I feel like I have constantly had the Olympics on since they have started. I’m not a huge sports person but I think they are sometimes interesting to watch and especially the Olympics since they do not occur that often. When were in class on Friday and talking about the readings and how women are seen as less and weaker then mean, and in turn this is a form of a disability. I never really thought of it that way but it definitely seems to fit the mold for how our society seems to think today. The more I thought about it I noticed more parallels with how society thinks of women and of those people who have a disability.
Back to the Olympics…women and men’s sports are also different from each other. When I think of the Olympics I think of the women participating ice skating and the men participating in snow boarding. The fact that that was the first thing that came to my mind future shows how gender stereotypes have been instilled in our brains. Women have different adaptations and rules for their sports in the Olympics and they are often viewed as the slower ones. Women definitely play a huge role in every sport in the Olympics but I still feel like there is a parallel between women's sports and the idea that women are seen as having a “disability.” Clearly there are aspects in sports where men would be faster and stronger because of the way that they are built. However, I feel that there is still an idea of weakness placed on women in sports then in men. I believe that I have been instilled with these ideas because of the media through methods from magazine advertisements, to commercials TV programs. I will definitely continue to watch the Olympics and look for incidents of gender stereotyping.
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When I was growing up I always noticed the difference in rules of girl sports and boy sports because I was very athletic and I always wanted to play with the boys and wasn't allowed. I noticed that everything was separated, in some cases the rules were different and even the equipment was different, such as female basketballs being smaller than the mens. I hated these facts because I wanted to be a "good athlete" and not just "good for a girl." I wanted to be compared the same way and turn out better. *just in case you haven't noticed, I was very competitive. But in all honesty, I never payed attention to sexual differenced between the athletes in the Olympics. I always saw both men and women figure skaters, volleyball players, sprinters, ect. I always felt like the Olympics was the one place where a woman could be fairly judged and compared equally to a man. I could just be naive, but for some reason I ignored the discrimination for the love of the Olympics.
ReplyDeleteIt is so funny that you decided to talk about the Winter Olympics because I almost blogged about them as well. As a society, we do automatically assume that women are the weaker sex. Before the Olympics even started, a guy who does the luge died while practicing. Because of this unfortunate event, the committee decided that it would be best to change the course and have the guys start where the women start. They interviewed one of the American men lugers to see what he thought about the switch, and he said that he was disappointed that the committee switched the course around because he knew that it was going to be much easier than what it previously had been since it was the girls’ start. I thought that it was wrong of him to make it seem like the women were doing much less in terms of the sport. I just didn’t care for his tone.
ReplyDeleteEver since I was little I have been a huge nerd for the olympics, I just spent the last two hours waiting for shaun white's snowboarding event, (which he got gold for!) And I've have always kind of thought that the olympic games was one thing that was free of gender stereotyping, but since taking this class I have become more aware of gender roles, and while watching these games I have noticed that even they perpetuate gender roles. I was watching men's luge the other night and due to the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, the starting point for the men's luge has been moved forward to the women's starting point to reduce their speeds. A couple of the competitors were complaining that it wasn't fun anymore because it lacked the thrill of going over 95mph. But by moving the starting point, it only reduced their speeds of about 5mph. Going 90mph would still be pretty thrilling for me and I agree with the post above in that I didn't like how they made it out to be so easy just because it was the same thing women were doing. If they had moved the women's starting point up as well, I guarantee the men wouldn't be complaining. Our culture has created the idea that men are dominant over woman and therefore when competing in athletic events should be able to go faster and stronger than women.
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