I happen to agree with Mr. Mushnick on this one. Why do we have this double standard in sports and how (if at all) does it carry over into other parts of life?
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I’m having trouble looking this one up (maybe that should tell me something) but I recall a similar issue several years ago (1991).
It was either a playoff game or the Superbowl in which the New England Patriots were playing. A female reporter insisted that she be granted access to the locker room after the game. After bullying her way in there the some Patriot players, completely naked, surrounded her and hazed her.
The reporter was not pleased with her treatment and made a bit of a stink about it that never amounted to much. I do, however, remember the response given by the team’s owner (Victor somebody [Kiam?]). Remember, at the time the Gulf War was in full swing. When asked about this incident Victor responded that at least the reporter is one of few Americans who has seen Patriot Missiles up close.
After laughing my ass off I kept thinking what the women’s movement might try to do to me if, as a male reporter, I insisted on access to any women’s team locker room while they are showering.
-We live in an era of Politcal Correctness. Actually, we border on Political Incorrectness. What Viera did was wrong and low class. But under the laws of PC, it is Okay for a woman to oogle over a man, but not vice versa. The View obviously pushed the envelope in this case.
-Men do NOT belong in women’s locker rooms. Women are more self concious of their bodies in front of a man than the average man in front of a woman.
Frankly, men reporters that try and get into women’s locker rooms are the same type of troublemakers as women trying to get into mens sports and men trying out for the Field Hockey team. I wish they would all go away.
This was Lisa Olson, who filed a complaint with the NFL about the incident in 1990. Ironically, Olson was also covering the Mets when Vieira asked Piazza, “Who has the biggest wood on the team?” Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post did a good column on the incident. Jack O’Connell, the president of the Baseball Writers of America has asked MLB not to credential Vieira again.
That is not the double standard. The issue in the Olson situation (and others like it) is that male reporters were given access to the players in the locker room, but female reporters were denied the same access, putting them at a disadvantage. If female reporters had access to, for example, to WNBA locker rooms, I would expect that male reporters should be granted the same access. The sexual harrassment that Olson faced, along with the harrassment that lasted well after the incident, is not particularly amusing.
As to Vieira, I think the problem is partly the nature of “The View.” If this had been someone from “The Daily Show” doing the interview, the reaction may have been less. Because “The View” considers itself more of a “serious” show, people’s expectations are different.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. While it’s certainly in bad taste for The View to on the one hand complain about sexism and on the other fulfill the worst stereotypes regarding women ogling male athletes, does anyone really think this doesn’t go on the other way around?
When Anna Kournikava doesn’t have to do a faux-Playboy spread just to get a few pages in Sports Illustrated, maybe this will be an issue.
That might happen on the day that Kournikova actually wins something. The problem with Kournikoa is not that she has to use her sex appeal to get coverage from sports magazines, it is that she can use her sex appeal to gain coverage from sports magazines. She doesn’t deserve it on he rmerit as an athlete.
Well no…it’s an “issue” when Anna Kournikava does a cheezy layout AND when The View asks about “wood” size. The Sally Jenkins bit does a pretty good job of explaining why this is an issue (not a huge issue granted, but one at least worth mentioning)
This is absurd. Why should anyone, male or female, not have the expectation of being able to take a shower without a stranger of the opposite sex standing nearby asking you questions? At the very least the league could tell players they have 15 minutes after the game ends to get a shower before the doors are flung open. After that the player takes his chances of doing an interview in the nude.
That female reporters are at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts in this case is obvious. I say tough…that’s the game you entered by choice when settling on that profession. Your need for a news story does not abrogate another persons right to some privacy. I do not have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Olson (although threats of having acid thrown at her is WAY too much as is the wrecking of her career…a little egg on face would have sufficed).
Unfortunately this impacts female sports reporters more than male reporters as most of the big money sports are male dominated. However, it CAN work both ways. The US Women’s Soccer team was a big story. Here, the female reporters can get quicker access than the male reporters. This is as it should be.
Perhaps, if women get big money sports rolling (i.e. WNBA) then perhaps the playing field will be levelled. The men get some choice interviews and the women get some other choice interviews.
Most teams do it this way, in fact. When I had press passes to the locker rooms after the Giants-Oilers game three years ago in Tennessee, myself and the rest of the media patiently waited outside until the locker room was opened to the media - about 15 minutes or so.
This did not stop several players from being totally naked, however. And there were women there.
Did you ever see Any Given Sunday? In it, the female team owner is walking around and having conversations with very naked football players after a game or practice. Everyone there handles it like if someone walked into your office fully clothed - it’s a business meeting in their office.
