BBC presenter John Inverdale’s comments about Wimbledon women’s single champion Marion Bartoli’s physical appearance earlier this week, and the furor they inspired, have called attention once again to the deep-rooted, pervasive sexism within professional sports. But her reaction serves as a barometer of how things have changed for women athletes over the years.
For those who don’t know, Inverdale, chatting with another commentator about champion Bartoli’s technique as a player, remarked:
I just wonder if her dad, because he has obviously been the most influential person in her life, did say to her when she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, maybe, ‘listen, you are never going to be, you know, a looker. You are never going to be somebody like a Sharapova, you’re never going to be 5 feet 11, you’re never going to be somebody with long legs, so you have to compensate for that. You are going to have to be the most dogged, determined fighter that anyone has ever seen on the tennis court if you are going to make it,’ and she kind of is.
Bertoli’s beautiful, guileless reaction to Inverdale: “It doesn’t matter, honestly. I am not blonde, yes. That is a fact. Have I dreamt about having a modeling contract? No. I’m sorry. But have I dreamt about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes.”
Sports commentators, rarely insightful or enthusiastic when it comes to the performance of female athletes, are prone to paying rapt attention to the girlfriends of male athletes. See Brent Musburger’s fawning over Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Web, or Wimbledon’s longstanding obsession with the girlfriends of male players, with this year’s focus on Kim Sears and Marta Domachowska (who are currently dating Andy Murray and Jerzy Janowics, respectively). At times, the media have pitted these beauties against each other, in a type of who-is-more-sexy-and-desirable? battle, with Domachowska “winning” the contest, having once posed for the Polish version of Playboy.
While there’s a certain old-school sexist idiocy to Inverdale and Musburger, their actions haven’t been malicious. Their reactions to the outcry and subsequent apologies seem to reflect an earnest befuddlement. One gets the impression that their comments stemmed from the genuine idea that they were complimenting these women.
Female athletes have all the qualities that make for a great sports narrative—underdog status, loyalty, commitment, perseverance, and innovation—yet they continue to be, for the most part, overlooked by commentators and reporters. When they are noticed, often it’s for their physical attractiveness and not their athleticism.
A while back, I happened upon a graphic novel by David Collier about Ethel Catherwood, a Canadian high jumper, which led me to research the 1928 Olympics. The Amsterdam Games were the first to allow women to compete in five track-and-field events, although they were only admitted at the time on a trial basis.
Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, published in 1999, selected 59 articles to represent the 20th century. One of them was written by a woman. None of them featured female athlete as the main subject. By now, most people know that the best way for a woman to be on a Sports Illustrated cover, or even represented inside its pages, is to be a swimsuit model.
The Inverdale/Bartoli story reminds me of the backlash that Babe Didrikson Zaharias—arguably one of the greatest and most accomplished athletes ever—faced after her sweep in the 1932 Olympics, and her struggle with one sportswriter in particular. After her Olympic success, the press deemed her “too boyish,” a “sexual deviant” and “unfeminine.” More than one reporter questioned whether she was actually a man masquerading as a woman.
“People are always asking me,” she once said, “‘Are you going to get married, Babe?’ and it gets my goat. They seem to think that I’m a strange, unnatural being, summed up in the words ‘Muscle Moll,’ and the idea seems to be that Muscle Molls are not people.”
Unlike Inverdale and Musburger, Babe’s greatest critic—responsible for her Muscle Moll nickname—was malicious.
Babe had outrun sportswriter and novelist Paul Gallico on the seventeenth fairway after a round of golf at the Brentwood Country Club. He’d challenged her to the race, and as he lay exhausted on the edge of the green, she had playfully mocked him.
His revenge, spawned by embarrassment and anger and a tremendously bruised ego, included an onslaught of hateful articles and stories, many of which were published in Vanity Fair. Gallico wrote about their golf round in the 1932 October issue (notably forgetting to mention their race), and observed that after the game, “nobody knew whether to invite the Babe into the men’s locker room for a bath and a drink, or whether to say, ‘Well, goodbye kid, see you later.’” According to the article, Babe would have been “right at home” in the men’s locker room. Gallico used the word “boy” to describe her more than a dozen times.
In the October 1933 issue of Vanity Fair, Gallico continued his attack, publishing a short story titled “Honey.” The protagonist, Honey Hadwell, is a barely-disguised version of Babe, a parallel that was further reinforced by the full-page photograph of Babe that ran on the page opposite his story, and captioned “Tough Babe.”
Honey Hadwell is an oddity with “the most beautiful body that anyone saw on a woman because it happened to be a boy’s body,” and a face with “a hawk’s beak for a nose and a cold pair of eyes.” Honey hates herself because she can’t get a man, even if she can win gold medals. The story focuses on her self-hatred and shriveling self-esteem. A male high jumper pays attention to her until he learns her techniques, and then he drops her.
