This comment popped up in my inbox yesterday from this post:

“maybe we aren’t “demeaning” anyone–maybe being sexy is a positive thing, not a demeaning one. Too radical a notion?”

This is in reference to elite and professional athletes being portrayed in highly sexualized manners.

That’s more than one question.  What are  the questions then?  Are we demeaning athletes, is being sexy positive, and is that too radical a notion?

Is being sexy positive?  Yes.  It is.  It’s positive to be sexy, and attractive, and beautiful.   There’s no disputing that.  Literature tells us that attractive people get more positive things in life – greater recognition, more job opportunities/promotions, better benefits, etc. etc. etc.  Is it bad to be sexy?  Not at all.  The problem comes when we hold every woman up to a sexy image, and say that image is the ‘ideal’ for women.  It’s just not possible.  In body image research, one of my personal biggest critiques is that body image research tries to fit every woman in to one ideal.  Why do we only get one?  Why can’t there be more than one?  In my personal life, I emulate a lot of different ideals.  So to bring it around to athletes, if the images that young girls see most often is a sexy image of a pro athlete, is that a positive?  I don’t think so.  There’s a difference between glamour-ing it up and sexing it up.  It’s a tricky line, but I think the dominant images of pro and elite female athletes should be of them being athletes.  Not tricking out in bikinis to try to gain viewers.

So are we demeaning athletes? In some instances, I say yes, we are.  Dara Torres, the swimmer, has accomplished amazing athletic feats in the sport of swimming.  4 Olympic games, winning medals in all four, competing against people that weren’t even born when she was in her first Olympics.

Yet…

Yeah, yeah, she’s in a pool, and she’s a swimmer, and she’s wearing a bathing suit.  What’s the problem?

Tell me.  Are you thinking about her Olympic accomplishments?  The hours upon hours she’s spending in the gym, sweating, and pushing her body to the athletic max?  Do you think a young female swimmer is going to think of that?  Or is she going to look at this amazing athlete, and think that all that is important is how her body looks, and how sexy she can be?

The fact that we even have to ask that question to me says that yes, we are demeaning our athletes.

Being sexy isn’t a radical notion.  But put it in context.  This isn’t talking about how these women might look for a night on the town, for a VIP event, or how they might look to go out to a concert one night.   This isn’t talking about how I might want to look for my husband when we go out sometimes.  This isn’t talking about the models we see in Cosmo or Glamour.

This is talking about what an athlete is best known for, and how an athlete is portrayed by the media.

Call me crazy, but I think they should be known for being an athlete, and not solely a sex symbol.  And that young girls should have a role model to look up to that’s not sexed out in a bikini.

The recovery is still going.  It seems like in the past week, I had a sudden surge of healing, and I’m feeling much more like my old self.  At least stamina-wise I am.  I seem to have my normal energy back and that’s a good thing!! Physically I’m still not there yet, but I’m (still) trying to be patient.  I am thinking I might go back to the gym this week.  I think all I’ll be able to manage is walking on the treadmill – and walking slower than normal – but it will feel good to get back and do something.

I also realized last week just how behind I got in my schoolwork.  I knew I was going to get a little behind, but when I actually sat down and looked at what needed to get done, I had a huge “Oh, shit!” moment.

My boy and I are heading up to Canada in another week ago to a big sports conference.  I’m really excited to go to it, since it looks like there’s going to be a lot of interesting panels and presentations.  I mean, it’s a whole conference that revolves around sports – how can I not like it?  I’ve also never really been to Canada.  I say ‘really’ because I did go to Niagara Falls a few years ago, and walked to the Canadian side of the falls, but I don’t count that as legitimately going.  This time I need my passport.

I had one solo paper accepted, and we had one joint paper accepted.  The solo paper is the pilot study for what became my dissertation; I looked at how commentary during the 2008 gymnastics competition in Beijing might have a had a very nationally biased slant to it.  I found evidence of some bias, but I’m honestly surprised that it wasn’t bigger.  I still need to analyze the individual event finals, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do them before we leave.  I’ll try, and if not, I think I have enough data to present with just the team and all-around competitions analyzed.

