{"id":72637,"date":"2019-01-15T15:59:41","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T20:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72637"},"modified":"2019-01-15T15:59:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T20:59:41","slug":"the-social-side-of-gender-and-strength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2019\/01\/15\/the-social-side-of-gender-and-strength\/","title":{"rendered":"The Social Side of Gender and Strength"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As a feminist sociologist, I couldn\u2019t help but notice how reality competition shows like\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0<i>The Titan Games\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0<i>American Ninja Warrior <\/i>can\u00a0teach us a lot about how society understands physical strength in relation to gender.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Each of these shows takes a different approach to including women in strength competitions. On <i>The Titan Games<\/i>, women compete against women, while men compete against men. For each round, there is a man and woman winner. Given this format, men and women get equal screen time throughout the show. We see pairs of women and men compete in the same competitions like the Herculean Pull\u2014the most intense one-on-one game of tug-of-war you have ever seen. This same-gender competition can actually minimize gender differences to the audience.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Even if the pairs of women are slower than the pairs of men on some events, competition times are not shown to the television audience, so this difference is not highlighted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vB_2HLWhA3o\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In contrast, in the original rules of <i>Ninja Warrior<\/i>, everyone competed and the highest ranked individuals moved on to the next round. This quickly resulted in few women being represented beyond the first round (although some women were advanced as \u201cwildcards\u201d at the producers\u2019 discretion). On <i>Ninja Warrior<\/i>, the audience sees the ranks of all the competitors, so it is very clear how the women do in comparison to the men (not so well, for the most part).<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_72640\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-72640\" style=\"width: 483px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanninjawarriornation.com\/2016\/6\/29\/12062310\/numbers-of-ninja-warrior-ladies-night-in-philadelphia\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-72640\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2019\/01\/ep_205_20graph_201_zpszytdlbwr.0.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"483\" height=\"293\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-72640\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: &#8220;Numbers of Ninja Warrior: Ladies Night in Philadelphia&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In 2017 (Season 9), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanninjawarriornation.com\/2017\/6\/12\/15787338\/american-ninja-warriors-new-rules-will-advance-more-women-to-the-city-and-national-finals\"><span class=\"s2\">the rules were modified<\/span><\/a> to secure slots for women in later rounds. Interestingly, the rule change was in response to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/espnw\/culture\/article\/19583111\/american-ninja-warrior-changes-five-women-city-final-two-per-city-vegas-no-wild-cards\"><span class=\"s3\">fan interest in seeing more women compete<\/span><\/a>. Under the new rules, the top five women in qualifying rounds would advance and the top two women in the city finals would move on to national finals. This format results in some women moving forward based on performance in relation to all competitors and other women moving on based on their performance in relation to other women<i>. <\/i>For example, in Philadelphia qualifiers in Season 10, three\u00a0women earned a spot in the city finals based on their overall rank in the competition and the next two highest-ranking women (although lower ranking than some men)\u00a0also advanced to the City finals to attain the minimum of five women advancing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">From a feminist perspective, which approach is best for showing women&#8217;s strength in competition? Do you prioritize representation and visibility for women, giving equal time to men and women throughout the competition as in <i>The Titan Games<\/i>?<i> <\/i>Or do you prioritize eliminating gender as an organizing category, providing the opportunity for (some) women to be ranked higher than (some) men, and including the potential for participation of folks outside the gender binary as in the original <i>Ninja Warrior <\/i>rules? Or do you try to do both?<\/span><\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 1310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanninjawarriornation.com\/2016\/6\/29\/12062310\/numbers-of-ninja-warrior-ladies-night-in-philadelphia \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/894Dam0tUi1XpyIHR6hLtN7EamM=\/0x18:598x417\/1310x873\/filters:format(webp)\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/49994069\/Screen_Shot_2016-06-30_at_10.05.58_AM.0.0.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1310\" height=\"873\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Five women moving on from American Ninja Warrior Philadelphia qualifiers to city finals in Season 10. (Click for Source)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">This question matters because there are real stakes to the way we see strength in pop culture. The way we consider gender and physical strength affects many women, even those who are not elite athletes. For example, <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1111\/socf.12169\"><span class=\"s2\">in my own research on the construction trades<\/span><\/a>, many tradeswomen face assumptions and stereotypes about women\u2019s physical ability that disadvantage them throughout their careers. It\u2019s important to disrupt discourses about strength when they are leveraged to unnecessarily disadvantage women. Not all women (or men) have the physical ability to do\u00a0construction work. But many do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Strength competitions like these might seem to support stereotypes, but our scientific understanding of strength raises some troubling ideas about perceived &#8220;natural&#8221; differences of the body. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/sex-redefined-1.16943\"><span class=\"s2\">Biological differences between men and women are not a clear as some would like to believe<\/span><\/a>, this had led to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/04\/30\/sports\/track-gender-rules.html\"><span class=\"s2\">problems with determining athletes\u2019 genders<\/span><\/a> for competition. In the US, large and muscular bodies are seen as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mensjournal.com\/health-fitness\/heres-what-ideal-male-body-looks-19-countries-around-world\/\"><span class=\"s2\">desirable for men <\/span><\/a>and <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@AishaPowell_\/female-bodybuilding-the-ups-and-downs-of-women-bodybuilders-26611e984bae\"><span class=\"s2\">problematic for women<\/span><\/a>; this shapes who trains to complete in these types of competitions. If more women trained for strength-based competitions, we can assume the gap between men and women in these competitions would shrink, but not fully disappear. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4309798\/\"><span class=\"s2\">Similar trends have occurred in long distance running. <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s difficult to imagine that anyone who has seen the women competitors on these shows could believe that women are not strong enough to do construction. Especially if you watched the first episode of <i>The Titan Games<\/i> and saw Tina Rivas, a sheet metal installer. And as she said about her work, \u201cI am the only woman. So obviously that\u2019s a little bit hard. But I can handle it.\u201d Indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pdx.edu\/sociology\/maura-kelly\">Maura Kelly<\/a> is an Associate Professor of Sociology at\u00a0Portland State University. Her research and teaching interests include gender, sexualities, social inequality, work and occupations, and popular culture. Her current research is primarily focused on the experiences of women and people of color in the construction trades as well as policy and programs intended to\u00a0increase the diversity of the construction trades workforce. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming book <\/span><\/em><span class=\"s1\">Feminist Research in Practice<\/span><em><span class=\"s1\"> (Rowman &amp; Littlefield 2019).<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a feminist sociologist, I couldn\u2019t help but notice how reality competition shows like\u00a0Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0The Titan Games\u00a0and\u00a0American Ninja Warrior can\u00a0teach us a lot about how society understands physical strength in relation to gender.\u00a0 Each of these shows takes a different approach to including women in strength competitions. On The Titan Games, women compete [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1851,"featured_media":72643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,55,343],"class_list":["post-72637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-gender","tag-tvmovies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2019\/01\/SI-Rock-e1547585617863.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72639,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72637\/revisions\/72639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}