Getting naked: aspirations, delusions, and confusions about gender equity in youth sport

Abstract

Those who follow soccer (football), and in particular women’s soccer, are quite familiar with the moment when Brandi Chastain scored the winning goal for team USA in the 1999 World Cup shoot-out over China. Her celebration comprised the removal of her jersey, falling to her knees, and running across the playing field while waving her uniform to over 90,000 stadium fans 30 seconds later. Two minutes after the game-winning goal, she re-clothed herself and continued to celebrate with her teammates. Following the celebrations a media and public perplexity developed inregard to the sexualization of female athletes (Shugart 2003) and the potential effects on young girls of seeing a sports bra. While Chastain’s celebratory response was akin to that of many male footballers, the media response towards her was not. For example, at the English Football Association (FA) Cup semi-final held just months earlier, when Ryan Giggs removed his jersey after scoring the game winner, there was no indication of him being sexualized for the act. However, in the Chastain case, media commentary consisted of references to her breasts rather than her athletic prowess. The focus narrowed on her nakedness and not her skill in finding the top corner of the net. Her team had just won the World Cup but was faced with having to downplay a ‘booters with hooters’ image (Shugart 2003: 13). The case, and the subsequent public and media response, raise many ques-tions about gender equity in sport. Why was the practice of removing a jersey so noticeable when carried out by a female? Why was the player’s skill and successful goal overlooked? Why did Chastain need to explain herself ? In some ways the practice of removing jerseys has been prevented since the implementation of Law 12, which was once relaxed, but has been reinforced by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), with referees required to card players who remove jerseys. The law states that, ‘while it is permissible for a player to demonstrate his joy when a goal has beenscored, the celebration must not be excessive’, going on to indicate that ‘a player must be cautioned if … he removes his shirt or covers his head with his shirt’ (FIFA 2011: 118). The power relation is evident, whereby decisions are being made by the officials, and not the players and referees involved in the game. It is also noteworthy that while FIFA tournaments for women have existed for over two decades and the laws of the game have undergone consistent revisions, there have been no changes regarding gender-equitable language in the writing of the rules. Players are automatically referred to as male, and the women’s game is overshadowed through policy and masculineoriented language. While there may be a tendency to blame the media for the under-representation, as well as the misrepresentation of women in sport, the difficulty is much more multifarious in nature. It is highly complex and requires a deepened understanding of power structures, media influence and gender theory in order to disrupt the gender order in and for future generations. In this chapter I argue that if the face of gender equity in sport is going tobe reconceptualized, we must engage youth in conversations which critically address the difficulties they are confronted with and invite them to become analytical readers of media and power structures. Through the threading of narrative and historical media accounts, I explore the focus question for this inquiry: ‘In what ways might media and power structures influence societal understandings of females in sport?’