My boy and I did one where we analyzed the school newspapers of all the schools in the SEC to see if there was a gender bias in the coverage of sports.  I have almost all those numbers run, and there is about a 60/40 split that favors men in actual articles, but the word count of articles about men versus articles about women is just about equal.  The bias isn’t as big as it is in for-profit papers, but (I think) it’s still significant.  I’m excited for that one.

Plus, in the honor of going to a sports conference, I scored us tickets to the Ottawa Senators vs. the NJ Devils hockey game.  I LOVE hockey, and now we’re going to go to a hockey game in Canada.  It’s the land!  I’m a Rangers fan at heart, but I never get to see hockey anymore, so I’ll take the Devils too.  We’ve seen two MLB games so far when we’ve been to conferences, so going to hockey seems like a good fit as well.  One day we’ll have to go to a conference that enables us to hit up an NFL game.

It’s research, right?

This just looked fun, and it’s been a while, so I lifted it from the Fish at Fishing Around. 

1. Is there anybody you just wish would fall off the planet?

Absolutely.  Lots of someones.

2. How do you flush the toilet in public?

I flush it with my foot.  I thank my years of gymnastics for the ability to still do this.

3. Do you wear your seatbelt in the car?

Always!

4. Do you have a crush on someone?

Yes.  My cute husband. 

5. Name one thing you worry about running out of.

Toilet paper.  Because that would be horrible.

6. What famous person do you (or other people) think you resemble?

I have never been compared to anyone famous.  I don’t even think I look like anyone famous.  I just look like me.

7. What is your favourite pizza topping?

Sausage.  But good Italian sausage, not some generic crap.

8. Do you crack your knuckles?

Yes

9. What song do you hate the most?

Most songs by Green Day get on my last nerve. Nickelback songs run a close second.

10. Did just mentioning that song make it get stuck in your head?

Nope.

11. What are your super powers?

I can create fire!

12. Peppermint or spearmint?

Peppermint

13. Where are your car keys?

Downstairs on the counter next to my purse.

14. Last song you listened to?

Ummm.  I can’t remember?

15. What’s your most annoying habit?

Is ‘being too hard on myself’ a habit?  Because I certainly make it one.

16. Where did you last go on vacation?

Outside of Philadelphia, in the Poconos.

17. What is your best physical feature?

Depends who you ask

18. What CD is closest to you right now?

One I just made that now holds all the materials I collected in my Ph.D. classes.

19. What 3 things can always be found in your refrigerator?

Milk, Sweet Tea, and fruit of some kind.

20. What superstition do you believe/practice?

Throwing salt over your shoulder, and not walking under ladders.

21. What colour are your bed sheets?

The ones currently on the bed are navy blue.

22. Would you rather be a fish or a bird?

Fish!

23. Last thing you broke?

A glass.  I think.

24. What are you having to eat tonight?

Food!

25. What colour shirt are you wearing?

Navy blue Auburn long sleeve t-shirt.

26. If you could be doing anything else today, what would you rather be doing?

Laying on a beach, drinking a frozen adult beverage, and reading a book.

27. Do security cameras make you nervous?

Nope.  I usually don’t notice them.  Sometimes I like to make faces at them when I do notice them.

28. If you wrote a book about your life, what would the title be?

Duh – A Yank Gone South

29. Last time you went to a cemetery?

When my grandmother died.  Almost 5 years ago?

30. Last concert you went to?

An Indigo Girls concert.  Love them!

31. Favourite musician(s)/bands you’ve seen in concert?

Indigo Girls, U2, Prince, Harry Connick Jr – can you say yum?

32. Next concert you’re planning to attend?

The next one that is free (so, in other words, none).

33. Do you talk to yourself?

Every single day.

34. Have you ever adopted or purchased a pet?

Please.  How do you think I get my animals?  I adopt!

35. Have you ever been present when an animal is being born?

Gross.  No.

I meant to talk about my research, and thought I had a good plan for the next couple of weeks.

Then there was a problem.

It was a pain in my lower right side that started, oh, in July.  It was more annoying than anything. Because I’m awesome, I figured I’d bring it up at my next doctor’s appointment.  In September.  So the ache stayed.  Sometimes it got worse, but mostly it felt like I had been kicked in the right side.  Then it conveniently ramped itself up about a week before I went to the doctor.  Now I could go in complaining of stabbing pains that were now hurting, not just annoying.

