What if the bikini uniforms worn by the female Olympic beach volleyball players were part of a larger trend that was hurting the future of women's athletics? More on that later. On to the photos of purient interest.
For those who did not see the original post - Olympic Wedgies All Around, the Pornification of Sports - please get caught up and come back. The not quite safe for work photos will still be here. Note that the other post has many not so safe for work photos as well. But it's Saturday and most folks are home anyway.
Now that you have read all about parity, the naked olympics and ur-bikinis -- you cannot have failed to notice that I kept finding more and more bikini ass oriented things being posted around the internetz.
Tonight was no exception.
I finally decided it was time to stop adding edits -- six is my new self-imposed limit -- and start a new post with all the other goodies that have popped up.
First, I highly recommend the post Olympic photographers like big butts (and they cannot lie). Dorothy Snarker got busy with photoshop and created revealing montages like this:
She makes the point that these photos are unaltered and are great examples of "the aesthetic dismemberment (that) is commonplace when it comes to women." If you aren't familiar with the phenomena of aesthetic dismemberment, I suggest the long running thread "Disembodied Things" over at Shakespeare's Sister as a primer.
Then there is Beach Volleyball Pics -- The Most Egregious Sports Coverage. It has 1250 Diggs so you know there is much purient interest to be mined. It's 53 photo spread leads with the herbal life wedgie I mentioned in Olympic Wedgies All Around. What can I say? It's a hell of a butt shot. Plus it looks so painful you - just - can't - look - away. It is the train wreck of wedgies.
#43 actually shows one competitor pulling a wedgie out, albeit in a graceful two handed manner. There is also some girl on girl action. (seriously) #45 left me speechless. What was the photographer thinking? (Other than - wow just think of all the money they're paying for shots like this right now!)
On to the page dedicated to Brazilian beach volleyball player Larissa Franca's ass.
An exemplar from that post:
Note her disembodied-ness.
Attack of the headless/legless women!
Cruise on over to the The Ass-entials of Beach Volleyball which features scads of photos including this one handed wedge pick:
The fabulous editors of Coed Magazine who rounded up the ass-entials found so many photos they also did a second post -- The Girls of 2008 Olympic Beach Volleyball.
So where am I going with all this? Surely there must be a point!
In my roaming I came across a much older post (2006) that is very relevent and made sense to me -- Sexualised sports uniforms turning girls off sport.
The author, Tigtog, found that the title of her blog was the finding in a bi-partisan Senate inquiry. Yes, the senate in question was in Australia, but their findings are probably fairly universal. Evidently American teenagers aren't the only ones who hate their bodies and feel like self-conscious dorks.
A quote from the original article on the findings:
"A Federal Government report has recommended clubs give teenage girls the option of wearing looser-fitting comfortable clothes, to avoid them becoming body-conscious and abandoning organised sport."
If young women don't bother starting a sport because of embarrassing uniforms, where will the next stupendous Olympic butts come from???
I'm sleepy now, but tomorrow for parities sake I will seek out more Olympic beefcake to post as counterweight. (Parity!)
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But on a slightly serious note -- my seriousness never gets more than slight -- my niece was hanging out this month on summer break. She is 11 and at that stage were she is starting to tune in to ugly messages of how much appearance matters. When I read the blog about sexualized sports uniforms, I didn't have a hard time believing that tight clothes are turning off young girls. Just spending time at the water park with the niece convinced me that they are far too conscious of their "fat" at that age and are easily embarrassed. Not sure what the answer is. I understand how the bikini uniforms are increasing viewership which drives the advertisement and sponsorship revenue which helps pay for the competitions and so on... but such a damn shame only the women are pimped out.
There's actually a piece on the Huffington Post by a woman who's bemoaning the lack of skin shown by men.
It's the way it is. Sports need to goose their ratings and providing viewers with eye candy, whether it's of the male or female variety, does that.
Once we remember that these sports are a business, everything starts to make sense.
That makes the Women's Beach Volleyball Team the most historically patriotic of all, for perfrming mostly naked, even at the sacrifice to their comfort, because sand, falling, sweat, and wedgies are a cocktail for disaster.
Oh my Lord, the obliviousness of the condescending sexism in this comment from the Larissa's Ass internet post
26miles all running with wedgies - those aren't absorbant and soft 100% cotton wedgies, those are lycra wedgies. I don't get it.
i'm all for parity, but i'd prefer we achieve it by removing fabric from the men rather than adding to the women. a little sports porn is not a bad thing, in my world. i'm mostly bored with most sports, so it helps.
i think i was surprised for me, because i don't watch those sports you showed, and the ones i've enjoyed all week--swimming, diving and gymnastics--the suits are equal or (generally) more revealing for the men, so i've been happy.
i've got to say i enjoy watching those male bodies stripped down that way--but the diving and gymnastics are all about watching the grace and fluidity of the body, rather than racing somewhere, so it's kinda necessary. and enjoyable. i enjoy a little eye candy on a buff body, especially while performing.
the all-body suits on the men in the pool is a bummer, but luckily they're so damn uncomfortable they strip them right off.
honestly, i don't remember the gymnasts showing their packages quite that much before.
Sex should be cooperative, not competitive, but the sports comparisons and sexualization of sport continues.
The photo link about cracking the code in women's beach volleyball could having just as easily been called coding the crack.
As the for the nudity in the first Olympics--one story I recall learning is that in the first Olympics all males competed in the nude. This also applied the trainers to ensure that women wouldn't sneak in to watch. Only the priestess and virgin women were allowed to watch the games. Other women who were caught watching could be put to death. In my view this is a bit worse than a lycra wedgie.
But bikini beach volleyball? Give me a big freakin wedgie break!
Regarding my balls -- that is a funny story for another time.
Why fight sexy? I demand equal sex appeal!!!
Truly, I think its a shame that even when a woman advances to this ridiculously high level of sportsmanship, she still has to show ass as part of the program or that's our main focus. Constant sexualization. It's tiresome actually. It really get boring after years and years and years...at least for me.
But I guess no one cares about my thoughts in the media arena, as long as men are titillated. All hail the king!
They say that at first, you get a lot of guys acting like cavemen, staring at their butts. But at some point, they realize, holy crap, these women can play.
It's like people paying attention to Maria Sharapova because she is, well, hot. Watch her long enough, though, and even the most neanderthal mind gets that she is one hell of an athlete.
Besides, what's the difference between admiring someone because they've got a cute butt or because they've got a lot of athletic talent? Either way, we're not talking about their inner beauty. We're talking about a physical attribute.
I've hated watching basketball ever since the boys started wearing those cocktail dresses!
Equality! I demand equality!