Continued from previous
page
But still,
competition between athletes and universities for media exposure is fierce
and nominees may feel pressured to participate, regardless of their feelings
about pornography. As Smith notes, "Promising young athletes are compromised
at an important juncture in their careers. The ones who agree to the award
become publicly linked with the pornography industry". (WAP interview,
1993).
But the link
can work for the good too. Smith's husband, a well known basketball coach
at the University of North Carolina, was nominated for, and accepted, Playboy's
All- America Team Coach of the Year Award in 1976. In their efforts to
embarrass Smith and silence her activism, Playboy representatives point
out again and again how her husband supported the award by accepting the
nomination and participating in the award events. Smith readily admits
to participating in the Playboy event with her husband, maintaining
that pornography wasn't a critical social issue for her at the time. Indeed,
feminists in the United States were just starting to formulate a cohesive
argument against pornography in the early to mid 1970s. Andrea Dworkin
s Woman
Hating was first published here in 1974, and Robin Morgan's declaration,
"Pornography is the theory, rape the practice," was made the
year after Smith attended the Playboy event.
In an effort
to increase public understanding of what commercial sexual exploitation
is all about, Smith went straight to those who have the power and ability
to stop it. She presented her concerns about Playboy at the 1986
convention for the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Judith Reisman,
Ph.D., also presented her findings from her research of the most extensive
content analysis of Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, as
well as developed a fact sheet for NCAA
members.
Smith drew
up a list of proposals for the NCAA to adopt, which include a commitment
to educational programs for the athletes that would offer instruction on
critical viewing skills of sexually explicit material, and encourage a
"...rejection of popular media that promote 'recreational' drug consumption"
(Letter to Board of Trustees and Members
of the American Football Coaches Association, July 21, 1986).
Additionally,
in the same letter, she proposed a mandate against collegiate players and
coaches appearing in pornographic publications. The criteria for identifying
such a publication includes:
The sanctioning of adult/child sexual exploitation.
The sanctioning or providing of positive information on any form of illicit drug consumption.
The depiction of explicit sexual activity associated with violence and degradation.
Currently, Smith is encouraging people who have concerns
about Playboy's exploitation of collegiate athletes to also write
the NCAA. A previously submitted rationale for proposed policy changes
is archived here.
Mail to Cedric Dempsey, NCAA Executive Director
Mail to Janet Justus, NCAA Student--Athlete Issues
NCAA National Headquarters
6201 College Boulevard
Overland Park, KS 66211-2422
(913) 339-1906
Ironically, while Playboy's
been borrowing from the sports world, Sports Illustrated
has been borrowing from the porn world. One month each year, this internationally
distributed and respected sports magazine eschews its hallmarked celebration
of athletic ability to devote an issue to pictures of women in bathing
suits. The infamous swimsuit issue is the
most popular of the year--and a rarity. It is practically the only
time SI spotlights women in their magazine--less than 10%
of coverage is devoted to women in sports. Unfortunately, this coverage
is a centerfold rather than centerpiece approach.
The women
in the swimsuit issue strike similar poses to those normally found in pornographic
magazines. Indeed, the managing editor of Sports Illustrated, admitted
as much in an interview . . . 'We ride a bubble each year,' [Mark] Mulvoy
told Newsweek. The bubble is what Penthouse and Playboy
do. Some years we're right on the bubble, some years we back off."'
(cited by Blewer, WAP Newsreport, 1993, p.6)
Unlike pornographic
materials, however, SI has no age requirement for purchase or viewing.
Therefore, high school, and even grade school children have a greater opportunity
for exposure to these, less graphic yet equally objectionable displays
of women and our bodies. "Middle school kids can't hang up pictures
from a hard-core bondage magazine in their lockers," Smith observes,
"but it's seen as perfectly normal for them to hang up a photograph
of a bikini clad young woman from the swimsuit issue. Yes, Sports Illustratedhas
better photographs and the material is presented in a slicker way, but
the fundamental ideology of both is still the same" (Smith in Kaylor,
Carolina Blue, May 4, 1996, p. 6). Unfortunately, due to SI's
swimsuit issue, young male sports fans are influenced at an early age about
this sexist stereotype of valuing women only as sex objects for male entertainment.
That ideology
is inequality; discrimination; a one-dimensional understanding of women
that effectively cripples the entire human race. When women are breaking
barriers in every arena, including sports, it is unconscionable for a news
publication like SI to provide minimal coverage of women athletes
and their accomplishments and devote entire issues to sexually explicit
pictures of young women models. They are enforcing a prejudice that affects
every woman and girl.
