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Ally Ullrich
Femininity As Performance
“I see a hole out there! I see a hole out there! I see an H-O-L-E hole out there! So hit the
ball out there! So hit the ball out there! So hit the B-A-L-L ball out there!” This is one of many
chants my softball team used to yell out while our team was up to bat, and because I was always
a leader on the sports field, I tended to lead the cheers in the dugout. Athletics have never been
considered a “girl’s world”, and although that has changed slightly as of late, there is still the
stereotype that to excel in sports, a woman must be butch or uncomfortably masculine and that
pretty, feminine girls will never go very far in the athletic realm. But my teammates and I didn’t
care, or so we thought. Whether it was softball, basketball, soccer, etc., we were busting our
butts just like the boys and proving that we could be pretty at the same time. Looking back now,
I didn’t think much of the ribbons we would wear in our hair, the peppy high pitched voices we
used when we could cheer during games, and the pink socks we wore that didn’t match our
school colors. “[Pink] repeatedly and firmly fuses girls’ identity to appearance” and it is a staple
in women’s sports (Orenstein 3). It seemed so natural, and my friends and I embraced the “girlygirls who can play ball” lifestyle. I never realized how much of it was for show and how many of
those things we did to prove our femininity, even our heterosexuality, until I began taking
Women’s Studies classes at the University of Iowa after my softball and basketball playing days
were long over. When I read Courtney Martin’s “Athletic Obsession”, I felt as though she was
talking directly to me and it led me to reevaluate my experience with sports.
To begin, I have never been what you call “petite”. I am five foot ten, one hundred and
sixty-five solid pounds, and my basketball’s coach nickname for me in high school was “Tall
Timber” (as if it wasn’t embarrassing to be called that in front of my friends and gasp, the cute
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boys in school). But I’ve always been taught that you need to work with what you’ve got, and
work with it I did. My go-to outfits always involved the color pink and I used to make sure I
wore jeans at least three times a week in fear that people would regard me as a “dyke” if I wore
sweats too much. My constant awareness of how I was perceived changed my entire lifestyle as I
would make sure not to eat too much at lunch (because did you see how much cake that girl ate?)
and the need to be sexually desirable to boys dominated my clothing choices and caused me to
develop an irrational incapability to feel good about myself without makeup. Martin hit the nail
on the head when she wrote that “a female athlete is publicly pressured to prove that she is first
female, i.e., pretty, sexy, sweet, and only secondarily athletic” and I felt this pressure on a daily
basis (Martin 226).
But what made me feel this way? Why did I feel it necessary to prove that I was straight
and sexy and girly? I believe media played and continues to play a large part in my constant
emphasis on femininity; the girls around me felt the same pressure, which resulted in us
monitoring each other to make sure we were exhibiting just enough femininity to be straight but
not too much “prissiness” that would result in a poorer performance on the playing field.
“As female athletes have gotten more press in the media and more playtime on major TV
channels, more than their talent and skill have been exposed. Their bodies, not immune to the
values of the culture at large, have come to be scrutinized” even though a true athlete should
focus more on what she needs to do to improve in her sport, not what she needs to do to improve
her body (Martin 226). A perfect example of media’s double standard for women athletes is that
the top online article regarding women’s sports is called “The Top 10 Sexiest Women In Sports”
and lists three surfers, three women in track, a volleyball player, a soccer player, a golfer, and a
cycler. Three of these ten women are also models and each woman is pictured in much less than
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a jersey or uniform—number one on the list even forgot to put a shirt on! It is images like these
that con young girls into thinking that there is only one type of acceptable femininity—the “in
your face, out of your clothes” kind. This is where body image comes into play and the athletic
dedication begins to look like more of an obsession.
