominant female athlete in the West right now. But her pictures aren’t plastered all over the internet.
Straight men don’t love their male athletic heroes because they’re sexy. Teenage boys are quite capable of idolizing LeBron James or Peyton Manning without fantasizing about them. They fantasize about being them, which is very different. But we live in a culture where a great many men can only identify “hot” female athletes. As a sports fan, a teacher, and a mentor, I find that exasperating, disappointing, and even enraging. I can idolize a female athlete as easily as a male one. Growing up, Martina Navratilova and Bjorn Borg were my tennis heroes. I wanted to emulate both of them, and I was sensible enough to see that I had no reason to identify with Borg more merely because he was male. I had no more chance of being as good a tennis player as Borg than I did of waking up one day as a woman; even as a child, I knew that much. And so I could look up to, be inspired by, and want to emulate athletes of both sexes equally. And though as a lad I certainly had my athletic crushes (even a few with a sexual component), I never picked who to root for — of either sex — based on looks. Surely, I’m not that unusual a bear.
So google Allison Stokke. But then google Jordan Hasay, and Jamesha Youngblood. And remember that whatever they look like, they are simply young women of extraordinary ability and talent who deserve to be recognized on the basis of what they achieve alone.
UPDATE: Twisty at I blame the patriarchy has a long post on this subject with over 100 comments; she posted on Saturday, and I ought to have done a search to see who else had touched on the issue first. As usual at IBTP, the language is raw and eloquent. Twisty and I have, in the end, much the same view. Read it.
Thanks for posting about this, Hugo. I have to admit, I am not too concerned when people think of sports figures in sexual terms - I’m not above doing so myself. A high school boy thinking a high school athlete is hot is no problem for me, nor is an adult woman fantasizing about Peyton Manning (and even posting about it on the Internet, if she chooses). It’s the public sexualization of high school athletes by adults that squicks me out. People can’t always control their impulses or responses, but when carried on publicly, it feels like victimization of the athlete to me.
I hate this so much. On the one hand, it’s certainly the case that Ms. Stokke is a very attractive young woman, and I’m enough of an aesthete that I wish that we, as a culture, could handle that without resorting to denial.
Obviously enough, we can’t. And that’s pretty pathetic.
Tam, you’re right — I’m much less troubled by the eroticization of age-appropriate athletes. It’s older folks leering after the young that troubles me.
When will the endless comparisons to Anna Kournikova stop? As an advid women’s tennis fan, I’m a little tired of seeing Anna dragged through the rubble of Title IX and whether or not women’s sports is watched because of their looks or because of their skill.
First of all Anna made it to #8 in the world during a time when Graf and Seles were dominating womens tennis, as they would be today if they were in the current age group. The fact that Anna never won a WTA tour singles title should be immaterial to just about every discussion involving her looks. Oh, nevermind the fact that she was a multiple Grand Slam event winner in doubles and was ranked #1 in the world in doubles. (Hell doubles don’t count, sorry I forgot.)
Woman can play Tennis as well as Volleyball and look gracefull and talented while doing so (and by graceful I mean they look coridinated and capable.) They also do well in track and field and I’m sure Stokke measures up. However this endless complaining about women’s looks and if they make the sports watchable has got to stop someplace.
Let’s look at a few examples. Beach volleyball. Wow! Just what every male dreams about. Long legged good looking women in bikini’s playing volley ball on the beach, what red blooded male would want to watch? All of them? Then why don’t they watch? Oh sure they will surf by and stop for a minute and watch but not for long. It’s boring! Two on two volleyball being played on a surface that restricts your movements is pure boredom. On the other hand collegiate women’s volleyball is full of grace and skill and is very entertaining to watch…….as a sport. I was sorry to see the professional league go away a few years ago. The problem here is that volleyball just isn’t that popular. Oh, yeah, title IX never did anything for women’s volleyball by the way.
How about women’s basketball. I loved it as an 8 year old kid. I had a crush on one of the local high school girls and I loved to watch her play. Oh, did I say that really? Well I was only 8 and to be honest I don’t even remember if she was “pretty” or not. I guess I thought so then. Ok so she got me in the gym to watch is there something wrong with that. Then you learn to like the sport, except I hate women’s basketball now. It is one of the ugliest most graceless games I’ve ever seen played. The main problem here is the ball is a little to heavy and big for most girls to handle it. I would suggest lowering the basket by a foot, making the ball 8 inches instead of 9 and the rim diameter 11 inches instead of 12. It may make an ugly game watchable. In addition if Anna Kournikova was a basketball player, I still wouldn’t watch.
To sum it all up, we view women in society as the “sexy” gender. Then to cap it off women are generally the most critical, if a women is not up to standards. That is going to spill over into sports someplace and sometimes. What it doesn’t mean is that we are all sexist, racist and what have you. I’m tired of being told that I must be sexist because I liked to what Anna play tennis. I also like to watch Steffi, Martina, Chrissy, and now Maria and Ashley (see my website) the fact that Anna is extraodinarily beautiful was just a bonus and not a reason for watching. One thing in defense of Anna’s beauty just a little bit………she did put butts in seats. Oh, did I mention more of those butts where women’s and not men’s? At her last WTA tournament, The Family Circle Cup in 2003, her practice court was surrounded by women and young girls………not men!
