this reminds me of when Danica Patrick (the first woman to win an Indy race) decided to pose in skimpy bikini, to try to prove that she's hot. She made history and she should be an example to women in racing, but what she did, I found it a complete turn-off.

I'm tired of female athletes pulling this B.S. Why can't they just be athletes and set a good example to females aspiring to compete in sports?

Wow, this is super disturbing. I am not really into sport at all so I haven't thought much beyond "Why do they always put female athletes in overly feminine* clothes that don't suit their body type?" Satin is nobody's friend.

On a more serious note: If someone tried to tell me that sports would somehow magically turn my daughter into a lesbian I'd be like "First of all, nothing can TURN you into a lesbian, second of all if it turned out my daughter was a lesbian then that's what she is, I don't see how that is a bad thing."

*Meaning here Western society's preconceived notion of feminine, for lack of a better word.

at least in the picture with the coach fixing his tie, it doesn't feel like he owns all the women. I kind of feel some power coming from them. now I see it's kind of based on Charlie's Angels...
In fact, if you have ever written any analytical material on Charlie's Angels, the show, I'd like to be linked to it, if possible. Same if anyone knows some interesting article on that, I'd be interested in reading it.

Other than that, I think there is some misconception to management producing this sort of promotional material.. I wonder if this is really how fans want to see the players, and I feel the fear of being seen as lesbians (and lesbians' associates for the male coaches and people involved in the sport) is more on their part than something that actually goes through the minds of the fans or the general audience. I think it doesn't change anything, what people don't like is just that they are women, lesbian or not, performing as professional athletes, as a team where there is no man, if they were very feminized it would perhaps make it easier for some people to not take them seriously or respect them, in my opinion.

I'm thinking about female volleyball players, they're probably ones where both the attire and the activity on the court are probably feminine enough that media is fine with images of them performing.

From my persona experience lots of these athletic types tend to be lesbians but perhaps not majority of them in general. All in all, athlete is an athlete, the is should be no real standard with female sports such as this. And did you see the soviet female athletes of the 80s 70s and 60s they look more masculine than most men but yet they are all out feminine, there is no contradiction.

Undoubtedly there is great difference when you look at the income of male and female athletes, for an example. But this labelling people of lesbians or athletes as in highlighting their gender in such normative way is entirely an american phenomenon. Or at least americanisation fuels this style of understanding gender aesthetics greatly. Let us remember that anorexia virtually did not exist until advertisement started to spread american beauty ideals to a mass of people in western countries. Truly a phenomenon the world could do without.

"Of course, part of an acceptable performance of femininity is showing that you want male attention, and that you actively try to make yourself appealing to men. So while these materials might do many other things, they also carry a particular message: these girls like to pretty themselves up, and that should reassure you that it’s not a team full of lesbians."

Plenty of lesbians like to look pretty as well. The origins of what they consider pretty may be rooted in the male gaze but is it right to deny female athletes the chance to be making themselves pretty for purposes other than to appeal to the male gaze?

I agree that the fixation on "hey look, we can be pretty too!" is a little odd, but let's face it, many athletes AREN'T pretty, gender notwithstanding. They're not selected for based on looks and while they tend to be fit, which helps, there've been some damn ugly athletes in sports history. On top of that, basketball players in particular tend to be much taller than their peers, and that leads to natural physical awkwardness, especially in your younger years while you're still growing into your body. So in a way there's an element of "Look at me now" to this, too. That's empowering.

Lastly, and correct me if I'm wrong here because this is largely conjecture, but there's an element of conflict to growing up as a professional, self-sufficient woman that involves role balancing. The conflict is entirely rooted in social pressures, naturally; men deal with the same dichotomy between family and profession, but society lets them deal with it on their own terms and without unsolicited scrutiny. Still, though, there's a real issue of identity that professional women grow up with, right? So isn't it possible that posing for pictures like this is a way for these women to show - maybe even to themselves - that they don't (have to) feel bound by normalized social roles?

I imagine many of these athletes would probably just as soon not have to deal with something like a photo shoot; their job is to play basketball and competitive sports requires a great deal of focus and commitment, and a photo shoot aids neither. So I'm sure a lot of them are doing this because it's what their team owner or GM or coach or agent is telling them they have to. Still it's worth considering that there may be a therapeutic element this for some of the athletes.

