R E C E N T L Y
The uses and abuses of Chelsea Clinton
Why feminists are co-dependent with philandering Bill
The sexual symbolism of Ted Kaczynski's crimes
Deconstructing the Kennedys
Should an economist wear a short, tantalizing black dress to work?
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A L S O
About Camille Paglia
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C O L U M N I S T S
Sexpert Opinion
Bestseller Hell
Spice of Life
Remember Halabja
Right On!
Word by Word
Under the Covers
Hollywoodland
Second Thoughts
Sound Salvation
Unzipped
The Awful Truth
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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A
PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dear Camille:
Speaking of Amazons, how about that U.S. women's hockey team and the
gritty, courageous, graceful and big-hearted women who made history?
Not that anyone would know. But then how typical of the predominantly
male, testosterone-oriented sports machine that pooh poohs their
achievement and what it took to get there. As the father of two
daughters, one of whom competed (unsuccessfully) for a place on the '94
Olympic rowing team and the other of whom is an all-American collegiate
lacrosse player, I await the day when women's athletics are given their
proper due by the American public. Unfortunately, the Olympic season is the only time when women in sport get anything near the attention they deserve. Really a tragedy, don't
you think?
Through my daughters, I have been privileged to meet a few of these
world-class female athletes and I am awestruck by their strength,
stamina, beauty and grace. Talk about the classical ideal. Athena
lives! But her legacy is not celebrated by an American public that
continues to be fed the male version of sports by crotch-scratching
sportswriters and commentators who still believe that the only
acceptable place for women to perspire is in the bedroom.
Ted Bracken
Dear Mr. Bracken:
The American team's capture of the first Olympic gold medal in women's ice
hockey will of course go down in history. I was very impressed by the women's
aggressive body-checking, as well as their unsentimental go-for-the-jugular
attitude in off-ice interviews.
Title IX, which mandates gender equity in apportionment of funds in university
athletic departments, has enormously expanded sports opportunities for
American women students. However, I have been very troubled by the
destructive way Title IX has increasingly been arbitrarily applied, so that
vigorous, venerable and multiracial men's programs in wrestling and
gymnastics have lost varsity status or been dropped entirely to make room for
marginal, elitist, WASPy prep-school sports like women's water polo. In an
article in USA Today ("Men's Sports Vanishing," April 9, 1996), I argued that
if Title IX cannot be rationally and justly administered, it should be
repealed.
As a feminist, however, I am delighted by the practical experience in teamwork
that Title IX has given women students, a critical skill for advancing up the
corporate career ladder. Team sports, which develop will, character and
self-discipline, are far preferable as a route to sexual and social equality
than the snoopy intrusiveness of Draconian sexual-harassment regulations (as
illustrated by Anita Hill's petty charges against Clarence Thomas).
Unfortunately, it may be at least another generation before women's team
sports are taken as seriously as men's. High-achieving professional women
must first infiltrate the big-money television networks as tough-minded
executives and rigorously self-educated sportscasters. But part of the
problem is also that, while there have been many strong personalities in
individual women's sports like tennis, track, skiing and ice skating, team
sports have produced very few compelling female figures beyond basketball's
Nancy Lieberman, who's been around for two decades.
Women's basketball, for example, which is being given another big push as a
professional-league sport after repeated failures, will remain depressingly
third-rate until its coaches and players start to realize that visual style is crucial to winning and sustaining
audience interest. Have they no sense of aesthetics? I cannot bear to watch
lumbering bison with identical flapping ponytails strain like schoolyard kids
to reach the hoop that their graceful elder brothers sail over like eagles.
Furthermore, at this point in feminist history, women athletes of every age
bear responsibility for how they comport themselves before, during and after
competition. See the following letter for a good example of how things can go
wrong.
Dear Camille:
Last night I watched the Lipinski-Kwan duel in the Olympics women's figure
skating. I wasn't struck so much by the beauty or athleticism of the
event as I was by the wild histrionics occurring at the edge of the rink.
As soon as one of these girls would leave the ice, good performance or
bad, she would promptly burst into tears. What's up with that? I don't
recall any sobbing skaters prior to 1994 (when Nancy Kerrigan wailed
"Why me?" at the nationals after being whacked by Tonya Harding's goons,
and then Harding got something to cry about when her lace broke at the
Olympics). Peggy Fleming didn't bawl. Dorothy Hamill wasn't a weeper. Is
chthonic hysteria creeping up on the Olympic Apollonian ideal? Will
running eyeliner be Tonya Harding's lasting contribution to the sport
of figure skating?
William Abernathy
Dear Mr. Abernathy: Your letter should be posted in every women's locker room in the world. These recent "teare-floods" and "sigh-tempests" (to quote John Donne) -- which were probably started by 1994 gold-medalist Oksana Baiul, to Nancy Kerrigan's fury -- are setting women back. We should all be mortified. Ironically, it may have been super-Amazon tennis star and lesbian poster girl Martina Navratilova who first kicked off this trend with her sobbing youthful tantrum into a towel at courtside. In "Vamps & Tramps," in fact, I maintained that old-school, goody-goody Catholic girl Chris Evert, who never displayed self-pity or petulance about a bad call, was ultimately a better feminist role model than the blubbering, spiteful Martina, who was always mooningly searching the stands for the reassuring eyes of Big Mama (her blond lover, Judy Nelson). The grueling, hothouse conditions of early training in tennis and ice skating have clearly stunted the maturation of today's aspiring champions, whose lives are micromanaged by ambitious parents and martinet managers. As the financial rewards have exponentially increased, so have the pressures. Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill (as well as the cerebral Virginia Wade in tennis) had real class: They were vibrant, poised personalities who had developed fully and naturally.
The bourgeois assembly line of contemporary culture seems to be making many
young people -- not just athletes -- more and more generic. Surface blandness,
with an undercurrent of infantile hysteria, has succeeded existential angst as
the psychological norm. It makes me want to run to the nearest Joan Crawford
movie for an emergency transfusion of gritty spunk!
Feel an attack of self-pity coming on? Get a grip -- ask Camille. |
