Sports both reflect and communicate the values of
the cultures that surround them, writes Jen See.
A few weeks ago, Derek sent me a link over email, hoping
to prod me into writing about women’s sports and pay
equity. A male columnist had sat down at his keyboard and
pounded out an opinion piece about how boring he found the women’s
World Cup soccer matches.
I did not read past the first paragraph.
(Editor’s note: But you can! Click
here.)
I have reached a point where my brain simply shuts down when men
begin to tell me about how women’s sports bore them or how women
athletes don’t deserve equal pay. It turns into word salad, maybe
coleslaw, with its tiny shredded pieces and all that pale green
cabbage, mostly water, with next to no nutritional value. It takes
up space on the plate, but there’s not much there.
Four years ago during the last World Cup, an editor sent me a
similar link and assigned me to call up some women athletes and
formulate a response. That the link four years ago was a different
male writer hardly matters.
It’s a familiar genre. Man watches women’s sports. Man declares
women’s sports too boring. I rolled my eyes, but dutifully called
up several women — intentionally choosing a couple sources purely
for their sense of humor and their ability to deliver a sick burn —
and wrote the story.
It has become the job of women writers to do these stories. It
isn’t enough that we cover the sport. We also have to justify its
existence. And that double-duty weighs still more heavily on the
women who train their asses off to succeed in their chosen
sports.
They can’t just win. It has to be scintillating. They have to
win the game — or the race or their heat — and then win over the
men, who are just waiting to tear them down, just waiting to say,
they shouldn’t be out there at all.
It’d be nice if women could just ignore all of this. Play our
own games and write our own stories. And tell the men with their
doubts and their boredom to go to hell.
But nothing is ever easy in this world.
Men continue to hold tight the keys to many gates — the gates to
media attention, sponsorship, prize money, and a living wage. No
athlete is necessarily entitled to such things. But if men have
them, and in many professional sports they do, why shouldn’t
women?
Thanks to their control of the gates, men have made their sports
the norm. You never envision a world without men’s sports. Of
course, men play sports. No one ever asks out loud if men’s sports
should exist, the way they do about the women’s analogues. By using
their power over cultural narratives, men have made their sports
the default, while along the way, reinforcing in a myriad of ways,
a hierarchy that ensures their power goes unchallenged.
Why should women have space to play sports?
Turn the question around. Why should men?
Every time a men’s sports event fizzles, you become obligated to
defend it. Oh, Bells was super boring this year, men shouldn’t make
as much money as women, and really, why do they even have a men’s
event. If that line of argument sounds weird or wrong to you, well,
imagine being a woman athlete, who hears those questions on repeat
and rarely can avoid answering them.
In truth, women’s sports matter in far-reaching ways to the
athletes who play them. Studies have shown that women who play
sports through their high school and college years are less likely
to be victims of domestic abuse. Women who play sports also ascend
to higher levels in their professional lives.
And sure, while some girls look up to fashion icons, others
simply do not. Imagine you’re a girl who can’t sit still. Imagine
you’re a girl who isn’t all that interested in fashion. Wouldn’t
you want to see someone like you out there, rather than feeling
alone and out of place? If your imagination fails you on this
question, I can tell you that you would.
The most common argument against equal pay and prize money
equity is that women’s sports draw a smaller audience. In the US
media, editors and television producers devote less than 5% of
their sports coverage to women. I don’t have numbers for the surf
media, but anecdotally, it isn’t much better.
A woman pro surfer I interviewed said she didn’t ever look at
magazines.
“They don’t cover the girls.” (Women among themselves frequently
refer to one another as girls.)
Maybe you’re about to argue that women simply aren’t interested
in sports.
Sure. I got that one.
At the college-level in the US, nearly half of student-athletes
are now women. Title IX and subsequent case law required colleges
to offer equal opportunity and funding for women’s sports — and
women have seized those opportunities and run as far and as fast as
they can with them.
All the same, it remains difficult, if not impossible, to build
an audience for a sport without media coverage. Look at how many
hours of free publicity the NFL receives from Sports Center and the
like. Little wonder that football draws a giant audience. The media
outlets provide fans with the backstories and the water-cooler
banter. When you know the narratives, when an athlete becomes more
than a colorful jersey, a sport comes alive. And women’s sports are
uniformly denied the oxygen to fuels that transformation.
If your friends watch women’s sports, you likely will, too.
During the 2015 World Cup finals, I happened to be in Sun
Valley, riding mountain bikes with a crew of women. We’d shredded
some prime singletrack, as the saying goes. Then one of my besties
and I headed to a local coffee shop-brewery to watch the game. I
remember hanging out at the counter, drinking a beer, chatting
about riding and sports with a good friend. And then, seeing women
on a massive stage, doing the performance of their lives. It was
enthralling and inspiring — all the more so for being shared.
I think to appreciate women’s sports, you have to engage them on
their own terms. Which is to say, if your constant frame of
reference is the men’s analogue, if you watch women’s surfing with
the men’s version always in your head, you will never entirely
enjoy it. You will always compare it — and most of you, I think,
will find the women’s version lacking.
I would argue that’s your fault for imposing your own notion of
value on the game, not the fault of the competitors.
This dynamic lies at the heart of the debate over whether the
judging standard should be the same across genders. It reflects an
inability to watch one without reference to the other. I can’t say
I care if the standard is the same.
After all, there is no Platonic ideal of the
perfectly surfed wave. A ten is always relative to what’s happened
in the heat before it, and during the contest as a whole. I see no
reason why women shouldn’t be judged against women, and men against
men.
Eventually, I think your relationship with women’s sports
depends on why you watch sports at all.
For me, whether I’m watching a women’s surf heat or the men’s
Tour de France, I am drawn to the human stories that come out of
them. It’s not about the absolute level of the competitors,
necessarily. I don’t care how high Carissa Moore can throw an air —
or if she throws one at all.
I am drawn instead to the dynamics of the competition between
her and her opponent and what’s at stake for each of them.
And none of that has anything to do with the men’s event running
in parallel.
In a recent New York
Times story, Lindsay Crouse recalled the famous moment when
Brandi Chastain whipped off her shirt to celebrate victory in the
1999 world cup. She saw it then as a sign that women’s
sports had finally arrived.
In retrospect, Crouse views that moment as bittersweet. We
thought the battle was over, she says, but we were wrong.
I know this won’t be the last time I write this story.
In truth, I feel like I write it every time I sit down to tell a
story about women’s sports or about the athletes who pour their
hearts into competing at them. Maybe at the end of one of those
stories, one less man feels compelled to tell me that it’s all too
boring to watch.
Here we are, I think, as I sit at my keyboard wearing a sports
bra in the summer heat.
Here we are still fighting the same battles for equity and
opportunity.
Sports both reflect and communicate the values of the cultures
that surround them.
Here we are fighting for equity, not just in sports, but on just
about every terrain.
And maybe in the end, this is why women’s sports matter.