The story ends with Honey hitting and hurting herself with her fists, then the next day winning the gold in the javelin. She explains that her success comes from a desire for revenge against men, saying: “Ah throwed it right through his black heart.”
Babe loved to compete, but she hated when sportswriters wrote about her appearance or claimed that she “wasn’t interested in boys.” She knew that she wasn’t going to ever be a “glamour girl,” the highest compliment for a woman athlete at the time. She struggled to be accepted, going to great lengths to alter the way that she dressed and looked, trying as hard as she could to emphasize her heterosexuality and domesticity.
“I know I’m not pretty,” she told a reporter once, “but I do try to be graceful.”
Tags: babe didrikson, female athletes, john inverdale, marion bartoli, sports, sports commentary, tennis, wimbledon
Oh Paul Gallico, how could you? I will never be able to read Jennie again.
(also “I know I’m not pretty” = my heart just BROKE. Can Jane Lynch play her in the movie of her life? Only make it a revisionist one where she fucking kicks ass AND doesn’t give a shit about misogynist losers?)
Isn’t that just heart-rending? Obviously she did not let it hold her back, and was amazing, but it’s just killer. “I know I’m not pretty, but I try.” SOBS
as if “being pretty” was worth more than being a fucking badass athlete. I mean being pretty is fine, but it’s not really a skill (in the same way, I guess you could make derailing arguments about makeup and effort))?
But it’s so valued by society that it’s easy to fall into that way of thinking. I do it all the time. “I know I’m not pretty, but I’ve got an amazing family/career/life. But I’m not pretty.” Ugh. Done.
There was a TV movie made on her life in the early 80s. 🙂
The weirdest part about Inverdale’s comments is that he is explicitly comparing her to Maria Sharpova, another accomplished athlete (Grand Slam winner, currently ranked #2 in the world). It still would’ve been insulting but it would have made more sense if in Inverdale’s imagining Bartoli’s father had said “you’re not going to be a looker, you’re not going to be a supermodel, so you need to be a tenacious athlete.” But I don’t get how “looker” figures into the comparison w/Sharpova. Does he think Sharpova wins tennis matches because she’s pretty?
Looking at his comments again, maybe the key point he’s trying to get at is the long legs — he’s basically saying Bartoli has to have a different style of play from Sharpova because she’s so much shorter. Though that makes “looker” even more out of place. Maybe he just can’t think of Sharpova’s long legs without having an involuntary boner, I dunno.
So true! It’s insulting to Sharapova as well because of the implication that being a pretty blonde is why she wins, instead of because she’s really good at tennis.
I was thinking this. Riiiiiiiight. Maria Sharipova. Probably sleeps with the refs to win her matches because there is no way an ornamental lady-face like hers could actually, you know, be good at something like tennis amirite?
The whole debacle makes my skin crawl.
I really dont understand John Inverdale’s point. This is world ranking competitive tennis. It doesnt matter how gorgeous someone is, they aren’t going to win by just standing there looking pretty. This is a game where regardless of looks you have to bring it and Marion Bartoli brought it.
Youre right, suggesting he was commentating on her style might make more sense. Without the long legs her style might have to be more scrappy and powerful. Its just so terrible he has to frame her energy and drive as some sort of negative side effect.
He might have gotten away with saying “she’ll never get rich on the back of endorsements because she is not as pretty, so she had better be good.” But that would be a comment that comments on some nasty things about the industry of sports endorsements. And not, say, a much easier sexist comment on how it’s Bartoli’s fault if she isn’t rich and successful because she has the temerity not to be born super conventionally hot.
Which again. Makes my skin crawl.
Jesus. Why do people suck so very much.
This has been driving me nuts, and the only sensible conclusion I can come to is that he’s snarking on her non-waifishness, which makes me angrier than the prettiness factor.
There is also the sad and interesting story of Stella Walsh.
*sigh* My mom used to say this about herself when I was growing up. (irrelevant, but this was not true- she was a knockout)
What even with PG. And how depressing the more things change…
YAY AWESOME SPORTS WRITING
So of course I looked up Babe’s Wikipedia page, and she may have thought she would never be pretty, but her smile in her portrait there just slays me. Hope you never let the bastards get you too far down, Babe.
I think it’s kind of astonishing that apparently we’re not teaching girls the difference between what they are inherently, and what they do with their lives – or that the latter is just as important.
It’s the old object-subject thing again. Being pretty is more important than doing something incredible. Being “nice” is more important than doing great things. On and on.
This just flat doesn’t pass the sexist smell test, either – no one would ever suggest Michael Phelps is less of an athlete because he’s not a handsome man (and he’s not, he’s a goofy looking dude, and I don’t believe I read one article where his looks were brought up, much less criticized).