I went from one doctor, to the ER, back to the same doctor, then to a new doctor, and it was decided that I needed a diagnostic laprascope done to figure out what the hell was going on.  One doctor said appendix, the other said adhesions or something else.  They both performed the surgery, and the only thing I knew for sure was that my appendix was most likely going to be coming out.

That was two weeks ago tomorrow.  My appendix did go, along with a lot of adhesions and scar tissue.  My mom came down to be my own private nurse (it works out nicely that she has been a registered nurse since 1970).  I have been mostly laying on the couch, recuperating, and not doing much research.

I’m  recuperating nicely from the surgery, and my three incisions apparently look ‘beautiful’.  This was said by both my parents, as the three of us pulled up our shirts this weekend to compare stomach scars.  I, as the beneficiary of the least invasive surgery, and 2009 technology, do have much better looking scars.  Or I will, once they heal.  They are still skeeving me out a little bit.

I still get tired more easily than I’d like.  I can’t pick things up that I normally would (because I like to pick up heavy stuff).  It’s hard to go from being the independent do’er of things to being the one that asks for help.  When I do try, I am either quickly reminded by the healing stomach to stop, or am quickly reprimanded by my boy.  I’m trying to remember to ask for help all the time.  Considering how I normally am, I don’t think I’m doing that bad.

I drove today, for the first time since the surgery.  I’ve been a passenger in a car, and that’s uncomfortable.  Driving was not making me happy at all.  My head should be cleared from the anesthesia, but you apparently use a lot more of your stomach than you realize when driving.  Well, that and the seat belt doesn’t help.  I’m glad I only drove 10 or so miles today.  By the time I got back home,  I was ready to be done.

So I’m still resting, but there’s a conference in a little over three weeks that I’ve got two papers to present at.  Which means I should do them.  One’s going to look at a nationalism bias in commentary of a sporting event – which is actually the pilot study for my dissertation – and the second is a comparison of how much coverage boys versus girls are getting in college newspapers.  One lit review is currently done, the 2nd is being worked on.  The actual research needs to be done, so I’ll have a nice little project to work on as I continue to try to let myself heal and not overdo.

Did you know that Sports Illustrated expanded their boundaries beyond the swimsuit issue, and did a feature on the 20 best looking athletes?

Want to guess how many men there were?  How many women?

I’ll tell you.  There were 20 women, and no men.  I guess that means male athletes aren’t attractive.

Surprising?  No.   Discouraging?  A little.

P.S. None of the shots of the 20 best looking athletes were of the women doing anything athletic.  If you’re going to call them hot, at least put a picture up of them surfing or snowboarding or whatever.

*Note: I don’t know why this post is formatting this way, and after 10 minutes of no success in changing it, it’s just going to stay the way it is.  Enjoy the half nude athletes anyway.

As I’ve travelled down the Ph.D. path, it took me almost two years to get to my current area of research, which is a little surprising to me.  In a nutshell, I’m studying media portrayals of athletes, including differences in gender.  In the spring I did a really fun paper where I looked at how female athletes were affected by the images of elite female athletes in the media.  Right now, our undergrads are apparently desperate for research participation abilities, so my advisor had the idea to revise something we did to try to get it through IRB asap, and hopefully take advantage of the willing participant pool.

So I started looking at my survey, and decided to do something in the vein of what normal, non-athletes think of how male and female athletes are portrayed.  Female athletes are generally sex objects, and we see them in the following ways:

Nothing really atypical, for what past research has shown for female media portrayals.

Then I started looking at images of males. And surprisingly, I found these:

Um, what?  And these weren’t even hard to find.  These were some of the first images that popped up on Google.

So sex sells.  We know this.  We may not necessarily like it, but in reality?  We don’t do much to stop it.

But these images of the guys?  (and yes, they are all pictures of athletes, not models).  FASCINATING.

So my question becomes – what does it mean?  What do people think of it?  Is it good?  Bad?  A positive for sports?  Or are we just demeaning athletes of both sexes now?

I love my job.

I’m in a wedding in a couple of weeks, and despite losing a bunch of weight (and keeping it off) for my own wedding, I decided to buy a Spanx bodysuit anyway.  It’s not that I even really need it for the slimming effect, but more because the top portion of the dress isn’t the most flattering on me, so I figured I’d just make sure all my lines were smooth underneath.

