How Do You Promote Women in Sports?

Past the link below, you’ll find a short post on SB*Nation’s pro-cycling blog written by a female pro cyclist, along with a bunch of pics of various women of pro cycling in various states of undress (all quite safe for work).  Sure you can enjoy the pics—and to be clear, everyone involved in the discussion past the link seems to take pleasure in doing so—but the issue at hand is a little more interesting.  The writer asks whether the girls taking these pics are basically doing a disservice to the seriousness of their sport by selling themselves as sex symbols instead of as professional athletes.  The issue comes up because the writer herself was asked to do a pin-up shoot, and while she was happy to be sexy enough to be asked, she ultimately wanted to sell herself as an athlete first—albeit one with a drool-worthy body.

Thus the question, which I think is a fine topic for the football offseason: What do you think?  Can women athletes who sell themselves primarily with their physical attractiveness still be taken seriously as athletes, or do they at that point become little more than highly skilled fitness models?  I mean, can you even imagine Tom Brady or someone of his caliber posing for Playgirl?

Here’s the link, titled “The Elephant in the Room”.

For the curious, my answer is different depending on whose benefit we’re worried about.  If you’re a female pro-cyclist (or triathlete or bobsledder or whatever), and you want to make a living from your sport, then I think, yeah, you have to do whatever you have to in order to put food on your table and pay your mortgage.  Pro-sports people are basically entertainers, they get paid to a large extent according to the amount of interest and publicity—and thus sponsorship—they generate, and that’s just the way it is.  You don’t like it?  Go sell insurance for a living. 

I mean, I’m not saying that every female athlete—or every male athlete, for that matter—ought to basically pose nude, but I do think that athletes are like any other celebrity, and that they’re therefore justified in doing whatever will keep their names and faces in the papers so long as they’re comfortable with it.  Bottom line, that’s how they make their money. 

Does it help if they can get on the podium occasionally?  Of course it does.  That’s the object of the sport, and then, too, there’s the prize money to consider.  I think winning should always be the primary objective of any professional athlete.  My only point here is that if you’re struggling to make a living as a professional athlete in a small market sport—and there are lots of sports out there with athletes that fit that description—then you’re justified in doing whatever you can to make your living.  Beyond that, you can only hope that your success on the field (or the track or the pool or wherever) is enough that folks see you as an athlete first and not just as a sex symbol.

The other side of the equation, then, is what’s best for the sport.

Here, I gotta say that I think all those glamour shots are poison.  Lindsey Vonn is one of the most successful skiers in American history, but then she posed in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, and even her fellow competitors wondered if she was still taking the sport seriously.  But while I think the move was a no-brainer in terms of Vonn’s personal finances and her personal ability to attract sponsorship, I think that the real damage those shots did was to the sport as a whole.  I mean, why take any of it seriously when the best woman is the world is better known for what she looks like in a bikini than she is for her actual skiing?  Because look, regardless of the quality of the athletes involved, there’s a reason why folks don’t watch the Lingerie Bowl to see quality football.  Bottom line, football isn’t fundamentally what’s on display there.  In marketing terms, the football isn’t where the Value Proposition is most closely focused.  And if that’s maybe not such a big deal to specific individuals participating in sport, I think it’s an absolute deal-breaker for the sports themselves.  People go to a bike race to see bike racing.  If what you’re really selling is boobs, then that’s a problem.  There are lots of other, better places to see boobs than at a bike race, even a bike race with a lot of hot female racers.

These sports need to know what their value propositions are, and they need to sell on them rather than the sex appeal of their stars.  The sex appeal is just a bonus.  It doesn’t hurt, but if it becomes the point, it actually damages the value of the brand.  That’s as true in bike racing as it is in anything else.

Of Gods and Presidents...