Even without these added expectations, women have a tendency to put more pressure on
themselves than is necessary; “instead of just walking more, we pledge to run marathons” and
instead of being happy with ourselves, we pledge to be someone else’s idea of perfection (Martin
221). The expected performance of femininity is detrimental to a young girl’s self-esteem when
the only acceptable standard is perfection. As if that pressure wasn’t enough, girls are often
expected to exhibit two contradictory lifestyles at once: the dedicated athlete and the girl who is
effortlessly talented, the virgin and the tempter, the socialite and the bookworm, and the list goes
on and on. Women are told they need to be everything at once in order to be an all-American girl
“but as long as they can dig deep and perform, they and others feel, nothing is wrong” (Martin
224). Sports are a large part of this performance and being able to dribble a basketball while at
the same time wearing pink hair ribbons seems to be the ultimate way to achieve one’s goals as
an athlete and as a woman simultaneously.
However, men are not expected to adhere to these same standards as the role of alpha
male and athlete go hand in hand. There is no multifaceted expectation for a man to exhibit his
masculinity when dribbling the ball down the court because this act already confirms his
heterosexuality rather than questioning it. On the other hand, “both heterosexual [female] and
lesbian athletes attempt to balance the masculinity of sports participation with pressures to
acknowledge that they are not in fact men. This is distinct from the pressure female athletes feel
to acknowledge that they are indeed women” (Craig and LaCroix 454). In other words, women
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who play sports often do not just stop at hair ribbons and glitter spray; they go even further when
they are off the court to wear revealing dresses and sexy high heels, complete with a hint of
“ditzy” to confirm their womanhood and to prove their sexual orientation. Traci Craig and
Jessica LaCroix address this societal pressure when writing that “female athletes reject certain
aspects of femininity while engaged in sports, but [are] often encouraged by others to engage in
femininity outside of athletics to avoid being perceived as lesbians” (454). It makes more sense
to me now that the main topics of conversation with my high school teammates revolved around
sex, makeup, boys, shoes, hair, boys, shopping, and did I mention boys? This is not to say that
these conversations are not typical of every high school girl, but there was an additional pressure
for us as athletes to be in tune with these topics in order to maintain our insider status in girl
world.
But when your life is a constant performance for other people, there are bound to be
times when the audience just doesn’t seem satisfied. There were so many days in high school
that I would binge eat on pizza after a long practice and feel guilty about it for days or other
times that I would wear sweats and my hair in a ponytail to school and feel self-conscious and
insecure the entire day because of my “grungy” appearance. Sports were just the beginning of
my performance and they taught me a great work ethic that without even realizing it, I began to
apply to my performance as a woman. It is no wonder that “girls feel strangely at home
punishing themselves, as if we inherit some uniquely female gene for sacrifice and hard work
that allowed our great-great-grandmothers to have babies in the middle of nowhere. We feel
comfortable being hard on ourselves, justified in our self-criticisms, redeemed by our often
outlandish dedication” (Martin 230). Women so often reach for unattainable goals that they view
their entire effort as a failure, even though they were set up for failure in the first place. From the
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time we are young girls, we play with dolls and Barbies with elongated bodies that aren’t even
anatomically possible, and by our teenage years, we see ads with airbrushed models and read
magazines that display bikini clad women who have been photoshopped. It is these
representations of femininity that are our lifelong examples and goals. The pressure to fill
contradictory roles at the same time is exhausting and I knew that just as well as anyone when I
would come home from a great basketball practice feeling good about my hard work, only to
discover that throughout my sweaty dedication, a new zit had appeared right in the middle of my
forehead. Cue the Clearasil, cue the Maybelline foundation. If only someone had told me that
basketball and beauty are just not meant to go hand in hand.
But I was not the only girl who had mixed feelings about being a woman and an athlete at
the same time; in fact, we all showed signs of confusion at some point. It’s doubtful that during a
men’s basketball practice, you would hear the word “sorry” very often but walk into a gym full
of girls playing an aggressive sport, and you’re bound to hear the word time and time again.