Yeah, with my husband’s niece at one point the family had to put a moratorium on appearance-based comments because the child was getting vain AND thinking that looks were more important! I think about that and try to balance out the “you’re so cute/pretty” comments to my BBs with “you are so smart/good at X!” (and I tell my little dude he’s handsome too 😉
My parents were really good at this somehow, and I was too little to remember how they did it. I think that basically they never commented on my looks unless I was dressed up – e.g. “You look very nice” – or unless I was worried about my looks, in which case it was this very matter-of-fact, “You are a very pretty girl. You always have been.” So I came to think of my looks as an unmovable fact, not as an aspiration.
OTHER people definitely commented on my looks all the damn time, positively and negatively, in ways that made it sound like it was something I had done rather than something that just was, but I think because my parents didn’t seem to care one way or the other, it kept me from thinking it was something I should worry about.
Maybe the trick is to compliment kids on stuff they can do, rather than stuff they are? Because while they were awesome at the looks thing, my parents DID tell me all the time that I was smart, and this made me think that I had already achieved shit when of course I hadn’t. The whole idea of studying hard still baffles me. “But I’m SMART. Why would I need to study like someone who doesn’t know stuff?” There are some studies going around that suggest kids who are complimented on how hard they try or how they persevered through the part where it was super-hard and confusing actually do better in school and in life than kids who are just told they’re smart.
It’s all kind of anecdotal, though. And kids, man. Kids will pick up the strangest facts about life from the stuff we say. It’s kind of hard to figure out what sticks.
There was a pretty good biopic made about Babe in the early 70s; directed for tv by Buzz Kulik who had made the original Brian’s Song. It is finally available on dvd via the Warner Archive folks…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072677/
And in Pat and Mike, Katharine Hepburn plays a Babe-like athlete, and Babe herself makes an appearance in the film.
Another constant theme in women’s tennis commentary is about the players’ emotional state/fitness – surprise, surprise! It’s much rarer in the men’s game – sure, when Youzhny drew blood bashing himself in the forehead with his racquet, there were questions and jokes about his mental state. But more often, when a player on the ATP tour is giving up breaks or making a lot of unforced errors, they’ll question his fitness. I guess tired legs don’t affect women, though, because their problems on the court are suspiciously often the apparent result of a case of “nerves” and not being “emotionally ready.”
Things that are criticized during women’s matches but not during men’s:
– Appearance, including fashion
– Emotional state
– Noises made
What else?
I totally get what Bartoli and Babe are trying to say, because I’ve had to say it. It can be really powerful to acknowledge the fact that you might not meet a cultural ideal, but you’re damn good at what you do, and that has to be enough for you, world.
In other sexist Wimbledon news this week, when Andy Murray won, news articles kept reporting that it ended a 77 year drought on a British player winning….completely ignoring that not one, but 4 British women have won during those 77 years, the last winning in 1977. Because of course it’s all about the men.
But it's so valued by society that it's easy to fall into that way of thinking. I do it all the time. "I know I'm not pretty, but I've got an amazing family/career/life. But I'm not pretty." Ugh. Done.
I just did a Google image search for Marion Bartoli, and groups of photos came up at the top, with the headings “Hot,” “Sexy,” “Fat” and “Legs.” Excuse me while I try to put the pieces of my exploded head back together. How can a search engine be an asshole?
I just did a Google image search for Marion Bartoli, and groups of photos came up at the top, with the headings "Hot," "Sexy," "Fat" and "Legs." Excuse me while I try to put the pieces of my exploded head back together. How can a search engine be an asshole?
Somehow I missed this while controversy, but I do love learning about it and about this context. Great essay.
Great essay. It’s sad that as we enter the 21st Century, western men continue to devolve by objectifying women. They continue to be threatened by strong successful women, and especially do not know what to make of the women who fall on the “masculine” end of the spectrum. The Didrikson/Gallico dynamic blatantly represents that, and although we have made some strides since Title 9, we still have a long way to go.
I got into a huge argument with Horse and Hound last year because of similar coverage of the Olympic riders. One woman was Actually described, in a short paragraph accompanying a profile (so not a long piece that might have needed space filling) as ‘Pretty mother Vittoria Pannizonn’ and their entire coverage was like that. Unfortunately the journalist who wrote it (who was a woman) could not see anything wrong with it. I was more disheartened by the fact that the magazine’s staff were more or less my age, a lot of women on the staff, and not a bunch of old dinosaurs.
Well, I for one think Honey Hadwell sounds perfectly attractive.
I just wonder if his dad did say to him when he was 12, 13, 14, maybe ‘Listen son, you’re never going to be, you know, a looker. You’ll never have the bone structure of a Fernando Torres, the abs and ass of a David Beckham, or the shoulder-to-hip ratio of a Cristiano Ronaldo. You’re going to have to be the most dogged, determined fighter that anyone has ever seen on the soccer field if you are going to make it,’ and he kind of is.