In the greater Birmingham area, there is one place to buy Spanx.  One.  Sak’s Fifth Avenue.  You know – the place that isn’t exactly student budget friendly? (Or any budget friendly, for that matter.  Budget and Saks do not go in the same sentence unless you are talking about your unlimited budget)  So this is not a place I frequent oh, ever.   I went in on Friday, and they asked me for my phone number or email address.  I picked the lesser of the two evils, and gave my email.

Today I received my first email.  I promptly clicked on the ‘unsubscribe’ link, and hopefully ensured that it will also be my last email.   I don’t know why I found that so funny, but I  did.  That’s a big marketing fail.  Maybe they should just not email people that only go in and buy one thing.  That might be a sign that the people a) aren’t really that interested, or b) don’t have the wallets that are being targeted.

My birthday was Saturday, and I had just the most perfect day ever.  I got to spend the whole day with my boy, no interruptions, no schoolwork, and no stress.  We stopped in Clanton for some fresh peach ice cream (which we hadn’t had in over a year) on our way to Auburn for the football game.  Despite the monsoon that delayed kick off for an hour-ish, it was a great game.  I say that now, because Auburn won.    I had my doubts during the first quarter.  We got home obnoxiously late, which left us nice and tired for a visit with our friends and their absolutely tireless four year old.  I couldn’t have asked for a better day!

I’m debating making some changes to the blog here, as I’m determined not to let it die, and it’s been pretty sad around here.  I’ve started in the past 6 months or so to really get interested in sports research, and I’m debating starting to talk about it on here.  It’s pretty interesting stuff.  To me, at least.  I’m pretty focused on gender differences in sports, and I’m tossing an idea around in my head for a new paper that I think would be really interesting, if I can get the right direction on it.

If nothing else, perhaps pictures of scantily clad male and female athletes will attract some attention.

I’m working on the revisions for the dissertation proposal.  My plan was to have it done by last Friday.  That didn’t happen.  Today I had to email my chair and say “If I’ve switched the experiment to this type of design, then that means all of my old independent variables are wrong, so are my new ones this and that?”

The fact that I’m writing the dissertation and I still don’t know for sure what my independent variables is just one example of why I’m having severe buyers remorse with my program.

My new hope is to finish up the revisions tomorrow.  They asked for clarification on a few things, and asked me to add a couple more things that I’m about convinced don’t exist in the literature.  But because I’m a compulsive overachiever, I’m going to kill myself looking for it.

**********

Tonight I took part in my first fantasy football draft.  It’s an all girls league, and I’m pretty excited.  How’s this for role reversal?  My boy is working late tonight, and I got to go drink beer, eat pizza, and play fantasy football.   Our life is good.

I have no idea how I’m going to fare in fantasy football, because I don’t really understand it.  In the 6th round, I apparently snagged a running back that everyone else was gunning for.  I wasn’t 100% sure who he even was, I just liked the way his stats looked.  It’ll be interesting.  At the very worst, my team will suck, but I’ll still go to the mid-season watch party.  More football and beer, oh darn.

**********

I’m having a complete failing when it’s come to working out lately.  We decided to suspend our Y membership to try to save money, figuring we’d alternate between the gyms at our respective schools.  So far, for me at least, it hasn’t been working out too good.  I’m apparently too battered and beat up to use most of the machines at my boy’s school, and my school is too far to just make a run to.  It’s so frustrating to me, because I was in a really good groove of working out.  Now I just feel lazy and unhealthy, and I hate it.  I wish I could figure out the magic answer.  If I don’t figure something out soon I’m going to be really cranky.

That, or I’m just going to take over the darn Y membership and pay it for my own sanity.

*************

In the bestest news (besides my ABD status), my friend WENNYBROWN has accepted a job with a big company and is relocating to Birmingham.  I am SO excited she’s going to be here.  She came over last weekend, we scoped out apartments, she signed a lease, and she moves in this weekend.  The best part of it?  She hired movers.  She’s smarter than we are. 

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the alphabet. Yet.  ABD is how I will define myself for the next few months or so.  In the world of academia, ABD stands for “All But Dissertation”.