Is this strange? Well, yes it is to you and I and our work environments. It would also be strange that after I finished work people would stick cameras in my face and ask me about how my day was. It would be strange to have a lot of things happen in my office that happen on a football field on Sunday.
But the players handle it with professionalism because, whether we can understand it or not, they can and they do.
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You can say “tough” or anything else.
The laws of this country, however, disagree with your views.
**
The laws have also been interpreted that celebrities lose certain rights of privacy by the nature of their status. You may also say “tough,” but that doesn’t change the laws.
Now, I definitely have sympathy for a woman who is doing her job and five players come up to her, make sexual advances towards her and wave their dicks in her face. Sorry you don’t. But, and the history both immediate (the players being fined, the league making rules known against this kind of behavior) and since (we don’t see thing slike this happening now) tell me that she deserved my sympathy.
What those players did was not only repugnant in our worldview, but also in their world too - They would not have done this to a male reporter, and actions like this made a media which as recently as 1977 wrote headlines such as, “Woman sues to see players naked” turn towards their female peers when Olson’s case came to light.
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I disagree. Well, to a point, anyway. I think you have to dig a little deeper and wonder why SI is doing a spread/story on her of this nature, and not on one of the top competitors like the Williams sisters, or Lindsey Davenport, or Martina Hingis. The answer is that, even today, female athletes are treated largely in one of two ways by the sports press: they are either sexualized, or they are trivialized. (And the Williams sisters have even more barriers to face, thanks to their skin color.) Since Kournikova is the most obviously sexual female tennis player, she gets the pages.
It’s the same culture that accounts for why it’s OK to speculate on the sexual orientation of female golfers (or basketball players), but not males. (OK, maybe Rodman.) Or why if a male soccer player tears off his jersey after scoring the winning goal, nobody blinks an eye, but if Mia Hamm does it, it’s a catastrophe.
I don’t disagree that what Viera was stupid. To criticize the reduction of female athletes to their erogenous zones on the one hand, then do the same to male athletes on the other, is ill-advised at best and blatant hypocrisy at worst. It just amuses me that the sexualization of athletes by media members only becomes an issue to the pundits, apparently, when it happens to men. Heaven forbid that their position of primacy in the sports world be threatened by someone wanting to know their dick sizes.
I guess it would be unreasonable to expect everyone but players and team personell to wait outside the locker room to interview players. But hell, let’s do it anyway.
Does a comment from a player mean anymore if the player is only half-dressed and standing in front of a locker? Do these guys really have that much to say anyway? Are the journalist’s deadlines so tough that they can’t wait a half-hour till the players get dressed? I mean, the stadiums have press rooms, just have the players pass through on their way out of the stadium. Everbody has equal access to the interview.
As to the OP…
This particular woman should not have been issued press credentials if she’s not their acting as a journalist.
Just some random, incoherent thoughts…
It wasn’t Mia Hamm who tore her shirt off, it was Brandi Chastain.
Depends what you mean. Openly lesbian athletes have been accepted in sport as a matter of fact for years; who criticizes Martina Navratilova anymore? On the other hand, gay male athletes are pretty much driven underground. Clearly, women do have significant advantages in this respect.
The Anna Kournikova article came long after Kournikova was a major Internet sex symbol (for what reason I cannot fathom) and long after her well-documented teenaged tryst with much older hockey star Sergei Fedorov. SI was way behind what the public wanted, not ahead of it.
The solution to the locker room angle is easy, of course; if the team does not want their player seen naked, don’t allow reporters in for a given period of time. The problem here is not that reporters should be allowed to see players naked, but that the “privacy” angle can be used to discriminate against women when a perfectly acceptable substitute (not allowing anyone in for X minutes) is available.
I think these two suggestions get to the heart of it, particularly the “victim” aspect.
As much as we attempt to legislate equality in all matters between the sexes, the fact remains that on average men are bigger and stronger than women and women are, sexually, much more vulnerable than men. Unfortunately, aggressive male displays of sexual attraction carry an underlying threat of violence (whether intentional or not) because the average woman can never forget that the average man could, if he chose, force those attentions on her.
When Meredith Vieira makes comments about the players’ rear ends they may (quite rightly) feel offended and objectified, but they likely don’t feel threatened.
This is not to say that what she did was in any way acceptable as a form of serious journalism. I agree with the comment above that it would have caused less flack coming from something like The Daily Show, where we expect a comedy routine. IMO, the producers of The View need to decide how they want to market themselves. If they want to seriously discuss social issues, they need to stick to that.