Before I go any further, let me just say one thing: the whole death-industrial-complex is a fucking jobs program.  It’s unbelievable.  Seriously.  I literally cannot believe the amount of technical, legalistic bullshit that goes into trying to put somebody’s final affairs in order.  Shit, she’s dead, she left everything to me.  It’s not that she liked me so much, but I was her only son, practically her only living relation.  How fucking hard is that to understand?  Look, there is no valid reason why I have should have to fill out all these damned TPS Reports in triplicate.  Except to keep a lot of lawyers, accountants, bankers, pimps and prostitutes in fat cash, homey.  It’s driving me stark raving crazy.

Yuck.   

Alright, so I haven’t done a lot of politics lately, but I gotta say that I’m pleased to see that Donald Trump’s would-be presidential campaign finally seems to have flamed out.  It bothers me the way that all of this year’s would-be Republican candidates are basically just reality TV stars.  Even Newt Gingrich, a formerly serious guy, seems like he’s just in it at this point so he can sell some T-Shirts, grab a spot on Fox News after it’s over, and maybe write another book.  He must know he can’t actually win the election.  Not only is he short and dumpy compared to the president, he’s also perhaps the second most polarizing figure in recent American political history (behind Hilary Clinton), and he’s got an extensive and well-documented history of cheating on his wives.  This is not the way presidents are made.  And Gingrich is smart enough to know it. 

Bottom line, besides Mitt Romney, there’s not a single serious candidate in the Republican race.  And what’s even worse, Romney has to run away from his strengths in order to appeal to the Republican base!  Ugh.  I mean, I don’t love Romney or anything, but I can at least admit that he’s a smart guy who came up with a smart health care system, and that he’s a successful-enough business man to maybe make a serious effort at intelligently balancing the budget.  But right now he can’t run away from his own record fast enough, especially on health care, which is arguably his greatest success.  Hell, even the fact that he’s an upstanding Mormon family man is gonna hurt him with the Birther/Wingnut faction of the GOP, let alone the fact that he was governor of Massachusetts.  Y’know, the Republican base will in no way vote from some Yankee businessman from Massachusetts.  It just ain’t gonna happen.  Which leaves us with Trump and Palin and Bachman and whoever the Hell else wants to get out there and rouse the rabble in some hopelessly quixotic campaign to confuse the issues and scare the Hell out of everyone with a bunch of talk about gay marriage.

*groan*  Those guys are all so scared of the gays.  I just don’t get it.  Like it’s catching or something.  Look, I don’t actually know all that many gay people—and I work in Manhattan!—but the ones I do know are totally NOT scary.  Not scary at all.

Still, I get it.  The current president looks utterly indestructible, and so all best Republicans are simply holding their fire this time around.  And that leaves us with the wackadoos.  But still…  it’d be nice if the GOP could at least put up the appearance of a serious fight.  I mean, it’s not a done deal or anything.  We are actually going to have an election.  It’d be cool if we could get a candidate or two to at least discuss the issues.  Somebody who doesn’t have to “phone a friend” in order to come up with a list of the last few books she’s read or the newspapers she reads regularly.

*sigh*

On the brighter side, I saw Thor last night, and it was totally better than I thought it was gonna be.  I blame that entirely on the screenplay.  I noticed in the credits that the movie was actually written byBabylon 5 creator J. Michael Stracyznski, and I hope like Hell that means he’s gonna put another series on TV.  Babylon 5 was awesome, and the major networks are very obviously searching for something they can put out there that’s both good and relevant to pop culture and comic books.  Stracyznski’s probably the right guy to go to for that.  Still, I’m not holding out too much hope.  I mean, I’d like to see that long anticipated HBO long-form series of the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil but I don’t actually think it’s coming.  But who knows?  Maybe something good will show up.

Of course, if it does, they’ll probably just cancel it after half a season.  Like they canceled The Chicago Code.  Fuckers.  America can’t get enough of Bob’s Burger’s, but no one wants to watch the Chicago Code?  What the Hell is wrong with this country?

Eh.  That wasn’t really the brighter side, was it?

