No Such Thing as a “Girly” Sport
Just because Women’s History Month is over doesn’t mean we won’t stop talking about women, especially in sports — an industry that has historically prioritized men. Now, many female athletes are rising to the top.However, that does not prevent the traditional gender stereotypes from appearing, especially if they are reinforced in a historically masculine field.
As someone who participated in sports growing up (swimming, ballet, basketball, and cheerleading), I was told that some of them — cheer and ballet — were not sports. Even my high school cheer captain’s father said cheerleading is not a sport because “you don’t get hurt.” However, my teammates’ bruises from falling off stunts, sprained ankles, and back pain from tumbling would disagree. Although there is no set definition of what qualifies as a sport, Dictionary.com defines it as “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess,” which can be seen in many traditional feminine sports, such as aerial silk, ballet, or synchronized swimming. But until these feminine-attributed sports can be held in the same regard as conventional masculine sports, the hegemonic values of gender roles will continue to remain present in the athletic world.
Although women were barred from participating in the historical Ancient Olympics Games, the first recorded female athletic competition dates back to the sixth century C.E. in Ancient Greece, where young, unmarried women participated in the Heraean Games in honor of the Queen of the Gods, Hera. Similarly, certain tribes in Ancient Africa allowed women, both young and old, to compete in wrestling traditions such as the Senegalese art of Laamb. Additionally, North American Indigenous women participated in the same sports as their male counterparts, from competing to spectating.
In the article “First Nations Women, Games, and Sport in Pre- and Post-Colonial North America,” Frabrice Desalhut and Thierry Terret state, “Women’s presence in the world of games was, at the time, in total opposition to Western cultural references that were dominated by ideas of a silent, motionless and fragile female body.” These cultural values can be seen in the Victorian Age from Western Europe, where the “ideal” [white] woman was considered to be “gentle and frail.” According to this perception, female participation in any physical activity was seen as a threat to their fertility, meaning that an athletic woman would be considered undesirable.
This notion spread to colonial America, where the thought of a woman participating in sports was frowned upon. Elite white women were not associated with physical exertion, unlike lower-class women, particularly their servants. Despite these recreational limitations, it was socially acceptable for upper-class women to participate in archery, tennis, croquet, and “bathing-beauty swimming” in elite women’s colleges. In her book Coming on Strong, scholar Susan Cahn writes that these sports relied on the decorative appearance of the outfits the activities required, maintaining a feminine image while participating in physical activity.
However, women have come a long way in sports history, from having only 22 women compete in the 1900 Olympics to the passing of Title IX in 1972, which allows women equal opportunity in education and sports. The highest level of female participation in the 2020 Olympics was 49 percent, where nearly 5,400 women competed. However, there are still instances where we’ve retained the old-fashioned attitudes towards femininity and sports before Title IX.
In a sample lecture, Professor Bonnie Morris from Georgetown and George Washington University states, “As 19th-century America honed white masculinity through baseball and basketball, it also restricted women’s competition in public spheres of sports and politics by retaining inconsistent ideals about females’ innate ability to endure pain, injury, and manual labor.” This goes back to the notion of women seen as the “weaker gender” due to their limited amounts of energy — and by extension — viewing femininity as something less than in comparison to masculinity.
The article “Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike” states, “Sports continue to be a male-dominated institution wherein hegemonic masculine ideals are constructed and celebrated, and sports that do not reinforce these ideals, such as sports associated with women, are often undervalued or ignored.” Despite traditionally feminine sports such as gymnastics, figure skating, and cheerleading being included in the Olympics, this does not prevent hegemonic gender roles from coming into view.
Josie Jones, the diversity and inclusion manager of the organization Women in Sport, notes the differences between men’s and women’s Gymnastic events, particularly in aesthetics. She points out that the men’s competitions focus on “strength,” such as pommel horse and rings, while the women’s competitions focus on “balance and artistic skill,” such as the beam and floor. In an interview with Aljazeera, Jones states, “The women’s floor events are also set to music a bit more like a dance, again a big focus on the aesthetics […] Yes, men are on average substantially bigger and stronger than women, but I find it hard to believe that women couldn’t ‘pommel’ well and men couldn’t keep a rhythm. Surely we are stereotyping here?”
We, as a society, need to step back and re-evaluate the underlying misogyny present in the socially constructed genderization of sports. “Girly sports” do not exist, because athleticism is not defined by the gender binary; by denoting a sport as “feminine” we strip generations of athletes of their hard work and accomplishments.
Photo Courtesy of Julia Centeno / The Quaker Campus
