Olympic-Sized Orgy

In anticipation of today's discussion about sports/gender/sexuality, my roommates and I were recently talking about how hot the Olympians were--I mean, say what you want about how tall the US Men's Gymnasts are but you could serve drinks off of those pectorals (and yeah, I know that's a pretty objectifying comment, but it's also true). Anyway, this prompted us to imagine how crazy things get in the Olympic Village; we wondered how many of those uber-sexy athletes were spending some of their training time under the sheets, if you know what I mean, and one of my roommates said she had seen some crazy statistics somewhere so I did a little searching and found this article on ESPN.com found here. It is 100% worth a read, even if you're just curious about what really goes on after NBC's cameras are shut off, and the numbers are pretty staggering. I'll make a list of the more shocking points:

1. The organizers of the Olympic Games ordered 100,000 condoms especially for the use of the Olympians staying in the Olympic Village.

2. By one Olympian's estimate, 70-75% of the athletes are hooking up with each other.

3. Some athletes, such as the infamous Ryan Lochte and US Sprinter LeShawn Merritt, have essentially said they can't wait to get it on--Merritt: "When I'm done leaving my legacy on the track, I'll make sure London remembers me." Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, London, Merritt is trying to get it in.

4. Once their events are over, athletes will constantly go to clubs and drink in the Olympic Village, which, as we saw in the Sex, Lies, & Alcohol video, can and does lead to giant amounts of sexy time.

5. Many of the athletes interviewed in the article mention the fact that the Village is a breeding ground for this sort of excessive sexual behavior because everyone is so fit and beautiful; as American javelin thrower Breaux Greer puts it, "Even if their face is a 7, their body is a 20."

6. "It's like Vegas. You learn not to ask lots of questions."

7. Another reason that attempts to explain the enormous amount of hooking up is that training takes up an athlete's entire day and subsequently, life. A common feeling is that they have little time to meet anyone, and once they get into the Olympic Village, they are surrounded by people who understand what it's like to be an Olympian and having that connection acts as a catalyst for sexual activity.

I'll let you guys read the article, but I've gathered a few interesting conclusions from this subject. First, most of the athletes seem to be following Ward's definition of recreational sex (1995) since the article mentions a constant flow of different sexual partners in and out of athletes' rooms, as well as mentioning the fact that many of the athletes have excess energy from their highly intensive training, and sex is one way for them to simply blow off steam. However, my last point (#7) suggests a deeper level of feeling to the sex, perhaps falling under Ward's relational sex category (1995) because the connection between athletes is something more than surface-level attraction; it is a way to relate to one other, or rather because they can relate to each other they are more likely to crave sex. Another interesting thing to consider is the seemingly central role that alcohol plays in the Olympic Village. High alcohol consumption is rampant and this will lead to more sexual activity, as alcohol always seems to do; the partying, "let loose" sort of lifestyle in the Olympic Village is compared to a college campus and the first year of college--a place where partying can lead to sexual activity but sometimes with negative consequences. It makes me wonder--if the Olympic Village is like a college campus with excess partying, do negative things that occur at college parties occur in the Village as well? Sexual assault, attempted rape, alcohol poisoning, date rape drugs? Would I be surprised if they did happen and were completely covered up? These are representatives of our countries, after all; if Ryan Lochte, for instance, tried to rape a gymnast from Austria or something I can't imagine that we would hear about it for the sake of our patriotic pride. The athletes talk about how they can do whatever they want inside the Village and outside just by flashing their medals; how many other things can they get away with due to their celebrity status?

Finally, I find it extremely interesting that the Olympians value each other for their 0% body-fat bodies. This is almost taking objectification to the extreme, but everyone does it to each other so what's the harm? Well, in the case of the Olympians, perhaps the constant surroundings of perfect bodies gives them a skewed sense of what constitutes a normal human physique. And, as an application of these perceptions much like the application of the promiscuous female stereotype in Ferguson et al, objectifying one other as much as the Olympians seem to do could lead all of them (which is about 10,000 people) to turn those attitudes to the outside world and view everyone they encounter with a highly unrealistic expectation as to what they will look like and an assumption that it's okay to treat men and women as objects.

On a sidenote, the Olympians are pretty scrumptious and the comments on their bodies/faces by many viewers of the Olympics could act as priming, again like in the Ferguson et al study; if a guy spends hours watching female gymnastics and talking about how hot all of the girls are and what great bodies they have--basically, objectifying the girls--what's to stop him from carrying this critical eye into the rest of his day and applying it to every woman he sees? Just something to think about.

Read the article. It's shockingly interesting.

Girls and Sports! Why Are They Dropping Out?

While waiting for “The Dark Knight Rises” to begin, I saw a pre-show commercial (those ads when the lights are still on even before the good previews) that actually caught my attention! No, it wasn’t about buying popcorn or the latest celebrity trivia… this ad was about young girls dropping out of sports at double the rate of young boys. What was most interesting about this commercial is that it blamed this dropout rate, as least in part, on the media for sending girls certain messages. The acknowledgement of the media’s influence is what caught my attention and made me think about/relate the ad to this class…

The ad starts by showing girls on a soccer field. Background voices filter in, speaking the messages that we see every day in magazines and commercials… “ Hide your flaws…“ , “ What guys notice,“ “Are you ready for swimsuit season?”. The girls on the field then turn in to make-up covered, high-heel strutting, hair-flowing females … basically, real life Bratz dolls…. The final message of the commercial is “Don’t let them walk away from their potential”.

This ad is claiming that these media messages are causing females to drop out of sports due to the pressure they put on girls to be feminine and sexy. The background voices in the ad were saying the exact same things as Seventeen magazine says - like my group found during our in-class activity. It was clear in our magazine exploration that the media encourage young girls to be boy-crazy and fashion-obsessed. I don’t think any of our groups saw mentions of sports or other hobbies in any of the magazines we read. The only hobbies we found were facebooking your crush or finding that right shade of foundation.

What struck me the most was the fact that this ad was about media’s effects on girls’ participation in sports. This approach is different than simply looking at media’s effects on girls’ sexual behavior/attitudes/expectation/etc.  In class we have read a lot of studies that look at these latter sorts of effects.  Readings such as Brown et al., (2005) and Taylor (2005) show that media content leads to more permissive sexual attitudes and possibly more sexual behavior. What the readings have thus far failed to acknowledge is how the media are affecting other aspects of youth’s lives. This ad shows that these messages trickle in to every aspect of a girls’ life, from her boy-crush to her after-school activities.

 It seems that people often look at sports and sports organizations directly when they critique the lack of female sports participants - blaming them for not providing as many opportunities or equal quality of instruction. However, it is rare to see the blame being put on the media in direct regards to sports participation. It seems clear, now, that media heavily influence girls in their decisions to not play sports…seeing as how media so overtly tells girls to be docile and pretty - and, heaven forbid they be competitive or athletic.

Overall, this commercial was interesting as it looked at a less commonly acknowledged effect of all the ‘be boy-crazy’, ‘be beautiful’, ‘be sexy’ messages in media.