Twelve years ago, there was massive outrage over NBC “objectifying” women at the London Olympics. Ok, I’m lying – there were the usual whiners like “Think Progress,” “Jezebel,” and Yahoo Sports. The perpetually annoyed and annoying crowd.
NBC posted a six-minute video with upbeat background music showing women athletes competing at the Olympics. NBC pulled the video shortly after posting it because those who whine loudest get noticed. Yahoo Sports (it used to be a thing) jumped on the bandwagon, condemning the video as sexist and “creepy.” The author cited a Jezebel writer as an authority on female objectification.
Jezebel’s writer was super offended by NBC’s video showing athletic women. Odd, since “Jezebel’s existence is dedicated to articles about sex positions and vibrators. They make Cosmo readers blush.
I watched the video 12 years ago, and yeah, it showed women’s bodies in slow motion. Scandalous. Apparently, women performing their events is bad because the women were clothed in… their uniforms? Why is admiring a woman’s athletic body “objectifying” women? A woman can “dress to impress,” but admiring that woman for looking good is somehow anathema. Women can wear swimsuits that you can fit into a back pocket, but admiring the curves around that suit is objectifying?
The Think Progress wag said the video “communicates nothing about the events these women are participating in or what it takes to perform them.” The Think Progress writer is either blind or didn’t actually watch the video.
The Yahoo writer, named Greg Wyszynski, was even more offended than the women he quoted. What made his wordy outrage hilarious is at the end of his article is an embedded video — it’s a video story from London. The Yahoo reporter tells us about two female athletes who were “Ladies looking to meet their Prince.” In fact, that is the title of the video. The ladies don’t know Prince Harry. He doesn’t know them, but they are desperate to meet the royal ginger. The reporter giddily describes that moment as:
“Every woman dreams of meeting their prince one day”.
Well, ok, Barbi.
You could sense the reporter’s heart going aflutter. The female athletes are shown in their scanty beach volleyball uniforms. A whole lot of body and not a lot of uni. As the reporter Barbi-dolls through her story about two women fangirling over Prince Harry, the female athletes are shown, majority flesh and a little bit of uni in slow-motion and still photos. The irony is hilarious.
We’ve been told the Paris Olympics is all about women. But one cannot “objectify” women. Camera operators are ordered not to portray women athletes in a “sexist” way. I don’t have any idea what that means, and I bet the camera guys are mystified as well.
And you, dear viewer, you must celebrate women as equal to men. And never notice their bodies. It’s not always real women we must celebrate — men claiming to be women are women, and woe unto you if you misgender a dude competing against women.
The Paris Olympics has been organized to give women “primetime” slots that were previously filled with men’s sports. Yiannis Exarchos, the guy in charge of Olympic broadcasting, said:
Women are not there because they are more attractive – they are there because they are elite athletes.
[Equal participation of women] is not enough. It has not been enough for us. We wanted to make sure that the actual sports content was also reflecting this equality.
The schedules of sporting events have traditionally been biased towards highlighting men’s events, almost always you have women’s competitions in the mornings, then the men’s.
We have worked during these years together with our partners in the federations and our broadcasters in order to make the schedule, the programme of competition of the Games of Paris, as equal as possible.
Traditionally, the last event is the men’s marathon. Here, for the first time, the last event of the Games is going to be the women’s marathon. Traditionally, in team sports, you have first women’s finals and then men’s finals. Here you will see very, very important sports like basketball and elsewhere, where it will be the reverse.
So, much like ESPN force-feeding the WNBA when most basketball fans don’t care for women’s basketball, you will get women’s basketball, whether you like it or not. And the Olympics won’t end with the Men’s Marathon. This year, the last event will be women marathoners. Philippides and tradition, be damned.
And, the IOC actually bean-counted — noting that although they efforted to make Paris an Olympics of equal results, it fell short.
The IOC has billed these Games as the first to achieve parity between male and female athletes, although it has actually fallen slightly short, with 5,630 male athletes to 5,416 female athletes taking part in Paris.
Hmm. There might be a reason for the disparity. Like Muslim countries being bastions of patriarchy and misogyny. Typically, those countries send far fewer women than men. Iran, for example, sent 40 people to Paris. Only 11 are women. There aren’t any Iranian women swimmers. Swimming in a burka would be a distinct disadvantage.
The IOC wants you to remember this:
[This is a] concerted effort of the entire Olympic movement, men and women, because gender equality is a team sport.”
Really? Tell that to women who are forced to compete against dudes. No thanks. I was done with the Olympics after it opened with bashing Christianity. But the IOC gave me another reason to avoid it with its silly bean-counting equity push.
