Maintaining Feminity For Female Athletes -Gene Csakany

I thought our discussions in last Tuesday and Thursday’s classes were very interesting.  We briefly started to talk about hockey and the “Lebron James” of the NHL, in Sidney Crosby.  We touched on the fact that like Lebron, Crosby is regarded as the best player in his sport, but many people do not like him and attach many negative characteristics with him personally as well as his playing ability.  But this still was not the most interesting part of the discussion when we talked about hockey.  The Canadian Women’s hockey team won gold at the 2010 Olympics and celebrated in a very interesting way.  They proceeded to drink beer and smoke cigars on the ice, and it was said it was a big deal only because of the fact that supposedly an underage team member was seen drinking alcohol.  That clearly was not the problem.  In our society women are basically required to maintain a certain level of femininity to be seen as a female athlete.  If the men’s team won gold and celebrated like this, it most likely would not be a big deal because men are typically stereotyped with drinking beer and smoking cigars.  Women are “suppose” to be classy and not partake in that type of celebration even though their team victory was clearly something to celebrate.  We then went into further detail on Thursday’s class and while in groups we concluded that many females feel the need to wear “skimpy” clothing in magazines or show more skin in general in order to maintain that feminine persona and not be given a negative connotation for being a female athlete.  Unless it is illegal, not many people give male athletes the same negative connotations for anything they do on or off the playing field.  Men are supposed to play sports in our society and be “manly” and tough.  But it is interesting that when women play, they have to fight obstacles of femininity just because of outsider perception.