Olympic spirit

Now the Rio Olympics are over, I'd like to add my two pence (more like one penny) to the whole debate over sexism in sports. In particular, sexism in media coverage of sport events (which leaves out other important subjects such as education of girls, fair pay, etc.). I'm not really interested in this subject per se, but more on the way it highlights the more general problem of sexism in media and the way it affects "normal" people in their everyday lives and not just the famous people that feature in it.

If you doubt there was plenty of sexism in the media coverage of the Olympics, you can read this Telegraph article (it concentrates on tweets, but this leads to a good amount of general media coverage too, including TV and press). If you have no doubts on this subject, read it for laughs, some of the stuff there is hilarious. My favourite is the one where a random guy decides to give some advice to an Olympic cyclist on Twitter. His post starts "First lesson in bicycling...", which is something an Olympic cyclist really needs as anyone can guess, and goes on to give some inane advice that simply translates to don't fall off your bike no matter how fast you're going. Seriously, this is Edinburgh Fringe material, they have a prestigious prize for the best one-line joke going on for years and this one is funnier that any of the winners.

Using a more scientific approach, a recent study by Cambridge University Press (CUP) proved [what we already know, as is often the case in this type of research], among other things, that "language around women in sport focuses disproportionately on the appearance, clothes and personal lives of women, highlighting [&ldots;] aesthetics over athletics" and that the most common words associated with women in media coverage of sports include ‘aged’, ‘older’, ‘pregnant’ and ‘married’ or ‘un-married’, while the top words associated with men are ‘fastest’, ‘strong’, ‘big’, ‘real’ and ‘great’.

Finally, there was this opinion article by Lindy West that I liked a lot. It starts off a little confusing, with a lot of puns and fancy wording that makes it hard to follow, but it goes on to state a few important points on the whole debate over sexism that are valid in general and not only related to the Olympics or sports. If you want to save some time, read only the 3 points she makes. Here I'd like to emphasise this one sentence in the article:

"Feminists don’t critique objectification because we are mad that people sometimes have sex feelings for each other."

I think this point is important because there is a lot of puritanism going around disguised as feminism. There is nothing wrong with a guy being attracted to a woman or a journalist seriously enjoying the way that tight leotard emphasises an athletes breasts. There is however a problem when said guy chooses to harass said woman with unsolicited and unwelcome attention or when said journalist chooses to dedicate the precious space he has to discuss the athletes performance to these feelings instead of her achievements. And this ends up having serious consequences in the everyday lives of real people when it is done as a rule, and not an exception, as the CUP study highlights. Because it is a problem that we (men and women, boys and girls) are constantly being fed the idea that the only thing women can truly excel at is, first, looking good and being sexy, second, being wives and mothers. Forget gold medals, professional achievements and the like, those are close to irrelevant.