It seems like everytime I turn on the TV, some Olympics commentator is saying something asinine and degrading about the women representing our country. It’s so bad, my husband and I spend 50% of our dinner time discussing the latest medal count and the other 50% saying, “On no, he diin’t.”
Have you been following this too? First there was the Chicago Tribune headline where bronze-medal winning Corey Cogdell was listed as “Wife of Bear’s lineman” – as though her only value was in relation to her husband’s ability to help push along a line drive. Then there was Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu… she crushed the world record in the 400-meter individual medley and before she was even out of the pool, NBC commentator Dan Hicks was praising her husband as “the man responsible for her win”. Apparently getting in the pool and doing the actual swimming doesn’t count for much anymore.
I can’t even count up the number of journalists who praised Katie Ledecky for “swimming like a man”, but that could easily have been runs, throws, lifts or anything else these athletes with vaginas are doing. There have been so many gaffes, large and small, my husband and I can’t keep up with them all.
Last night at dinner, my husband innocently asked, “How did they manage to avoid these kinds of sexist remarks the last go around?”
Well honey, I’m glad you asked. The fact is, they didn’t. For as long as womankind has been excelling, there have always been men ready to assign her glory to someone else (with a penis).
What is different this year is that people are finally taking notice. For the first time, everyday people like me and you are standing up and saying, “What the hell are you saying, dude? SHE deserves the credit for her win!” and refusing to sit back down until the situation is rectified.
It has taken us until 2016, but apparently this is the year when women in the US have had enough. Instead of more of the same old, same old sexist drivel, we are now having a national conversation about sexism, dragging the ugly beast that holds us back right out into the open. We are calling out offenders left and right, the higher up the person is, the more we are holding them accountable.
And if the conversation itself weren’t enough, we’re also making progress! That’s right, my Facebook feed is overflowing with retractions and apologies, half-hearted explanations need not apply. You make a dumb statement and there will be 100 tweets explaining how you can fix it before you even get off the air. Don’t even think about trying to defend it, fix it and move on.
As a woman and the mother of two little girls, the sexist coverage of the 2016 Olympics makes me happy. Not because I like hearing women demeaned at every turn, but because my husband and the rest of the nation are finally saying, “Stop that shit!” and actually meaning it. We’re saying it on the national news, in the major newspapers, on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Men, women, young and old, suddenly everyone found their voice and decided to use it.
When we tell our nation’s leaders that they cannot talk to or about women in sexist terms, we give our daughters the strength to say the same to people who challenge them. When we highlight that women can do anything and also be damn good at it, we’re telling our daughters that they can grow up to be athletes and engineers, mathematicians and scientists, hell, even the president of the United States. Most importantly, we reassure them that we will have their back, all along the way.
So yeah, the 2016 Olympics are still suffering from the same sexist bullshit of years past. But they’re also benefiting from a tidal wave of pro-woman support. Maybe, just maybe if the country takes the lessons learned to heart, our kids won’t have to hear the same sexist shit being said when they attempt the impossible. If that’s the case, this year’s gaffes are a relatively small price to pay to eliminate sexism in mainstream media.
(Shout out to Sports Illustrated, who managed to rise above the gaffes and show the rest of the media world how to celebrate our Olympic athletes the right way!)