That said, if I end up raising a daughter one of these days I'm gonna be pretty protective of her recognition that she can be an athlete, a lesbian, or both, and that neither of them are at all correlated. If she wants to be an athlete and wants to feel pretty that's fine as long as she's doing it for her reasons, and not her coach or athletic director's.

Yes--this is unfortunately a prevalent issue. At the midwest private university where I teach, one year very recently the women's basketball team and the men's each distributed a poster depicting the entire team. In the photograph of the men's team, the team members stood in a line, in uniform, looking tough and physical. In the women's photo, they were seated, in dresses and makeup (!) and looked very passive and "feminine."

Needless to say they got a lot of complaints, and the next year the posters were similar--but the women still were differentiated by charming smiles, whiles the men looked pissed off.

All the comments, in addition to those from Gwen, are quite insightful, but I wanted to add some interesting context to the discussion. From what I can gather, there is no link on the FSU women's b-ball main homepage to this external site - the one that features the photos above. (Important side note: the external site is the product of a local p.r. agency while the team's main homepage is run by FSU's athletic department).

Strange, no? It makes me wonder exactly who this external site is for...future recruits? Parents/families of future recruits? Fans? Potential fans? Who, as Gwen asserts above, is being reassured? I'm not sure. Further, what is even more sad is that this 'marketing' (if it is that) approach strongly diverges from the marketing efforts here at FSU over the past few years that have primarily focused on the fun, family-friendly atmosphere of the women's basketball games.

These issues were a point of endless grumpy debate in my household during the Olympics and the women's volleyball on tv.
See for instance this slideshow:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/14/olympic-beach-vollyball-a_n_119075.html
here they are undeniably athletic, but there's undoubtedly a fuzzy border (if any) between athleticism and sexuality presented here, with the focus on butt-shots, etc.

If it were really about athletics, then they would be fine wearing baggy shorts like the men's team. Imagine if we told the men's team that they had to wear speedos to improve their performance--they would laugh.

I'm conflicted, in the end. I do believe that men and women (athletes included) should be able to wear what they want in most circumstances. But I am depressed by seeing the gratuitous "pretty" mode creep into the picture. If I were on the women's team I would fight to wear baggy shorts, and I guess I'd be promptly kicked off the squad.

gah!

This is very interesting, especially in light of the controversy a few years ago over Don Imus' comments about the Rutgers' Women's Basketball team. In essense not only was he deriding the race of most of the players, he was calling them ugly which was horrible; as if he would ever call a men's team ugly no matter what they looked like. Though after the fact you saw those women making a point to be very dressy, look very pretty during the coverage of the incident almost to repudiate what he said and though I don't know this for a fact, I assume they put more time and effort into their apperance than usual to make a point. It is so sad that a stupid man can undermine young women's confidence in their sport by commenting on their appearance or trying to police the way they look.

It's also about the enormous social pressure for young women to be seen as pretty, passive and non-threatening--as well as the overwhelming pressure of heteronormative culture. It's not just about some man wanting them to be seen as feminine--it's about the whole culture and our squeamishness with strong, powerful, active women. Everything in patriarchy resists this--and tries to recuperate femininity by enforcing certain standards of beauty, passivity, and body modification. Why do you think we needed Title 9?

Hmm. So what happens when people come across a widely thought of as attractive, high class female athlete who IS openly gay? Do their heads explode in trying to process it? Jessica Landstrom, for example, plays soccer at the highest level she possibly could in women's soccer and is openly gay: http://wps.theoffside.com/sky-blue-fc/jessica-landstrom-joins-sky-blue-fc.html. I found it interesting that the writer of the piece captioned the photo with "Is it a new signing? Or is it a Gap ad?" and then attempts to circumvent any potential brouhaha over Landstrom's appearance by telling the "men of the world" that she's off their market.

Also, when Sheryl Swoopes came out, there was some interesting "discourse" regarding the so-called insidiousness of the claim that she is a woman who wasn't born a lesbian but "simply fell in love with a close female friend," prompting a lot of people to freak out over a high performing, relatively well endorsed, attractive athlete who really IS gay recruiting their daughters. I'm guessing that seemingly straight female athletes who ARE gay are a lot scarier for people than straight female athletes who "look gay".