If you want to go someplace and see where women are actually treated fairly and not because of their looks go to the NHRA. Angelle, Melanie, Ashley, Erica and Kim to name a few are not only drivers one of them is a crew chief and they are all accepted by those “neanderthal motorheads” as equals. Yes Shirley Muldowney had to pave the way but over in motor sports in only took about 5 years for women to be treated as equal competitors once she broke that barrier. The same is true where others have broken through in all motorsports. Sports where women can actually compete with men equally. Why is it that those of us out here that do all the living, working and dying and who are looked down upon by academia and liberals alike, the only ones that actually do treat women like equals?
All the alleged “enlightened” in the world spend most of their time promoting sexistm, racism and any other ism they can think of just so they have something to bitch about. Just so they can say they are smarter than Kim Lahaie Richards because she turns wrenches on a Nitro powered racecar. She must be a neanderthal but at least she’s treated equal by the male neanderthals out there in flyover country.
The media, academics and liberals continue to stir the pot. They continue to tell you that without them you would be troglodytes. Their agenda while working on about half the people (they still get voted in) proves that actually they themselves are the neanderthals of our time.
Steve, you’re exactly the kind of man I really, really, want to keep away from young athletes.
It’s the public sexualization of high school athletes by adults that squicks me out. People can’t always control their impulses or responses, but when carried on publicly, it feels like victimization of the athlete to me.
You nailed it Tam. That’s what grosses me out too. When Hugo was talking about what kind of pictures were taking at meets, I was going these are kids! They’re underage: those pictures in another context would illegal.
Not to mince hairs, but I really hope no one is actually fantasizing about Peyton Manning. And not just because I’m in Boston, either;)
I myself played tennis in high school, complete with the requisite tennis skirts. It didn’t get us any more fans than usual, I’m sorry to say (fans from the student body, I mean), but fortunately we didn’t have any creepy bystanders (although we did get a lot of honks from passersby since our courts were off the main road … but that was mostly students anyway — I returned the favor during Boys’ Tennis season). However, my best friend in high school was a volleyball player, and after they switched from wearing shorts with their uniforms to the so-called butt-huggers (not too unlike today’s womens’ boyshort panties, albeit with a bit less butt showing), they grabbed a lot more fans from the student body population — mostly male.
Of course, I can’t talk, because I attended three years of Boys’ Soccer matches for a somewhat similar reason. While I think the added spectators can be nice, it’s a bit disconcerting when half the student body is ogling your ass, according to my friends from the team.
Katie, is “mince hairs” a Bostonism or just a lovely malapropism? I am so going to use it.
You’re right that there’s a gray area here with attraction to peers, especially in high school. If the boys at Newport Harbor (where Allison Stokke goes to school) think she’s a hottie, that’s not a problem for me. If her teachers are drooling or fantasizing, it is, and if some forty year-old in Peoria or Poughkeepsie or Pendleton or Pasadena is staring longingly at her photos, it is.
Ugh. As a former track and field athlete, I’m appalled. I was never the recipient of this sort of attention in track and field (thank God!), but I can just imagine what it does to female athletes’ self-esteem. In non athletic contexts, I’ve sometimes had that little niggling voice in the back of my head asking, “do people think I’m good because I’m really good, or do they just like me because I’m a young, thin-ish, white-ish woman with big breasts?” I freaking hate it. It would be total poison if you were (a) getting this sort of attention as an athlete (b) whose looks were the subject of so much explicit discussion and drooling and (c) you were only 18.
I don’t particularly care what those guys are thinking inside their heads, but why do they have to publicly humiliate her?
“We live in a culture that tends to erotically fixate on tall, slender, pretty white girls ”
Only in America ;)!
People can’t always control their impulses or responses, but when carried on publicly, it feels like victimization of the athlete to me.
Another part of the problem is the amplification of the effect due to the real-time, low barrier to entry, nature of the internet. I am pretty much the opposite of a Luddite, so this is not the argument about how teh evil Internets is going to steal your children.
Rather, it is the recognition of the fact that pretty much anyone, anywhere can publish a photo or video that will stay up for at least a few hours. If it’s the kind of photo/video that others want to see - such as an attractive young woman in tight clothing - odds are good that someone else will pick it up and publish it somewhere else. Rinse, repeat, for a few days through the all-seeing popularity filter of sites such as Digg and eventually some of the photos will emerge out of obscurity and become as popular as these images of Ms. Stokke.
Sometimes this is a power for good, as when hypocrites like Dr Laura are humiliated by skeletons from their past. Other times it is merely attention and publicity for someone who neither asked for nor wanted their images to become public. As usual, technology is neither all good, nor all evil - it’s the way that people use or misuse it that makes it one or the other.
so that’s who she is! i’ll totally admit to having a huge girly crush on her! she doesn’t inspire me to be a vaulter per se, though i badly wish i could, but she does make me want to go run a couple of laps around a mountain. girl, sign me up for your workout video!
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.
I share your concerns about adults objectifying high school athletes. I question the values implied by the following statement:
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?
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.
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.
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.
“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…
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.
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.
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.
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.