We publish this article in Yahoo in Spanish in July 2021.We show it again to our users because it was one of the most viewed and commented stories on our site throughout 2021.
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What madness to think that women do things!In the 21st century, this notion seems wild.What do women do?Or rather, what do we do?
And when women do things, it's news!Should be.Breaky woman in public to her son.Girl wins gold medal in the female skating category.Woman faces marathon authorities and runs with men.Crazy!
The history of the first marathoner in Boston in 1967, Kathrine Switzer, is a well -known example that the rules, not because they exist and have been imposed dozens of years by men (considering that they were the only ones occupying management positions) are the right thing or the rightYou have to follow them.
Norway's national team in handball protested against a measure that imposed them to use a bikini uniform with which they did not feel comfortable and on the contrary, they say that sexualizes them.
The European Handball Federation, knowing this protest, instead of questioning the rules, did the opposite, but what has been done against women who raise their voice: punish them.Even the same International Handball Federation has admitted that it does not know the reasons why these rules on the uniforms for handball athletes were issued.
I would think that we all listen.That we all understand that they do not seek to impose their concept of comfort or aesthetics on the rest of the teams and that they are not even inventing another costume that is not the same that their companions men use.
That thought stopped until the photographs and some media holders or information agencies in their Tokyo coverage appeared.
Women's reification
Just an international agency distributed photographs of beach volleyball athletes taken at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.This could not be known, unless you read the photo foot, because the only thing that came out in the photographs were: a zoom to the back of an athlete, whose bikini only had the mark of the garment, and one hand resting on the hip withA volleyball ball.Until a stock photograph that are usually used for advertising tells you more than that!(or shows you the full woman).
In another image the thighs of the athlete appeared, while shooking at the same height sand from his hands and we saw his bikini in front and part of the torso.No more.We do not know who they are if we do not read the photo foot.We don't see their faces, we don't even see them in action, let's.If we take them out of context, we would think that they are even models.In a photograph the logo of the Olympic Games appears to the back.It can be 20 or 40 years ago, but no more because until before 1960, the uniforms should be just a few centimeters above the knee.
Those women who have possibly practiced childThe view ".This practice is called the Women's Grief, which is sexism in the media and not only has an impact on athletes, but also on those who consume these images because the message they send is one in which athletes are objects to enjoy, do notAction agents, according to the gender perspective guide in sports journalism.For sporting information free of stereotypes (2021) of the UN.
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— Jeff Lewis Sat Jun 20 21:05:08 +0000 2020
Discrimination and sport
Because also the information we see is the same as always: they are bodies that enter the most accepted and celebrated beauty standards.
The bodies that do not enter this "acceptable" category to look, have been strongly criticized in competencies for not looking like our repetitive concept of athletic or thin bodies, as if automatically those characteristics were synonymous with Olympic strength and health.
In a more obvious comparison: when Norwegian athletes received their fine, Paralympic athlete Olivia Breen with cerebral palsy received a sexist comment from England Athletics.The official told Breen during a test that she had to get longer shorts because her clothing was "too short and inappropriate".And here we enter a traitist speech, that is, the discrimination of people with disabilities-.
No woman should be reified or treated as if they were not multifaceted people with different purposes more than being a pleasant show to see.
"We start from the moment the image occurs and who produces it.The photographer does have a responsibility and plays a very important role in which women are still seen as pieces of meat that compete and not as high performance athletes that are in international competition, "says Greta Rico, Mexican documentary photographer andTeacher in Feminist Studies from the Autonomous University of Mexico - Xochimilco.
But these omissions not to photograph all bodies in the same way are the perfect proof that these angles are not accidental, but entirely biased by practices and teachings in the photograph of sexist, racist, capacitist sports journalism, nothing updated or questioned internally, repeated until tired and totally retrograde that meet very little with an informative purpose.
Stereotype
Women for centuries have been considered only as one more attraction to the landscape, not-hay-caes, just posing, being there, looking pretty.
"These constructions from the focus and the male gaze have generated a myth of women, not only is a stereotype formed like this, but many times those representations also violate women because they are messages that are constantly telling us that we are wrong, to the extent that a collective imaginary of women is generated; in the same way society and culture generate good women and bad women, ”explains Greta too.
At the international level there is Beijing's statement and action platform, held in 1995 and adopted by the UN that, among other points in favor of women's rights, insists that the media must suppress the constant projection of negative images or inTraditional papers that are restrictive and on the other hand, offer more stories of the contribution of women and their different lifestyles.
And although we see and know that women athletes do-cosas, the world continues to focus their static legs and their bikini or their butt and a ball.And now that women are protesting, we are just looking at them.Why aren't we paying attention to them?Riot Grrrl's band, X-Ray Spex already said: "Some people think girls should be seen, but not heard".
"Representation creates culture.We as women when we were girls, seeing how women were represented in the novels, in movies or in art, we are assimilating that culturally that is what we have to be or not, ”says Greta Rico.She from her gaze and documentary work with a gender approach tries.
And in the debate of what was first?The following doubts arise: Who sexualized first?the clothes?the bodies?Photographers?the media?The spectator people?the society?Everybody?It can be, there is no clear answer but there are direct requests.
The correct answer matters little when it is the athletes who express feel uncomfortable with the imposed costumes and must use them while they have a world and historical reflector about them.It matters little when we continue talking about or photographing their physical aspects instead of concentrating on their athletic abilities or their context.