Because girls are taught that aggression and physicality are a serious no-no from a young age, it
is very difficult to let go of that mindset on the basketball court, or any other physical contact
sport that girls participate in. “Women in sporting contexts often engage in apologetic behavior
in response to pressure to re-assert femininity to compensate for engaging in masculine
activities” and I am no exception to this rule (Craig and LaCroix 453). Women are expected to
have better sportsmanship than men and if they show any passion about a sport whatsoever, it is
often interpreted as having an attitude or a bad temper. A fairly recent University of Akron study
found that “women no longer view ‘athleticism’ or ‘decisiveness’ as inherently masculine, but
men still do. Men also associate masculinity with the terms ‘adventurous’, ‘aggressive’,
‘competitive’, and ‘self-confident’” (Orenstein 12). Although women seem to be evolving their
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opinions on what it means to be a woman, men’s opinions will be harder to change. Whether this
is due to fear of changing the status quo or just plain ignorance, it needs to be addressed.
Thinking back to what shapes people’s opinions on gender roles, popular media is largely
to blame for the unrelenting double standard. Coverage of women’s sports is lacking and
women’s athletics are not taken seriously. “The ‘sex sells’ strategy remains deeply embedded
among sports journalists and marketers, who also believe that reaffirming traditional notions of
femininity and heterosexuality is a critical sales strategy. This approach, or so the argument goes,
reassures (especially male) fans, corporate sponsors and TV audiences that females can engage
in highly competitive sports while retaining a nonthreatening femininity” (Kane). When women
are constantly objectified and sexualized, they are no longer seen as people but as commodities.
These types of sales strategies are intended to heighten enthusiasm about women’s sports but
“media images that emphasize femininity/sexuality actually suppress interest in, not to mention
respect for, women’s sports” (Kane).
I could never figure out why my volleyball team was required to wear shorts called
“skins” that were literally just spandex underwear that were long enough to cover your butt but
short enough to show you had one. It also never ceased to amaze me that our basketball home
jerseys were white and the school administration decided to ignore the fact that our shorts were
see-through, even though we weren’t allowed to wear jean shorts or skirts to school. But the
pressure to be sexy and girly kicked in again, and we decided that we would make the best of it
by wearing our “cutest” underwear. “Scholars have long argued that a major consequence of the
media’s tendency to sexualize women’s athletic accomplishments is the reinforcement of their
status as second-class citizens in one of the most powerful economic, social and political
institutions on the planet” and no one feels the glaring reality of disinterest and disrespect more
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than the female athletes themselves (Kane). Maybe we felt the need to show off our underwear if
only it would gauge some interest in the accomplishments that were taking place on the court. Or
maybe our cute underwear were the equivalent of hair ribbons and mascara. Personally, I felt as
though it was yet another establishment of our heterosexuality, as we secretly just wanted the
boys to look past our sweaty demeanor and focus on our better assets (pardon the pun). Either
way, it is now clear to me that our actions reinforced the idea that we were females first, athletes
second, and I never realized how important that was to me until years later.
Even today I feel that I need to prove and perform my role as a woman, although my high
school sporting days are over and I have traded in my basketball shoes for a classier, more
elegant flat (high heels aren’t necessary when your nickname is already “Tall Timber”, God
forbid I should be taller than the boys!). This performance is a direct reflection of the strict
standards that society sets for women; it also reflects an understanding that without the
performance, we will face “punishment”, whether that means exclusion from girl world,
questions regarding sexual orientation, or accusations of masculinity. This has caused me to
develop an irrationally heightened sensitivity regarding my own body image, the way others
perceive me, and the way I judge other women. Until women can be strong, independent, and
aggressive without having their femininity taken into question, they will be victims of society’s
double standards, and many will regard life as a constant performance rather than the freeing,
unpredictable adventure that it should be.
Works Cited
Craig, Traci and Jessica LaCroix. “Tomboy As Protective Identity.” Journal of Lesbian Studies.
Oct 2011: 450-465.
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Kane, Mary Jo. “Sex Sells Sex, Not Women’s Sports.” The Nation. 27 July 2011. 12 December
2013. <http://www.thenation.com/article/162390/sex-sells-sex-not-womens-sports>
Martin, Courtney. Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group,
2007.
Orenstein, Peggy. Cinderella Ate My Daughter. New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 2011.
“The 10 Sexiest Women In Sports.” Men’s Health. 22 June 2011. 12 December 2013.
<http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/sexiest-female-athletes>.