I was reading The New New Journalism, a collection of interviews with famous nonfiction writers. Ron Rosenbaum (author of Explaining Hitler, among other things) mentioned that when he was sent to cover the Super Bowl one year, he arrived early to find a convention of bull semen entrepreneurs. He wrote half his story about the Super Bowl on the bull semen convention, and when his editor questioned him he declared that it was terribly important as a metaphor for the “commodification of masculinity.”
Last night I went to a Flyers game. They played the Tampa Bay Lightning. I have a deep love for professional hockey, and I get particularly attached to players, regardless of team. I hate the way athletes get shipped around without much choice–’traded.’
It seems a bit silly to compare millionaire pop heroes to slaves, but at the same time, something about it makes me deeply uncomfortable. As feminists, we argue against the commodification of women’s bodies. But since this commodification of men’s bodies is so highly paid–and of course, not sexual–it doesn’t garner protest quite so often.
The idea of a team seems at odds with the idea that players can be told to pack their things and move to another state at pretty much any time.
My friend, who attended the game with me, laughed at my abrupt changes from intense fan to lustful girl-child (punctuating shouts of “stay in the net!” with “oh, so pretty,”) and joked that hockey was my porn.
This after a class discussion last week about ‘porn for chicks’ being stories in women’s magazines about rose petals in the bed and romantic dinners and such. Because of course women don’t enjoy sex and don’t think of men as sexual beings.
I objectify the hell out of hockey players and other famous men I find attractive. I like to joke about not wanting to actually talk to men that I think are cute because it’ll ruin the fantasy. I suppose I’m as rotten as any guy who goes to strip clubs, except the guys I’m looking at aren’t selling sex.
In the case of Vincent Lecavalier, center for Tampa Bay, he’s selling a certain vision of masculinity, though. He’s selling his skills at a game, sure, but it’s more than that. It’s an image of Man, young, virile, athletic, and in his case, with a fluid, natural grace on a pair of ice skates that is just, well, sexy. I like the way he moves.
I watch sports for the thrill of the competition, then, but also for the spectacle–the visual pleasures. I would argue, for those of you who know what I’m talking about, that sports inverts the Mulvey paradigm of visual pleasure in cinema–men take pleasure in identification with their sports heroes the way women take pleasure in identifying with the women on the movie screen, whereas men take pleasure in looking-at. When I watch Lecavalier (or Tom Brady, or any number of other pretties who play a game for a living) I am taking pleasure in looking-at.
For evidence, note that at games, grown men show up wearing a jersey with the name and number of their favorite player on it.
In another class, last semester, we devoted an entire three hour seminar period to discussing the portrayal of women athletes. Most guys in my class had little to no interest in watching women play sports unless they were attractive women. Because women athletes do not allow them the same pleasure in identification while watching. They claim, of course, that women athletes “just aren’t as good.” But of course, I call bullshit on that.
Anyway, I’m sure there’s plenty out there written on these subjects. It’s just been bubbling in my brain lately. That, and visions of pretty men on skates…