Page 185 - Sport Culture and the Media

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(Williams and Lumpkin 1990). When we consider this ‘quantitative’ neglect
alongside the ‘qualitative’ question of the manner in which black women have
been typically represented, then the intersection of gender and racial ideologies
in sports photographs is revealed to be an area worthy of more detailed analysis
and critique. In broad terms, according to Kent Ono (1997: 86) ‘Throughout
U.S. history, African American women are constructed as inherently sexual
and excessively available’. With specific regard to the swimsuit issue of Sports
Illustrated, Davis (1997: 90–1) argues that the neglect and then highly selective
inclusion of women of colour has meant that the ‘models with African ancestry
. . . typically possessed very light-color skin and facial features that conform
to the Anglo-American beauty ideal’, and suggests that there is ‘indisputable
textual evidence that racially-biased standards of beauty’, not to mention
gender-based standards of sexism, ‘influence the swimsuit issue’. But it is not
only black women’s representation in sports photography that demands
attention. The racialized dimension of photography is especially important in
the use of the black male sports body in the advertising of products, where the
sexualized component (which is also a key element of the cultural construction
of black men; Mercer 1992) is ‘bundled’ with a more extensive admixture of
contemporary style and cool (Carrington 2001). This prime role of the black
male sports image in the selling of products is one of part male pin-up, part
style guru. It is reliant on an ‘in your face’ sexual address that (Dennis Rodman
included) rejects feminized complaisance as resolutely as any traditional sports
photograph of the tough, unyielding sportsman. Before moving to a brief dis-
cussion of this genre, we might ask, finally, how a sports photograph becomes
sexual or erotic. ‘Sexiness’ may be consciously cultivated in stronger or weaker
forms by deploying a titillating mode of address associated with ‘cheesecake’
photography and pornography. As a corporeal discipline, sexiness can be a
bi-product of the inherently sensual expression of the sporting body in some
sports. Guttmann (1991, 1996), as noted above, argues that many (especially
feminist poststructuralist) critiques of sport have not been sufficiently well
informed about the historical linkage of sport and the erotic, and have been
blind or resistant to the erotic quality of toned bodies and athletic movement.
In making a plea for ‘mutually admiring male and female gazes (and for gay and
lesbian ones as well)’ (Guttmann 1996: 163), he contrasts the ‘travesties’ of
trying to make (in this case sportswomen) sexy to the ‘marvel’ of the eroticizing
effect of ‘athletic performances’ (Guttmann 1991: 261). