Feminism and Figure Skating

[dorispulaski]

All well and good--but I would not like the world to be as it was when I was young

1. Women were not allowed to serve on juries until , because they were such illogical beasts, don't you know.

ON THE FEDERAL LEVEL:

Other states were challenged in courts by women’s rights groups all the way to the Supreme Court and as late as a 1961 case denied women jury rights because of their "special status" referring back to a previous decision in the 1800’s.


However, in 1975 in the case of Taylor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court reversed its 1961 position about the 6th amendment rights of criminal defendants, and now holds the exclusion of women from juries is impermissible. Women are a "distinctive group" and "sufficiently numerous and distinct form men" that jury pools without them are a violation of a defendant’s right to be tried before a true cross-section or the community. "If there was ever the case that women were unqualified to sit on juries or were so situated that none of them should be required to perform jury service, that time has long since passed."

2. Women couldn't go to Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, or CalTech, and lots of other top colleges & universities.
Then they couldn't get hired because they did not go to the "best schools".

3. There were no girls' sports at my high school. That was true at a lot of schools.

4. You could be fired from a government job or a teaching job if you were married and pregnant. In fact, I was fired when I was expecting my second son. Probably, from any job, but those were the two cases where I knew people who were fired.

5. All forms of contraception were illegal in CT until Griswold vs. CT was decided in 1965 by the Supreme Court.

6. The newspaper want ads had Jobs for Men and Jobs for Women. You could expect to have your application summarily tossed out if you applied to a Job where a Man was wanted (but not a woman).

7. Women's jobs didn't pay much. About half of what a man earned, even in the same job.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/equalpayact1.html

8. Women, like Rosie the Riveter, were fired from their jobs when the men came home from the War.

I could go on and on about this. There were endless inequities and problems, but other people have done it better.

If you would like to read a revealing, but not polemic, memoir about being a young woman in the 1960's, you might like to read The Girl I Left Behind: A Narrative History of the 1960's by Judith Nies
http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Left-Beh...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325452301&sr=1-1


None of this was funny, and it wasn't about male egos. It was about money & power.

It was also being expected to smile while people said humiliating things about you. It was not a laughing matter to those of us who lived through it, and it is still not a laughing matter.

 

[louisa05]

But yeah, it's the same issue I alluded to above. The male is the default, the female needs qualification to clarify that they're not "the" championships or "the" Huskies, etc.

That is why it bugs me. When it is applied to a sport boys don't compete in (volleyball in these parts) it is pointless. And when it is applied to a sport both genders participate (track or basketball) it is a qualification as you say.

My high school was one of the few in this area that didn't use it, but the press still did at times.

 

[jcoates]

A few points. First, for anyone who has not done so, please watch Reflections on Ice. The links are in the Skating Documentary thread. It's a classic documentary that solely focuses on ladies skating and covers many of these issues.

Also remember that for decades, there were only a handful of broadly accepted sports in which women could participate. They were skating, golf, tennis, swimming and gymnastics. These sports are still the most popular and broadly practiced in the USA. They are also the sports most likely to make a female professional athlete a wealthy one. Each has its own history of objectifying women with language, dress or rules of competition. These conditions were imposed in part to soften the outward appearance of the athletes so that their endeavors would be more palatable. It's amazing what wearing a short skirt or a unitard will do.

On the other hand, sports that lend themselves to less outwardly feminine characteristics including gender neutral attire have had a harder time getting a foothold as acceptable. I think this is due in part to the fact that girls and boys are socialized to fit into very particular roles (including dress) but as opportunities to cross over into other areas have increased, there is a complex dance that's developed where the girl (and increasingly these days, the boy) must figure out how to engage in their pursuit while still meeting some standard of their expected societal role. As recently as the late 60s, women were discouraged from running marathons because some doctors feared it would harm their reproductive systems. Of course, the fitness revolution of the 80s helped to change that and now running is broadly popular, although competitive running is still more popular with men then women. Soccer is finally coming into its own thanks to the success of the US team. That has been helped by the shift in society's perception of what makes an acceptable young woman. Physical strength, fitness and sports participation is now valued for women, in part because it has been shown in studies and statistics to be tied to higher self esteem, lower likelihood of teen pregnancy, sexual assault, attendance and completion of college, etc.

Following from that, it's important to note that much of that shift would not have been possible without Title IX and the efforts of Billie Jean King. It can not be stated enough how great an impact that woman has had on the lives of every woman and girl who's come along in the US in the last 40 years. Had Title IX not been passed and had Billie not led the charge to speak out for women's right to participate equally and fairly in sports, I feel certain life today would look very different. Also the Battle of the Sexes match for 73 was a huge theatrical farce, but it also engaged women on a national level in sports for the first time. It was a milestone moment.

Lastly, Olympia is right about Wimbledon still referring to the women as "ladies" and the men as "gentlemen". In the current modern age, its actually viewed in the tennis world as a quaint and somewhat pleasant hold over from a past era. The French Open also uses formal labels, the same ones used in skating (dames & messieurs). Both of those majors have much more tangible ties to not only the past history of play but also of behavior in tennis. The US and Australian Opens are far more modernized in those regards. Still, it should be noted that Wimbledon is not some overly stuffy affair as some would believe. In many ways, it's the most modernized major in recent years. Prize money is now equal and the facilities are spectacular. There has been a change to the naming system. That occured in the late 80s. An example would be Chris Evert. When she first started playing the event in the early 70s, her name was displayed on the scoreboard as Miss C. M. Evert. When she married John Lloyd, it changed to Mrs. J. M. Lloyd. When they divorced in the late 80s her displayed name reverted back to Miss C. M. Evert. finally in her final year, after marrying Andy Mill, it changed again to the more modern Mrs. C. M. Evert. Chris did not hyphenate her name or take her husband's in her 2nd marriage so the All England Club was in a bind. They did not initially know what to call her. She was a married woman and societal rules dictates she be publicly declared as such, but her unusual (for them) choice of name threw them for a loop. So they compromised by using her chosen name, but referring to her with the appropriate title. Chris was always amused by this because it sounded like they were referring to her mother. That same standard has continued to be applied to married women since then (Lindsay Davenport, Kim Clijsters, Justin Henin). The French Open also used and continues to use a similar name system for women (madame or mademoiselle).

 

[brightphoton]

You do realize you're talking about a sport in which women are judged for how pretty they are and what they're wearing right? Yeah yeah, I know, that's not really true. But it is. For example, check out some of the posts about underwear issues in the Pet Peeves thread or what Eliza Tukt wore to the last GPF.

 

[Olympia]

And also marksmanship, I think, SF--both archery and riflery (or whatever it's called). Significantly, the first Iranian women to compete in the Olympics after the rise of the Ayatollah competed in shooting. I remember seeing a photo of one, covered from head to toe, toting her rifle--quite an unexpected juxtaposition.

I'd like to make a point about Tonya Harding and the way she was received in skating. While I agree that the general preference seems to be for princesses, Tonya broke through the cliches. She was the national champion before Kristi or Nancy were. People were thrilled with her triple axel. Many of my fellow fans were proud that we had an American skater who could answer the challenge of Midori Ito. The thing that pushed Tonya down from her position of supremacy was her lack of training diligence, both in terms of practice and sticking to her diet. She couldn't do her jumps as dependably, and without those, she didn't have a lot of other aspects to her skating that could pull her up in the eyes of the judges. So Kristi, a good all-round skater and a disciplined athlete, superseded Tonya. As for the year that Tonya was the American champion but Kristi leapfrogged over her to become world champion, we can't attribute that to American sexism. American judges put Tonya ahead of Kristi.

 

[Mathman]

Needless to say, those in CT are well aware that most lady dogs are not called lady dogs. And husky lady dogs is even worse.

The "Nappy-headed Hos" was a cute nickname for a women's basketball team (Rutgers University, according to Don Imus on MSNBC.)

http://mediamatters.org/research/200704040011

By the way, the original name for the Rutgers teams was "The Queensmen." (Feminine: The Kingswomen.)

The current name is the "Scarlet Knights." (Feminine: "Scarlet Ladies")

 

[skatinginbc]

The ISU still uses masculine pronouns in its rules when referring to a generic skater. They're not exactly forward thinking or politically correct in their use of language.

It annoys me more when one tries to be politically correct and uses "he/she" instead. First of all, it significantly decreases the esthetic value of a language. "Each has his/her own gift from God" just sounds stupid, awkward, unpoetic to my ear. Secondly, "he/she" is not much better in terms of gender equality. Why is "he" put before "she"? OK, let's say "she/he" instead. Then why should "she" go before "he"? Lastly, "he/she", an expression of redundancy, violates the economical principle that underlines the evolution of a natural language. It will eventually prove to be just a temporary solution that won't last as the language continues to evolve.

I've never heard any English speaker complaining that the epicene pronouns "they", "them", and "their" would cause gender confusion. No one seems bothered that those words may refer to a group of men, or a group of women, or a mixed group of men and women. The boys still being boys, girls still being girls, the life goes on even with gender-neutral pronouns. A poster told me that in Sweden the male and female pronouns are being eliminated in elementary schools. Good! That's true "forward thinking", a solution that can last.

 

[brightphoton]

A poster told me that in Sweden the male and female pronouns are being eliminated in elementary schools. Good! That's true "forward thinking", a solution that can last.

Mandarin is also genderless (he, she, they are all the same).

German, on the other hand, is waaay confusing, with its female, male, and neuter definitive articles (die, der, and das).

 

[Olympia]

I'm with Doris. People today think that feminism was about a lot of surface things, such as whether men should hold a door for women or whether women could be called Ms. Here's one of the things it really meant: When my aunt got out of law school, she applied at a law firm for a job. They said they couldn't hire her because the only ladies' bathroom was for the legal secretaries. And she had no recourse--she had to smile and walk away. She set up her own business instead. Today, many battles have been won in the U.S. and other first-world countries, but there are places in this world where to be born a girl means not getting as much food as the sons of the family, getting no schooling, being married off at twelve or younger, being used as a beast of burden by the husband's family, and being killed if attacked by a man. Can't drive, can't vote, can't speak in public. In one or two countries, can't ride a bicycle--because of the way you have to sit to pedal. Can be sold by her father so he can buy a bicycle, though. Half the world's population, deprived of everything but oxygen.

Does this mean that I dislike frilly princess skaters? Obviously not. You don't have to express your feminism by choosing certain sports over certain other sports. And it doesn't mean I dislike men, either. But there's a reason that women formed a movement, and it didn't just start in the 1960s--nor did it end there.

 

[skateluvr]

Interesting in that it is the most expensive, elitist sport called "the sport of Kings." The rules are the same because half the team is a horse, and women can learn to ride and jump as well as men. Strength is involved but mostly huge money. Pricness Anne met her husband at Olympics and her daughter Zara is an Olympian and will be in the future.

Interesting how elite and expensive it is to be a skater, especially ladies where girls need to be beautiful and thin to be called 'Ladylike." I will always prefer beautiful lines, but that is me. I think FS would be more popular if they decided sport first, art second. Although I'd watch it less, but that is just me.

I think it should be womens event like every other sport. The sexism in figure skating really is worth getting annoyed about, also the racism.

 

[dorispulaski]

Olympia, exactly.

Some more old ladies' war stories:
When I was a junior in high school, you went to the guidance counselor to sign up for your senior courses.

Mrs. Chapman looked at me and said, "I see, Doris, that you have done very well in your math and science courses, but I have to tell you that 96% of the women who graduate from college have to type and take shorthand in their jobs, and you haven't taken either."

"Furthermore, girls should consider before applying to college, that in coed colleges, if they are accepted, they are taking the seats of boys who will be drafted, and possibly die in the service."

Girls that got into UConn at the time were told by some professors that they should flunk their courses, because otherwise boys will go to Vietnam and die.

I am ashamed to say, I bought into this garbage. My only excuse is that I was young and naive. I went to New London Business College that summer, learned typing and shorthand, and got married in the middle of my senior year.

Curiously enough, I am still married to the same man, but after my youngest son went to first grade, I started college in 1972. I majored in physics rather than math, in part, because there were no women's bathrooms in the math building, and running in the snow to get to the bathrrom in the winter in northern VT is no fun at all.

I would hate for my granddaughter to go through that sort of crap.

I would hate for her even worse to be sold to buy food for the rest of the family, something that is happening routinely to young women in Pakistan this year. (It's a bad year there) As bad (and infuriating) as the US was in the 1950's and 1960's, it was a lot better than other places in the world, even today. But frankly, it was not "Happy Days" in any way, unless you were physically stunning or extremely talented in one of the accepted modes as a young woman. (I was (and am) neither)

 

[Olympia]

Interesting in that it is the most expensive, elitist sport called "the sport of Kings." The rules are the same because half the team is a horse, and women can learn to ride and jump as well as men. Strength is involved but mostly huge money. Pricness Anne met her husband at Olympics and her daughter Zara is an Olympian and will be in the future.

Interesting how elite and expensive it is to be a skater, especially ladies where girls need to be beautiful and thin to be called 'Ladylike." I will always prefer beautiful lines, but that is me. I think FS would be more popular if they decided sport first, art second. Although I'd watch it less, but that is just me.

I think it should be womens event like every other sport. The sexism in figure skating really is worth getting annoyed about, also the racism.

I've thought a lot about the racial aspect of skating. A lot of it, to be blunt, is more economic than racial. As you point out, skating costs money. There aren't many black athletes in riding either, for the same reason, and still very few in tennis, come to that. (Tennis will be the easiest to integrate, because one can learn at least the basics on a public court, as Arthur Ashe did.) For a long time, skating was almost exclusively Caucasian. It was great when Asians started taking part, and it's important to remember that a lot of the breakthrough actually happened in North America. as well as in Asia itself, with Yamaguchi, Kwan, Tiffany Chin, Naomi Nari Nam, McDonough, and Liang, Leung, and now Chan. Now we have to work on opening the door more widely for black and Latino skaters. However, in the current situation, where funds are not flowing in to the various organizations, subsidies will be harder to come by. There are other complex factors at work as well, though. Interestingly, baseball is currently going through a slump in the number of black players, though the number of Latino players remains high. Baseball just doesn't seem to be as interesting to the black community in the U.S. right now; audiences and aspiring athletes look to basketball and football instead. This is true even though a number of people in the major league baseball association, including Jackie Robinson's daughter Sharon, are active in outreach to black communities. So racism isn't always the primary issue, though one must always think of it as a possibility.

 

[jcoates]

Olympia and Doris, well said. :thumbsup:

Too many people forget that political and social movements are often a response to real world problems. My grandmother, for example, was a top student in high school in the 30s and graduated early yet she had no real prospects. Her parents were elderly (she was a very late in life baby), her siblings all dead due to illness, and she was black. She was expected to look after her folks, put her own dreams aside (she wanted to be a teacher and a nun) and find what work she could. (BTW career aspirations to be a teaching nun may sound weird, but 80 years ago it was a guarantee of further education, public respect, and at least in the case of the order my grandmother wanted to join, a chance to travel.) Fortunately for her she lived in DC which at the time had a growing number of government jobs due to FDRs efforts to pull the country out of the Great Depression, otherwise she would likely have only been able to get domestic work. She, like many other women, was both helped and hemmed in by a new career in clerical work. Helped because to have any job during the 30s was a blessing and hemmed in because her gender, her race and eventually her age acted as barriers to any serious advancement. She and my grandfather participated enthusiastically in the Civil Rights movement by the time the 60s came around, but the benefit would largely be lost for them. It was about passing out those benefits to the next generations. Before she died, my grandmother was so pleased to see to great strides women and African Americans had made over her lifetime.

The vast abundance of choices women have now (while certainly not as expansive as they should be) are far superior to what my grandmother ever had and are the direct result of more than a century of steadfast agitation by women's rights advocates in the US. Something like suffrage might seem like an easy issue to address now, but it took decades of state by state progress to get the government to acknowledge the right of women to speak for themselves at the ballot box. Women were beaten, jailed, assaulted, shunned and worse just for having the nerve to speak up and ask for better. That is, in my mind, the heart of feminism: to be able to speak up for yourself and to question the current rules and the authorities who impose them. To make your own choices.

Feminism or gender debates may be uncomfortable, but they are necessary. One can never assume that a social issue or its residual effects are a closed subject. Once you do, the problem will begin to rear its head again and we wouldn't even notice at first.

BTW, skateluvr, body and appearance issues in ladies skating have changed with the times. Dorothy Hamill, and many 1970s era women skaters had fuller figures and were certainly not excessively thin. That trend really began with female pair skaters from the gorilla and flea or one and a half teams. It eventually spread to singles once the jumping demands increased. That happened to coincide with the increase in preference for very thin women in the broader society. Sadly, that has led to some calling some young women fat who have any curves to speak of.

 

[sky_fly20]

imo, like most sports, figure skating is a male oriented sport
but as decades pass by, a lot of changes have happened not just in figure skating but sports in general
barriers are still there but there have been new stereotypes added as well , and despite the men's figure skating still popular, I do think
most people nowadays associate figure skating as feminine and for the ladies
thus men are mostly pushed into other winter sports like Hockey

and shouldn't this thread moved into politics ?
this is getting political, LOL

 

[Olympia]

Golly, jcoates, I'd love to have met your grandparents. When I think of that generation, I realize that we are, as the saying goes, dwarves standing on giants' shoulders. There are so many heroes and pioneers who got us to where we are today.

As for your point about changing standards for the appearance of female skaters, I remember that in 1976, when Dorothy Hamill won the OGM and was being groomed to be a professional star, she was told to get her weight down to 110. I think she's five foot three. For that height, 110 is a trim but healthy weight. She had muscles and a bit of substance and looked like a person, not a character out of Titania's court in A Midsummer Night's Dream, or a runaway from nursery school.

 

[dorispulaski]

jcoates, thank you for the great story about your grandmother.

And Olympia & jcoates, yes the appearance requirements for women in skating have changed (especially when I think back to Dorothy's era (and for that matter, Tai Babilonia & Randy Gardner). As you pointed out, the requirement for ultathinness didn't come until the pro years then. But didn't it perhaps really change with Peggy Fleming and her very popular TV specials following her Olympic win. For 3 years before Peggy, the ladies champion was Sjoukje Dijkstra of the Netherlands for three years running.

http://media.nu.nl/m/m1czsv6aprg4_505x800.jpg

When she retired, Sjoukje didn't even have to go ultrathin for Holiday on Ice:
http://www.holidayonice.nl/images/Sjoukje_Dijkstra.JPG

After Peggy, people were extremely critical of Trixi Schuba's appearance:

And yet Trixi was no larger than Sjoukje:
http://www.jacksonskates.com/assets/xtras2/Trixi Schuba73.jpg


I wonder whether that wasn't because skating was visible to the general public only in Sonja Henie movies, during the Olympics, and occasionally on ABC's Wide World of Sports=the women only had to meet the appearance requirements to equal other female athletes: the drivers of drag racers (Shirley Muldowney) and women skiers like Penny Pitou. As skating evolved into a media event in the 1970's, the pressure on the women in competitive skating to meet show business requirements of thinness and appearance was greater, perhaps, down into the competitive ranks?

Elaine Zayak and Rosalyn Sumners were the first two US girls who I remember being heavily criticized for their weight in ladies' skating in the US.. (1982-1984)

 

[Tonichelle]

Here I thought we were talking sports (my reference to protecting male ego). I didn't live through the "horrors" bu had I been in AK all those years ago my independence would probably be greater than what it is today. Maybe on the east coast were under valued? But in AK we I guess had it made... then we got civilized.

 

[jcoates]

Toni does have a point. Women's suffrage, which is at the root of the development of rights and discussion of feminism in any circumstance, is largely an outgrowth of successes won in western frontier states in the US. Yes there were plenty of suffragists on the east coast and much of the intellectual basis for the movement was based there. But the actual initial success in changing laws to give women more guaranteed rights actually started in the west where less established frontier living left little room for many standard gender roles. Able bodied people were needed to do whatever work presented itself and women had more opportunities to be self reliant and to prove themselves to men.

