Episode #2: Women's Ski Jumping at the Olympics

You can listen to this post as well over at ELRC Radio.

A sign from the protest efforts of female ski jumpers in 2009.

Austria's Daniela Iraschko-Stolz soars during a women's ski jumping training session at the 2014 Winter Olympics. (Matthias Schrader/Associated Press)

Welcome back everyone. I'm Korryn Mozisek and this is "The Talking Tomboy" – a show which offers a critical look into sports and culture. This week we discuss the history that is being made at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and I don't mean the high costs, overruns, or unfinished facilities. Instead, I want to take a look at the history that is being made by female athletes in the sport of ski jumping.

Ski jumping was included during the first Winter Olympics in 1924, but 2014 marks the first time that women will compete in the sport. While women have routinely participated at the youth level or been asked to test hills in advance of the Olympics, like Lindsey Van was in her hometown of Salt Lake City, women have had to put up a significant legal and cultural fight to be a part of the Olympic program. Why have women been barred until this year? Because of the danger the sport posed to them. Of course, all sports have inherent dangers from torn ligaments, broken bones, concussions, along with sprains. So what is so different about ski jumping? In 2005 as female ski jumpers and their families began pushing for inclusion at the international level, “Gian Franco Kasper, president of the Federation Internationale de Ski, stated: 'It’s like jumping down from, let’s say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies, from a medical point of view.'” The risk is not that women have more brittle bones or have a higher risk of injury based on their anatomy; no, instead, Kasper and others' perspective was that the women might injure their reproductive organs and threaten their ability to follow through with nature's intended contribution to the world of children.

This position might seem absurd to some listeners, especially since we are in the 21^st century. But the arguments by Kasper and others regarding the medical risks to women are not new. Instead, these have long been the arguments used to prevent girls and women from participating in sports. Little League Baseball argued in favor of their Boys Only rule in the 1970s that girls were physically inferior, more likely to be injured, and more likely to be disfigured for life by an injury which is also known as a broken nose. Little League Baseball cast themselves as protecting the little girls from future shame based on their looks and pressure from libber parents. There are other sports as well – for example, Hillary Clinton has previously discussed how she played a restricted version of 6-on-6 basketball as a child where the girls were only allowed to run half of the court. Women's tennis does not play as many sets as men. And, softball games only go 7 innings instead of baseball's 9. By not running up the full court or playing fewer games, then the fragile women were not at the same risk as the male counterparts.

With this in mind, we should think about how female athletes are described as different and inferior to their male counterparts. One group is thought of as embodying femininity within culture while the other group is displaying the masculinity of culture. Sports encourages beliefs about how boys and men should be tough, strong, athletic, physically imposing, and dominant. But sports have also restricted girls and women's abilities to perform these characteristics. Instead, the girl who continues to behave like a boy (aka a tomboy) into high school and college has her sexuality questioned because she can't want to be strong, tough, or dominant; that just isn't ladylike! Instead, female athletes can be strong but not too muscle bound and can be tough but while wearing makeup and ribbons to accentuate their attractiveness and sexual availability. Many theorists, including Andrew Billings and Gina Daddario, have examined television coverage of the Olympics and found that there are differences in the ways that male and female athletes are presented to the viewer. Men are often called by their last name and the focus is on how their mental or physical strength explains their success over the competition. In contrast, women are referred to by their first name or fairy tale, princess like nicknames. Their grace, flexibility, and emotions are the focus of the coverage, not their strength or toughness.

But ski jumping challenges many of the assumptions that physical differences are to explain for female athletes' inferiority. The sport relies on technique, aerodynamics, and less weight, not more to excel in the sport. By being lighter, less muscle bound, and having good technique women might just fly past their male competitors. Many have argued that it is not real concern for the physical impact or toil the sport puts on any body, male or female, that has been to blame for women's exclusion from the sport. Instead, it is because women really threaten the masculine-feminine dichotomy in sports. Women’s Ski Jumping Vice President, Vic Method, offered such an interpretation when he stated, “This is a big macho event in Europe. If suddenly you’ve got these little size-four girls jumping comparable distances, the men don’t look so macho anymore.” So while officials argued there weren't enough women participating in the sport or that it posed a risk to the women's health, in reality it came down to the fact that these women flying through the air challenged the beliefs about who is supposed to excel in sports. Suddenly their lighter and shorter frames are an advantage rather than a deterrent to their success. With each jump through the air, the female ski jumpers prove that their legal fight for inclusion was all worth it. They offer a glimpse at excellence and a challenge to the belief that female athletes are inherently inferior to their male counterparts. They may only be jumping from the normal hill in this Olympics while the men will also be jumping from the large hill, but make sure to enjoy watching them fly even if it is only for a few brief seconds because they are evidence of some cultural progress. That's the ball game for this week. Thanks for listening.