Anywho, Free Comic Book day was last Saturday, and I gotta say that I LOVED the thing that Robert Kirkman put out, Super-Dinosaur.  An obvious concept, maybe, but very well crafted, and my kids loved it.  I’m putting it on my Pull List.  And seriously, I can’t wait to see what Kirkman does with it.  What an awesome book!

Now if they could only write Batgirl for actual pre-teen girls, it’d be all good.

And finally: Triathlon.  Where I’m tired of being tired. 

It’s now that part of the season where the early aerobic prep is hitting hot and heavy, and none of the big races are close enough to justify resting or attempting to round into form just yet.  So I’m basically hammering myself into hamburger every weekend, and right now, it feels like it’s been a month since my quads started hurting.  Just walking around takes a conscious effort of will.  Seriously, not to pimp Kirkman again, but I feel like the walking dead, and it’s getting old. 

Thankfully, I’ve got my first actual triathlon of the season in about 10 days, meaning that I’m four days and an afternoon away from starting a Rest Week, and I cannot fucking wait.  Granted, this isn’t one of the bigger races, and I’ve got to do at least one long bike ride with intervals between now and then, but still… It’s an excuse to back off, and I’m taking it.  Plus, I won my age group at this race last year, meaning that this year I need to defend the championship belt. 

Hey, it’s something, right?  Maybe not as good as being WCW’s European Champion, but y’know, it’s nice to actually win every once in a while.

Well, I think it is.

I Feel Famous

I finally let Facebook add friends via my email account and then went through the six-degrees-of-separation they use to predict the REST of the folks you ought to know in their network.  Very surreal experience.  It seems like I'm about 2-degrees-of-separation away from all of the most famous comic writers and triathletes in the world.  And the rest of the folks that I know are all still in the Army.  I guess my past lives and my hobbies are just the overwhelming bits of my life.

Oddly, only two people from my actual, day-to-day life were on there  Which just goes to show you how much I use email these days, I suppose.

Long Swim

This morning's workout was the most swimming I've done in years.

 - 3 x 200 @ 3:15 warm up
 -- 3 x 300 @ 4:15 }
 -- 4 x 200 @ 2:50 } base interval = 1:25/100; aero-pace
 -- 5 x 100 @ 1:25 }
 - 400 Kick
 - 400 Pull
 - 50 easy drill
 - 5 x 50 @ 1:00 sprint - fly / free / fly / free / fly
 - 100 Warm Down

And now I'm tired.

Traffic

I was looking at the traffic on the old blog today.  Because none of you EVER comment, but I know folks are reading because I get a fairly steady stream of emails and in-person comments about stuff you read here.

So, here are today's stats:

United States 14 Croatia 3 Philippines 2 Denmark 1

Question: Can I get our readers from Denmark and Croatia to comment?  That'd be cool.

Stuff I've been reading

The Class of 1846, From West Point to Appomattox: Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, and their Brothers by John C. Waugh. 

I’m only about half-way through this one, but it’s been really entertaining so far.  It’s interesting to me to see how West Point has changed over the decades (centuries?) and also how it’s stayed the same.  I mean, much has changed, but I think the cadet experience—isolated, monastic, and interminably busy—is immutable.  On the other hand, Waugh has a hard-on for Jackson and especially McClellan, and I think McClellan in particular gets a bad rap.  And then, too, once he gets into the Civil War years, Waugh unaccountably develops a tendency to dwell on the bit players and minor actions.  For example, he spends three full chapters on the decision to shell Fort Sumter, even though the Class of ’48 barely plays a role there.  Still, I’m enjoying the book and recommend it to Civil War bluffs.

The Fall of Highwatch by Mark Sehestedt.

Forgotten Realms novels are and will probably remain my favorite vice.  This one is better than most in that it’s a successfully character-driven piece, and large swaths of it take place in the Feywild.  Still, like a lot of recent FR novels, the heroine is a complete neophyte adventurer, making this a kind of nascent hero’s journey.  Which is fine, but I like my heroes with a little more fight in them.