 

[dorispulaski]

Even in Alaska, things weren't perfect. But yes, in the slightly more uncivilized days, I think things were better there than on the east coast.

In Kodiak, Alaska, where I moved shortly after I married (Mr. Ski joined the USCG because of the draft; it was his preferred form of service, and he was transferred to Kodiak) , in some ways, women had it made because they were a lot fewer of them than the men.

However, women's jobs were mostly limited to fish packing, secretarial, taxi driver, store clerk, waitress, bar girl, and prostitution. On the east coast, there would have been few if any female taxi drivers and female bar tenders. Those were men's jobs there.

My first job in Kodiak was with a construction firm as a secretary. I also did the payroll. It used to bite my butt that the "stake hopper," the teenage boy who held the pole for the surveyor, earned twice as much as I did, and I actually had to know something, whereas he just had to do what he was told. His job was to hold the surveyor's pole for sighting and to pound little stakes into the ground. There was no way I could qualify for that job; it was listed under Job Wanted Men.


When the construction job finished up, I took the civil service test and got a job as a stenographer with the Naval Investigative Service Office. I was refused a job with the Navy film office, because "I was too pretty." That was a shock. I had always been considered rather plain. However, with scarcity, comes lowered standards and (sometimes) increased opportunity.

I was fired from my job in Alaska with the Naval Investigative Service Office because I became pregnant with my younger son. I did not seek medical care until after I was fired, since my medical care would have been through the military. If I had sought medical care, I would have been fired sooner. Furthermore, when they fired you for being pregnant, they didn't hold the job for you for after you had the baby.

And you got to listen to the commanding officer tell you how lucky you were to be fired for being pregnant, and how his wife wasn't pregnant.

So yes, it was better, I think that Alaska was better than the east coast, though still not perfect.

For one thing, secretarial work made enough to pay you to do it. On the east coast, when Ski was mustered out, secretarial work in VT paid so little and required such a high level of dress to be maintained that it didn't pay to work if you had to pay for childcare.

A look at secretarial life in the era from a humorous perspective can be seen in this song from "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying"

Already smitten with Finch, Rosemary fantasizes about life married to him.

New Rochelle, New Rochelle,
That's the place where the mansion will be
For me and the darling bright young man
I've picked out for marrying me.

He'll do well, I can tell,
So it isn't a moment too soon
To plan on my life in New Rochelle,
The wife of my darling tycoon.

I'll be so happy to keep his dinner warm
While he goes onward and upward;
Happy to keep his dinner warm
Till he comes wearily home from down town.

I'll be there waiting until his mind is clear
While he looks through me, right through me;
Waiting to say, "Good evening, dear.
I'm pregnant. What's new with you from down town?"

Oh, to be loved by a man I respect;
To bask in the glow of his perfectly understandable neglect.
Oh, to belong in the aura of his frown--darling busy frown.
Such heaven--wearing the wifely uniform
While he goes onward and upward.
Happy to keep his dinner warm
Till he comes wearily home from down town.

And that, mind you was considered an attractive fantasy.

Women's sports? What women's sports. There were none at my high school.

But you could skate on the pond in the winter; such wonderful, flying freedom!

 

[Olympia]

Yes, it's interesting to remember that the first state where women had the vote (in local elections, not national ones) was Wyoming. The second was Utah.

As for women's sports (thank God for Title IX, which truly did change the world), when I was in high school, we had one really talented athlete in our school. When I showed up for my first school-wide volleyball practice, I was taken aside and told that if this girl ran to my spot to make a play, I was to step aside and let her take the ball. This was all that the school could do for her, to accommodate her talent. I don't know whether she had the opportunity to try for any national track or swimming teams--maybe her family wouldn't let her--but there were no team sports in her immediate environment where she could have played up to her potential. Her only obvious chance to excel was to be allowed by the school athletic program to dominate any team she was on. I think she later became a gym teacher at the school. I can just imagine what would have been available to her today.

There are a lot of good things about the good old days, but in other ways, it's far better to be in the here and now.