The Art of Sport (and Loving your Body)

I’ve been reading a lot lately about women athletes being objectified as sex objects, and I’d like to take a moment to address the subject. While I certainly don’t think that objectifying anyone is a good thing to do, I’d be lying if I said I never had a screensaver of a gorgeous athlete whose bones I’d totally jump. Tell me Apolo Anton Ohno is not pretty to look at. But we can pretty much all agree that he is what and who he is because his sport is so much of his identity: he’s in great shape, so we like to look at him, and he’s successful because he’s in great shape and is massively talented. That being said, I don’t know if you noticed but he’s HOTT. Danell Leyva, Usain Bolt, shoot, even Tim Tebow’s not hard on the eyes, and I don’t like him. But what about the ladies?? Yeah, we have an entire culture of douchebags who only see women, athletes or otherwise, in terms of what we can do for their cocks. I, however, would like to offer an alternate way of thinking about young female athletes baring all.

The incomparable comedian Elayne Boosler said that the new rules of society shall be “you can’t get famous by being naked or sleeping with a celebrity: you have to make a contribution to society first.” Frankly, I think these women have. They are brave and hard-working and talented, and if they want to show us the side effects of all that training time, i.e. their amazing bodies, then more power to them. They’ve worked hard and they look great, and they should enjoy every moment of living in their hard-won human forms. It sure as shit beats beauty pageant culture.

It was only just outside my mom’s generation that women were not encouraged to be athletes at all, let alone thought of as attractive for being athletic. Of course, naked culture was much more under wraps than it is now, but really. The athletic female form is still kind of new in the grand scheme of mainstream attractiveness.

Just like their male counterparts, these women work tremendously hard and are passionate about what they do, and in my opinion that is something that makes them beautiful inside and out. Sometimes boys see better than they think, so they see only hotness where there is so much more, but fuck ‘em!! They’re not smart enough to understand that for Alicia Sacramone, Gretchen Bleiler, Lolo Jones, and on and on, hot and sexy is just the beginning. These women are badasses, and if they want to celebrate their stunning, enviable bodies by getting naked in front of the camera, then I say you go, girls. So many women don’t like their bodies, but yours are a monument to what hard work will get you.

You are living!!

Anyway, it’s just a thought, and I know that there is more to the argument than just this one idea, but I wanted to put this thought out there. I feel like we should all feel comfortable as we are, with or without clothing, or in the clothing our sports gave us to work with. (A shout-out to some of the ill-fitting leotards I’ve had to wear in public in order to compete in gymnastics!!)