Secret Atlas by Michael Stackpole.

I picked this one up from the library because I’ve started listening to Stackpole’s radio show/podcast, The Dragon Page: Cover-to-Cover.  And for the first four-fifth of this novel, I really dug it.  But the end went completely off the rails, and when I started the next book in the series, Cartomancy, I thought it was totally unreadable.  I’ve enjoyed some of Stackpole’s Star Wars work, and I’ll probably read his novelization of the upcoming Conan movie, but I can’t in good conscience recommend the Secret Atlas series.  If J.J. Abrams did humanoid-invasion-fantasy, it would be Secret Atlas.  Ugh.

Emperor: The Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden.

This is a very nice piece of historical fiction about Julius Caesar’s young adulthood, written by the author of the by now infamous Dangerous Book For Boys.  Kind of a Caesar-meets-Smallville thing. 

Iggulden’s writing is usually right on point, and it’s no different here, though I could wish he’d hewed a little closer to the actual history than he did.  Still, he has an entire Appendix dedicated to the differences in his novel and real history, so at least the changes he made came from conscious artistic license rather than ignorance.  And the book was fun.

Genghis: Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden.

I grabbed this one from the library at the same time I picked up the first of the Emperor books, but I didn’t like it nearly as well.  Which was a shame because Lords of the Bow was the second of Iggulden’s Genghis series, and I liked this first book in that series, Birth of an Empire, tremendously.  In fact, Birth was the one I read first of Iggulden’s books that I’ve read, and I liked so much that I thought I’d found a new favorite author.  But where Birth was filled with danger and intrigue, Bow gets bogged down in Genghis’s utter invincibility.  Don’t get me wrong; this wasn’t a bad book.  It just wasn’t as interesting—at least for me—as Gates of Rome was.

Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love by Chris Roberson (Writer) and Chrissie Zullo (Illustrator).

I loved Fables, but this isn’t Fables.  Yes, it’s based on the characters and creations from Tyrone Willingham’s now legendary series from DC’s Vertigo imprint, but this book is a strictly work-for-hire thing.  It’s more like merchandizing than real creative storytelling.  With that in mind, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured I’d give it a try.  Well, From Fabletown with Love is pretty much exactly what you’d expect: it’s Fables-meets-James-Bond.  Which wasn’t bad.  I ended up liking it more than I’d expected.

Star Wars: Legacy (Volume 10) - Extremes by John Ostrander (Writer) and Jan Duursema (Illustrator).

Star Wars: Legacy is great.  The first series (called Legacy) was fifty issues, and I liked nearly all of them.  A lot.  Moreover, Volume 2 (now called Legacy: War) has been equally good.  I’ve been digging it the most.  That said, Volume 10 (re-printing the last four issues of the Legacy series) wasn’t quite as good as Volume 9 had been, nor was it as good as the start of Legacy: War has been, and I was very disappointed.  I mean, it was okay, but Legacy, Volume 9 was just electric, and the first issues of the new series have also been electric, so it caught me off-guard that the actual ending of the actualLegacy series was such an anti-climax. 

Ah well.  Maybe part of the problem was that the big cliffhanger/reveal at the end was one I’d already been aware of, me being a regular reader of the new series and all.  Either way, I found Volume 10 to be one of the more “skippable” of the series, especially if you’re already reading Legacy: War.

Weekend Update

We’re still cleaning up and basically trying to reorganize in the wake of our trip to Tennessee last week, so it was kind of an exhausting weekend, but it was still pretty good, I think.  I got home from work on Friday and made pan-seared sea scallops that my wife’d gotten on sale at either Big Y or Stew Leonard’s.  Either way, I prep’ed them in a rub of olive oil, parsley, oregano, salt, and pepper and then seared them on high heat for about 90 seconds on a side before serving with a mix of couscous and rice and steamed broccoli.  I’ll call the meal a raging success based solely on the fact that my younger, pickier daughter Emma went back for seconds, but next time Sally picks these up, I hope she gets more than a pound.  For our family, we needed about a pound and a half.

