TMB wrote:Nicko, you said,
The relevance of a female athlete's looks is clearly going to be in regards to sponsorship. It's not like female athletes are - as far as I am aware, anyway - being excluded from competition until they get a nose job or something. It's about the image of the athlete in the mass media being linked to their ability to promote products.
I agree, but as in the case of Anna Kournikova, she was able to leverage her looks yet was not the best player, the difference with males athletes is that their looks will be leveraged providing they are at the top of the game. Their value is more dependent upon their ability.
Yep.
TMB wrote:And in this regard, male athletes have an advantage. Just by developing an athletic physique, a man is going to be regarded as more aesthetically pleasing. They've already made themselves "photogenic" as a side effect of their athletic training. Male physical attractiveness seems to be based - at least in part - upon attributes like strength, fitness and power. It is almost impossible for a man to develop the body of an athlete and not become more attractive in an aesthetic sense.
I partly agree, I think the males attractiveness is linked to their success in the sport just like people find Woody Allen sexy because he has charisma and talent but no aesthetic appeal. A woman similarly endowed would have no chance of being seen as sexy, talented perhaps but no queues of admiring men. Status and power in men is physically attractive to women. This means that if the man is notat the top of his game his objective looks will fade in the eyes of the beholder just as a male with lesser physical looks but who is at the top of the game will be seen as more attractive in the eyes of the beholder.
So what you are talking about is
hypergamy. Women are seen as "sex objects" while men are seen as "success objects".
Fair enough, but my point was that the differing standards of beauty in men and women tend to mean that a man who develops a physique that enables him to compete at an elite level in any sport or athletic activity will increase his physical attractiveness. A woman who develops a similarly athletic physique may not necessarily experience the same gain in attractiveness.
Whilst the factors influencing overall attractiveness are of course important, but what I'm saying is that just in terms of
pure physical attractiveness, male athletes get an increase in that as a side effect of
being male athletes. Even an elite male competitor who is not particularly successful relative to his peers will still have an athlete's physique.
TMB wrote:This is not the case with female athletes. Female attractiveness seems to be more based upon youth and facial architecture. It is entirely possible for a woman to become extremely physically fit without necessarily increasing her attractiveness in any sense that the mass media gives a fuck about.
Agreed, the female body building industry spends a lot of time arguing the case of how sexy and feminine their performers are but generally men and other women do not find muscle bound women, with square male like features attractive or sexy. This is not too say that all women find muscle bound men to be attractive or sexy but a significant portion do and if they are someone like Arnold Schwartzeneger who have charisma and status they become even more attractive. As I noted earlier groupies is essentially a female behaviour. I have seen thousands of teenage girls (almost no males) line up to see a male performer, an equivalent female performer got far les interest and an even mix of male and female but no real hysteria or obsession.
I'll get to the difference between male and female performers in a sec. Just on the issue of bodybuilding though, I think it's an excellent example of what I'm talking about. The considerations for a male bodybuilder pretty much end at the top of their neck. Not the case for female bodybuilders.
TMB wrote:It certainly throws up an extra hurdle for women in sports. Not as far as participation goes, but as far as making a career of it goes
As I have noted, the major hurdle, that of performance relative to males, has been overcome by giving women their own event so they are poised to get the same benefits in some sports (swimmers, tennis, golf, athletics – however not in baseball, cricket, soccer, rugby etc). The added advantage if they have the looks is that they do not need to be the best to get benefit. However some will run into issues when their looks are judged and found wanting like a recent winner of a grandslam tennis tournament, or Serena Williams who gets compared to Sharapovas looks and comes off second best, although she wins more tournaments. The contention is between the women themselves, yet it gets thrown back as men somehow getting unfair benefit.
Well, male sports are more financially rewarding than female ones, so it's not really the
same benefit.
Disclaimer: The remainder of this post is entirely speculation on my part. I'm not sure whether I've really convinced myself here, let alone whether I have any reasonable expectation of convincing others. But that brings me to the point you made earlier about male vs. female performers. Perhaps it might be more helpful to conceive of professional athletes in our era as a kind of performer. Someone once, talking about rock bands, said words to the effect that, "Men want to
be the singer; women want to be
with the singer." That is, there is a large factor of "wish-fulfillment" fantasy in all entertainment. I think this does reverse to some extent as you reverse the genders, but then you run into the differences between what makes a man attractive and what makes a woman attractive. You may have noticed that there are very few female singers who hit the big time without being - to be blunt - hot as fuck. Men don't want to be with a female singer, nor do women want to be that singer, unless the singer is hot.
If this is true, and if a large segment of the sports audience is actually motivated in a similar way, this would explain the differing popularity of men's and women's sports (and hence the monetary rewards). Male athletes already meet the requirements for many men's "fantasy self" and many women's "fantasy partner" by default. Female athletes do not meet the requirements for many women's "fantasy self" or many men's "fantasy partner"
just by being athletes. In order to meet the requirement, the female athlete must
also possess certain characteristics of "feminine beauty".
Without the ability to be transformed into this fantasy character in the minds of the audience, a performer/athlete's appeal is going to be restricted to those who appreciate their chosen field for it's own sake. That audience certainly exists, it's just a smaller one. The performer/athletes who do meet this fantasy standard can gain the attention of both the "purists"
and the "fantasists".
"Democracy is asset insurance for the rich. Stop skimping on the payments."
-- Mark Blyth
by 
