Stuck in the minors

A new book says that women will soon equal men at sports. If only it were true.

By Emily Jenkins

Sep 18, 2000 | In the 1990s, "Tinker Bell gymnasts were no longer praised for their tininess. Developing figure skaters talked openly about devising changes in their technique to address the shift in balance produced by growing breasts and hips. They didn't make their bodies stop growing to accommodate the sport, as gymnasts and skaters used to have to do; instead, they made the sport accommodate their growing bodies ... The social skeleton look had vanished."

So writes Colette Dowling, author of "The Cinderella Complex," in her entertaining feminist argument about women's strength: "The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality." "By making themselves physically equal [through exercise and self-defense training]," Dowling writes, "women can at last make themselves free."

I loved this book. Dowling describes the achievements of the first woman to play men's pro baseball, the girls' soccer team that beat all the boys' teams in the 1993 Ohio games, a 10th-grader who made the all-state Georgia football team. Katherine Switzer dodged irate officials to compete in the all-male Boston Marathon. Bev Francis changed the face of women's bodybuilding by refusing to limit the size of her muscles to appropriately feminine proportions. Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs. These stories are so inspirational that I would like to believe every word Dowling says -- but some of her argument is just wishful thinking.

As anyone who has lately opened a fashion magazine knows, the social skeleton look is alive and well, and to her credit Dowling later tempers her joyous proclamation that we are a nation of happy mesomorphs with a section on the much-publicized crisis in adolescent body image. Also, as anyone who watched skater Tara Lipinski win the Olympics can see, tiny bodies still earn gold medals in the most visible of women's sports. And as Joan Ryan attested in "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes" (and as Dowling later acknowledges), many competitive gymnasts and skaters suffer from severe eating disorders.

Dowling argues that by closing the strength gap women can gain social and political ground, and her central point is excellent and well-documented. However, I have two problems with her belief in the power of sports for women. First, many of the values of the current exercise boom are still very much in sync with the values of traditional femininity. And second, the sports we play are almost all designed for men.

When I arrived at college in 1985, the fitness craze was in full force. Jamie Lee Curtis flaunted her physique in the health club movie "Perfect." Madonna flexed her muscles on MTV. Jane Fonda sold millions of books and workout videos, and sexy bodybuilder Rachel McLish strutted her stuff in commercials, reminding women: "Before you primp, you've got to pump." Exercise was in -- and to me, it seemed like a feminist revolution.

I signed up, did aerobics every day and miraculously became a jock when I had always been a feminine weakling.

Next Page: The fitness movement was backlash, not feminism

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