The next day was Saturday, and it was typical of our lives lately.  As usual, I was the first one in the house to wake up.  I got up, updated The Sellswords of Luskan and started working on the next piece of the ongoing campaign, and eventually Hannah and I watched cartoons once she’d awakened.  Pretty soon Emma came downstairs, and then all three of us trouped back upstairs to the kitchen, where I made a quick breakfast and then packed them off for swim lessons.  We were out the door by 7:50 and got to the pool a little after 8:00.  Emma’s lesson starts at 8:15.  Once I’d made sure that Emma had gotten to class on time and set Hannah up with a book and couple of coloring books, it was time for my own swim workout, my “long” workout for the week.  It was:

-          4 x 100 @ 1:30 Warm Up

-          8 x 200 @ 2:50 Swim (Aerobic Pace, Target HR = 160)

-          200 Kick

-          400 Pull

-          100 Easy Drill

-          5 x 100 @ 1:20 (Tempo, trying to hold under 1:10/100--without my heart exploding)

-          100 Warm Down

If you’re wondering, that took me almost exactly an hour and ten minutes.  By that time, Emma was out of the pool, and Hannah was in for her lesson.  So I scooped up Emma, threw her in the shower and got her changed, and then we headed back out onto the deck to watch Hannah.

See, here’s the issue: I’d like to teach my own kids to swim, but I don’t feel like they learn from me very well.  Hannah has this thing where she’s not breathing out while her head’s in the water, which means that she’s lifting her head to breath—both inhalation and exhalation—which in turn makes it very hard for her to get a full breath on her stroke.  She winds up basically swimming for as long as she can hold her breath and then doggy-paddling while she breathes frantically once her breath runs out.  And then she has to more or less start all over again from a dead stop.  All of which I think I could fix in an afternoon… if she were listening to me and diligently following my instructions.  But she doesn’t like to let me teach her that stuff, so when I’ve tried to teach her, we’ve wound up playing.  Well, she winds up laughing while I wind up getting frustrated.  So, bottom line, she’s still taking lessons from strangers, and I personally have time for a long workout on Saturday mornings.  Which is fine.  But I have to restrain myself from getting in the water with her and correcting either her stroke or her instructor every time we go to the pool together.

At any rate, Hannah finished her lesson at 9:45, and I threw her in the shower and got her changed.  Then we headed home—me grouchy from hunger by this point—and I snapped at Sally until I finally got done making the waffles that fed us and kept peace in the house.

I like to make buttermilk waffles using the recipe out of The Joy of Cooking.

After breakfast, I headed out again, alone this time.  I got a haircut, ran by Home Depot for the part I needed to fix my garage door, ran by the liquor store, went to the bike shop to get a couple of tubes for Sally’s rear bicycle tire, and then went BACK to the Y to pick up Hannah’s bathing suit, which I’d left sitting in the Family Locker Room.  Argh.  Still, I was lucky because the liquor store had both Sam Adams 48-degrees Latitude IPA and Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo Extra IPA, both of which are personal favorites of mine.  On top of that, I grabbed a couple of bottles of white for Sally, one of which was from a local vintner (Jones Farms) and one of which was a European chardonnay, but I don’t remember the vintage.  I was also lucky that the Y had Hannah’s suit.  On the other hand, I spent almost 40-minutes cooling my heels at the bike shop when all I needed was a pair of inner tubes.

When I got home, I immediately went to work on the garage door.  I’d thought initially that the left-side spring had broken, but it turns out that it was the fucking steal cable that had sheered through!  So I actually needed Sally’s help holding up the door while I ran the replacement cable and hooked everything back up.  But then I made the mistake of replacing the hook the cable hung on with one that was aluminum—and which promptly snapped under load—so that we ended up having to do the job twice.  Ugh.  Still, that was probably the worst thing that happened all day, and fortunately the hook failed while we were both outside and had the garage door safely closed.  In any event, after that I repaired Sally’s tire, put away the remaining clothes and crap from my trip last weekend, finally did the dishes from the brunch waffles, and basically poodled around until late afternoon, at which point I decided I could safely and honorably sit down and crack one of my nice, new beers. 