I defended my dissertation proposal yesterday – successfully!  Not the entire dissertation.  That will hopefully come in January.  The proposal stage is rumored to be the most difficult, because that’s where your committe gives you the go-ahead on actually doing your dissertation work.  You write the first three chapters of it (the intro – yes, that gets its own chapter – the literature review, and the proposed methodology).  Your committee reads it, rips it apart, and sends you along to clean up the pieces.

I have a really solid committee of really good scholars, and more importantly, they all play nicely in the sandbox together, and no one feels a need to trump anyone else, and there’s no ego battles in the room.  That’s good, because I’d hate to have to look at people older than me and tell them to grow up.  My chair and I had a strategy meeting on Monday to decide who would go first and set the tone.  We decided on Dr. C, who is just the most awesome professor.  He is very go-with-the-flow, not a boat rocker, and I think he likes me so much because I have initiative and he doesn’t have to hold my hand.  We figured he’d be my lightweight committee member who would throw out a suggestion, and that would be it.

Wrong.  It was his turn, and he said “How much time do I have?”  If your ‘easy’ person makes that statement, then that should be a sign that things are going to go downhill quickly.

Thankfully, they did not.  He tore my methodology apart, but not in a bad way.  I knew it sucked, and he, along with the rest of the committee, made some great suggestions.  Hell, they told me to cut half of it, and simplified the other half.  They told me to do less.  I like that.

They approved, they signed the form, and I’ve successfully defended my dissertation proposal.  I finished the copy edits and minor revisions today, and now I’ll go through the list of “Must-do’s”.  That will get sent to the graduate school.  I’ve now crossed over the line from being a doctoral student to being ABD.

Next stop, Dr. Annie.

I’m writing a cover letter.  At least, I’m trying.  I hate these things.  How much shameless self promotion is too much?  I really wish I had the balls to just write one that says “I won’t waste your time, just look at my CV”.  Ugh.

So rather than write this cover letter, I figured I’d steal this meme from Fishing Around and do it instead.

what are your most common nicknames? Ren and Yankee.

what is today’s weather? It’s raining a lot.  It was a little muggy when I went to the store earlier.

where did go on vacation this year? I’m including conference travel, since I do fun stuff while I’m wherever.  Savannah, Philly, Oklahoma, CT, Boston.  Still to come – PA, Canada, and home again.

what did you do there? Visited family, sight-saw, and scholarly things.

where did you stay? With family, friends, and hotels.

what job do you do? I’m a research geek right now.

describe where you live. An Alabama suburb.  It looks like any other suburb, USA.

what do you usually do on weekends? Sleep late.  Do schoolwork.  Clean house.  Watch movies.  Visit with friends.  Watch football/go to games.  Cook.

what food hits your ‘bliss spot’? Ice cream.  Cookie dough ice cream.

what drink really does it for you? I really don’t think I have one.

describe the first friend that comes to your head. Awesome.

what was the last restaurant you went to? Our normal bbq place for Friday Pie Day.

where would you like to live if you had unlimited moneys and nothing stopping your dreams? Easy.  NYC.  No question.

what is the likeliness of you achieving this dream home? Slim to never.

what do you like to do in your spare time? Read, take pictures, sit in my rocking chair and rock.

what’s your favorite genre for TV programs? Drama

what’s your favorite genre for music? Rock

what’s your favorite song that’s sad? Ummmm…I guess “Angel” by Sarah McLaughlin – but really only when I hear it on the ASPCA commercial.

what’s your favorite soppy film? Dragonfly

how about your favorite chick flick? Working Girl

what are you looking forward to at the moment? Finishing this cover letter (which yes, I know is my own fault because I’m doing this meme instead).

what are you dreading at the moment? Writing this cover letter?  And I’m slightly dreading my upcoming dissertation proposal defense.

how would you describe your personality? Happy, silly, sarcastic and guarded.

if you had a personality eraser, what part of yours might you erase? The part that worries endlessly about everything.

you are given $5000 to spend in 1 day, what do you do with it? remember, no limitations! Put it toward my car payment.  Or bank it for future conference travel that my school probably won’t pay for.

what is your biggest fear? Right now?  Doing a really bad job on this cover letter and sounding like a tool.

Sigh.  Back to work.