Vancouver Whitecaps sexualize soccer with painted nude model
Even a Vancouverite like me who isn’t into soccer didn’t miss the recent viral advertising campaign publicizing the Vancouver Whitecaps, Canada’s newest Major League Soccer team.
It started with a “Find the Billboard” contest, which challenged fans to be the first to Tweet or text the location of a billboard featuring a model with a painted-on Whitecaps jersey.
The Whitecaps then released a video of the model being painted, shown in extreme close-ups. Because the close-ups mean you often can’t even tell what parts are being shown, I found it made me feel distanced from the model as a person and view her as more of an object.
Vancouver novelist and businesswoman Anne Giardini objected to the Whitecaps’ campaign, arguing that the ad doesn’t resonate with real young women who are into soccer: “They are not passive. They are not painted. They are not a blank canvas for some kind of perverse sports fantasy.”
Local blogger Meghan Murphy of the F-Word Media Collective agrees, pointing out that ads like this make the only role for women in sports a decorative one.
Unfortunately, it’s not new to sexualize women in sports or to use sexy women to sell men’s sports. From the Sports Illustrated swimsuit spreads to having women athletes pose in Playboy to the expansion of cheerleading to NHL Hockey, we see the objectification of women in the world of sports through sexualization.
Women who don’t conform can be subject to homophobic harassment, accused of being lesbians or trans. It creates a hostile environment for LGBTQ people and any women who don’t happen to wear skimpy clothing and look like supermodels.
Soccer doesn’t have anything to do with women baring it all, but it’s not surprising that the advertising strategy persists, with women still under-represented in sports leadership associations such as the Canadian Soccer Association, which has only 1 woman director out of 11. It gets to be a vicious cycle when there aren’t enough women at the top calling attention to the double-standard that treats men as athletes and women as sex objects.
The women’s World Cup of soccer is coming to Vancouver in 2015. Let’s hope soccer fans and sports organizations are able to make some positive changes in the sports culture to ensure the athletes are treated with the respect they deserve.
– Jarrah
Policing gender…on ice!
Here in my hometown of Vancouver the main part of the Olympic Games might be over, but people are still talking about it. During the Games I was fortunate enough to attend three figure skating practice sessions. I’m a huge figure skating fan, but getting to follow its biggest event so closely made me think about how strong the pressure is on skaters to conform to traditional ideas of what it means to be masculine or feminine.
For one thing, figure skating is one of the only sporting events that calls the women’s event a “ladies” event, thanks to the sport’s regulators at the International Skating Union (ISU). So while you could buy tickets to women’s curling, women’s hockey, and women’s biathlon, your figure skating tickets would be for the ladies’ short or long program. Until fairly recently, women singles skaters weren’t allowed to wear pants in their programs. In Ice Dancing, women skaters are still required to wear skirts, and men aren’t allowed to wear tights.
Skater Elena Sokolova's cutesy nickname may distract from her skill
The “ladies” label and costume requirements contribute to the trivialization of women figure skaters’ athletic ability. One example of how this trivialization occurs is the tagging of skaters with cutesy nicknames by commentators, as Russian figure skater Elena Sokolova was when Dick Button called her “cupcake”. Unfortunately, the name stuck. Continue reading
Vancouver 2010: Why do I see women Olympians in their swimsuits?
I cringe every year when Sports Illustrated releases its swimsuit edition—it’s page after page of half-naked women in a sports magazine that rarely features females otherwise. So, in early February, when this perennial athletic publication decided to include women winter Olympians in this particular edition, there was no lack of sexism. The women athletes, like all the other models, are photographed in overly sexualized positions and in skimpy swimsuits (even though they’re not swimmers).
Four American women in the 2010 Winter Olympics—snowboarders Claire Bidez and Hannah Teter and skiers Lindsey Vonn and Lacy Schnoor—appear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. In doing so, the women seem to be showing off their hot bods for a male audience that already values women’s sports less than men’s. These talented women have dozens of reasons to be admired, and none of them should have to do with their physiques in bikinis.
Check out these photos of Vonn, Bidez, and Schnoor and really think about what these images are saying about women athletes to a readership that is dominantly male.
Notice how the women’s sports equipment is secondary. Vonn is in bed, wrapped around her ski jacket—in a swimsuit. Bidez walks in the snow with her boots, snowboard and even goggles—in a swimsuit. With her skis strategically crossing in between her legs and donned in a bikini, Schnoor seems to be saying, “Yes, this is my body, which you can ogle. Oh, these skis? I use them for winning medals. But really, check out these legs!” What are these images telling male readers? And what are they telling young girls who look up to these Olympians? Continue reading
Nike Promotes Healthy Competition: Men vs. Women
I have always been a fan of Nike commercials. There is something behind their unisex “just do it” slogan that is energizing and empowering. Curious to what Nike has been up to lately, I decided to Google their commercials. I came across this:
I was skeptical at first. Is it going to be sexist? Will it dampen my perception of the company? Of course, most of all I wanted to know: Who are they going to place as the winner of the challenge?