As evening fell, Sally and I sat out on the porch drinking wine and beer and eating cheese and crackers.  I’ve no idea what we had for dinner (Sally reminded me later that it was hamburgers).  Regardless, Sally was the one to put the kids down for the night while I did the dinner dishes.  After that, we watched Fringe on Hulu and then went to sleep.  Exhausted.

I like Fringe, but I think they have to start being a little more careful with the plotting, of the show is gonna go completely off the rails.  The cartoon episode with Leonard Nemoy was even weirder than usual, and if they don’t stop and explain not just what the big machine and the books The First People are but also where they came from, I’m gonna be pissed.  Weird plotting is fine, but there’s a fine line between plot eccentricity and plot manipulation.

In any event, the next morning was Sunday, and as I’ve mentioned here before, I’d signed up for the Westport Minuteman 10K.  Moreover, I’d convinced Sally to sign up for the 5K race since her plantar fasciitis has been doing better recently.  So we packed up the kids and the car, headed to Westport’s Compo Beach, got all registered, planted the girls safely on the beach jungle gym, did yoga, and eventually lined up to race.  Sally’s race took off maybe ten minutes, and then so did mine.

I was tired both because of the work the day before and because I’d decided to work through the race rather than resting for it, but I nevertheless ran well.  I set a comfortable but aggressive pace, counting on form and a high cadence—both of which I work on relentlessly—to see me safely through to the end.  But I was concerned because running isn’t my best thing, and this race in particular has laid me low a couple of times.  But I successfully charged the hill at the half-way point, and then I felt more confident.  In fact, I crossed the midpoint at just a hair over 25-minutes, making me believe that if I worked the back end hard, I might just go under 50 overall!

In fact, I worked the rolling hills at the finish, and came in at 49:39, damned near a personal record.  Yay me. 

Sally, meanwhile, finished her 5K in 25-minutes or so.  That’s not a great time, but at least she ran without aggravating her injury.  That by itself was a big deal, believe me.  She stayed pain-free since then, too, so to be honest, I think I’m happier with her race than with mine.

Anyway, after that, Sunday was a lot like Saturday.  We went out to the dinner for breakfast, ordered a variety of omelets, toast, eggs, and pancakes between the four of us, and basically ate like kings.  Then we went home, and I ironed—for five hours!—cut the grass, put away clothes, and then drank some beer.  Sally cleaned the house.  While ironing, I watched the Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt, and then the kids and I watched back episodes of Voltron. 

Salt was okay.  I mean, I’m at best ambivalent about Ms. Jolie, and the movie’s plotting swung wildly between preposterous and predictable, but there were definitely parts of it that I liked.  I thought the second act was surprising, and that entertained me.  Still, I think I liked the “alien mice” episode of Voltron better than Salt, though the kids and I are jointly ready to see Prince Lotor finally capture the princess and dress her up like Lea from the third Star Wars movie.  Granted, I don’t think my daughters properly appreciate the things Lotor’s gonna do to Alura when he finally captures her and makes her his (love) slave, but it doesn’t change the fact that he is by far the series’ most dedicated, and therefore sympathetic, character.

Dinner that night was spaghetti and meatballs.  After that, it was my turn to put the kids to bed.  Then, once they were down, Sally and I started watching The Social Network (via Netflix), but we ended up going to bed at the halfway mark.  We ended up finishing it last night (Monday), and I’ve got to admit that I liked it a lot.  It makes me want to “friend” Mark Zuckerberg.  I might actually do that if I get some free time this week.

Anyway, that’s my life.  Exciting, no?