I've been watching the Olympics religiously for the past week and a half. I've been reading various posts on Feministing about women and the Olympics. But the subject I haven't seen is the women who are not on center stage, the women who seem to act as living props (Chinese women, I think it's important to note). These are the women who carried the country signs in the opening ceremony. The women (though, to be fair, there were also men) who acted as cheerleaders, stomping and clapping and smiling for the entire opening ceremony while acting as a human fence. The women who carried the signs around on the gymnastics floor. The women who carried the medals and flowers for the medal ceremonies, handing them to a man to give to the athletes. I'm sure there are plenty of other women in such positions who I haven't even noticed but who still deserve to have their position as scenery questioned.
I tried one of my favorite mental exercises: thinking, "What if those women were men?" What if there were men in blue and white suits handing award paraphenalia to another man? What if some of the people who carried the signs for gymnastics and the opening ceremony were men? The idea is ridiculous. If I'm honest with myself, the men who acted as cheerleaders/fences seemed a little ridiculous, simply because I'm not used to seeing men as cheerleaders-slash-stage-props. But that's the fundamental difference, that women in my culture and it seems Chinese culture as well are so often seen as knick knacks that happen to smile and breath rather than human beings who can do things. Men are largely exempted from the position of props; even the male cheerleader/fenceposts seemed to be herding the athletes into their human-boundaried pens on top of their other duties.
The hand-off in the ceremonies confuses me too. Why aren't the women the ones who anoint the athletes? Why must the medal and the bunch of flowers be handed to a man? I'm sure the man is someone important in the Olympic system, but this doesn't assuage my questions. It only transfers them to the Olympic Committee as well. And prompts me to ask, why doesn't he carry the stuff himself?
I can only conclude that my completely unobjective statements in the previous two paragraphs reveal the truth, that women are being used as objects, pretty living filler, like baby's breath in a floral arrangement. Men could just as easily carry those signs and flowers and metal-weighted necklaces. There is nothing that makes women inherently more capable of transporting minutiae. The only criteria I can discern for this incredible tilt seem to be youth and femaleness.
When I contrast this to the female athletes, I can't help but feel disappointed. We're supposed to take them seriously against a backdrop of solely feminine curves. We're supposed to pretend that the exploitation of women has somehow been cured because women are athletes! Meanwhile the old system of seeing women as their bodies and their beauty rather than their abilities continues at the edges, where no one is supposed to look too hard.
Pretty young women are the backgrounded burden-bearers of the Olympics, the dressed-up mules in a hypocritical procession.
(Cross-posted at What If)
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Thank you for commenting on this. That really bothered me, too. Especially the cheerleaders.
I was especially bothered knowing that a lot of the men I know (given my social circles) would be watching the Olympics specifically to sate their Asian fetishes. That they were rewarded in triplicate, at the least, is just adding fuel to the fire.
Argh. Why not men, indeed.
OMG THANK YOU.
I wanted to write a post on this, but couldn't figure out how I wanted to say it. So thanks for saying it.
Cheerleading should be an olympic sport. Whatever people think of it as far as 'sexist' goes - and there's other sexist sports - it's as much a sport as anything else. Seems that people are still under the illusion that 'it's all about pumping pompoms' - even though alot of cheerleading doesn't involve pompoms at all. Okay, it's not ALL incredible, but then nor is most football or other olympic sports all incredible - but brought to a professional level it can be amazing. How many people think it's easy to throw an adult woman up in the air and catch her with one hand? Or to be the woman jumping up and doing doing five somersaults and landing back on that hand? And there are so many different sports in the olympics, even TABLE TENNIS, for god's sake, so why not cheerleading? The outfits are no more revealing than those that the ice skaters and gymnasts wear (skaters are also heavily made up), so I don't think that's an issue. I certainly would love to see cheerleading as an actual event in the olympics, it would gain this sport more respect, and I'd sooner watch it than table tennis. The reason it's pushed to the side is because it is mainly females, and considered 'feminine' therefore people think it must be easy and doesn't command much respect.
And after that rant about cheerleading (which was also sparked by the Feministing post on that subject), and to get back on the point - I TOO AM PISSED that it's the women handing out paraphellania, and being treated like living ornaments. It's like they're... I dunno, bridesmaids or something. But even that's not a great comparison since there are pageboys at a wedding. But these women just seem to be there for show. Pushing them to the sidelines, as if sport is something for men to do whilst women watch.
Nettle Syrup, that's a good point. I would consider professional cheerleading on par with gymnastics or synchronized swimming, both of which are time-honored Olympic sports, require A LOT of athletic ability plus the ability to make it LOOK eay, and all of which I absolutely love.
Talking of race in the background, is anyone familiar with these pretty off Versace ads? I couldn't believe these ads, they're way off-putting...
http://www.ltcconline.net/lukas/gender/socialclass/pics/socialclass8.jpg
http://www.ltcconline.net/lukas/gender/socialclass/pics/socialclass6.jpg
http://www.ltcconline.net/lukas/gender/socialclass/pics/socialclass7.jpg
Well, I'm not much of a TV watcher, Olympics or not. It however seems to me that awarding people with medals, diplomas, whatever, is somehow ritualized. Usually done in pretty clothes, the official/dean/Minister of Better Future doesn't fish out the medal or diploma from a practical shopping bag... I mean, rituals may be silly from a certain point of view but there's a cultural continuity to which they bind us.
Obviously, one can argue that no rituals are needed, that one remains happily dead even without a burial and mourners in black, that wedding can be done without the bride looking pretty, that you can get your university diploma sent by mail without going through the silly ceremony with speeches. I do not dare venture to anthropology but I think that without rituals, the society changes into a heap of crap. Which at the same time explains why it's terribly hard to change the rituals. They are rooted very deep in human nature.
As for the cheerleaders: I never understood what's the purpose of their existence.
Nettle Syrup, thanks for the link - that's so off. *gag*
wax ghost,
you've hit the nail on the head with this post. I've been wondering the same things.
You know, the Olympics is supposed to embody a kind of universal spirit of inclusion and fairness; yet upon closer inspection there's a lot of pretense, as demonstrated in what you have described above.