Women and Sports or Our Bodies Are Never Our Own

 Although at first glance, there appear far more important global issues on which to spend one’s thoughts, I can’t help but feel disgusted and disappointed in the recent spate of ads targeting women and sports. Violence against women selling men golf clubs, a blonde naked body selling online sports gambling to a mostly men audience.

Oh, its so much more than an ad. It’s more than the eye-rolling trope of a young (white and sexualized) woman as a body prop in the churning capitalist propaganda machine. Its more than nausea at sex being used to sell arguably one of the worst vices (gambling) toward an aping (young, male) audience, dismissing them as too young, toxic and dumb to know any better. Its more too than the dismissal of all what women have fought for in the athletic arena.

Yet, this is far more. These ads are aligned to a global political authoritarian quasi-fascist movement that uses gender as a social positioning tool: (re) asserting beauty as only valuable when exposed on a white, young, blonde woman’s sexualized body, but also defining beauty as purely esthetic and reproductive in nature, always in service of men. It is a predictable Plato’s pendulum backlash to the recent global movements for body positivity, inclusivity, women’s advocacy for taking up space, improving their pay, their conditions in sports, and the struggle to shift not only who is considered beautiful but also who gets to define beauty. We have fought to move ourselves away from the reductionist male gaze (never just a gaze, always a violence in waiting), toward women defining beauty for themselves and recognizing it in the diversity of others. Beauty politics always mirrors a political social justice movement, in this case one that sought to claim broader rights, step into and redefine power, prove that equitable measures are necessary on the path toward intersectional equality, and shine a radical overdue spotlight on men’s violence against women in the household, the public square and the workplace. The shifts have been small: structures are slow moving, and patriarchy is an adaptable beast. Yet, in the confines of voting, young women (led by Black women) in the West are increasingly voting for their rights and those of others, leading to the largest political divide between men and women in voting history. Small wins.

These movements dealt a sharp blow to a predominantly white patriarchal structure that had considered its supremacy all but assured. (But who has actually suffered? Mainly women.)

Cue the backlash. In political landscapes and conflict, I have watched governments and military use women’s bodies to justify all measures of violence, equating the preservation of nation, borders and culture to the preservation of family, motherhood and virginity, cementing the righteous place of men at the heads of families, with women as the silent, smiling wives and mothers. It is in Russia’s rhetoric for family values, castigating Ukrainian inclusivity as ‘otherness’, it is in Israel’s hateful propaganda of normative ‘goodness’ contrasting with the pained and darker features of Palestinian women. I have witnessed revolutionary combatants celebrate (re: use) women’s bodies at the forefront of their movements, only to deny them real power, real decision-making roles in the future of countries. I have seen the physical violence by men on women’s bodies to justify their own identities, whether in war or in the bedroom, coupled with the violence of silencing women and denying them basic rights and services based not only on their sex but their wider physical selves: the colour of their skin, the shape of their eyes, the width of their waist, the ability of their limbs.

So it is especially rage-baiting (lest we forget the particular aim of these ads) to see sports – an arena that we wish was just for us, just for the strength we possess, the courage and confidence we have, the mindset we put to work, beyond the confines and policing of our shapes and sizes – reduced to a naked blonde woman (with so little voice, and such a vapid look) gazed upon by a million-fold men. (That she was in the room defining the ad’s parameters is a reminder that women continue to be foot soldiers in a white patriarchy (and often the first ones to get kicked out).) Women are born with pain in our bodies: every month during our menstruation, in the health issues affecting our wombs and our breasts, during pregnancy, birthing and childcare, in perimenopause and menopause… and that is before the unending physical and emotional ramifications of living in this world. For god’s sake, leave us be, or simply, let us become.

So, it’s not just an ad. It’s yet another reminder that women have never been the full owners of our bodies. Instead, we are used as brutal landscapes of politics and violence – in service, always, of men.  

I have loved seeing women in sports coming out to obliterate this message. But we cannot speak about women’s bodies (and beauty) without speaking about global rights, justice and equality. We cannot speak of women’s bodies without speaking of the need to recognize race, disability and class (among others, but top three, no?).

So, in order not to want to swim out in the ocean not to return, here’s to the women who resist. Fight, power through, are resilient stick to their truths, are warriors and beasts, let the rage fuel you. Here’s also to the women who are exhausted, soft, tentative, deeply hurt, needing of tenderness and care. And here’s to women trying, every single day. Making use of our bodies, our selves in all the ways that are true, that are free, to us, in the small ways women have always done, in this big beautiful and cruel world.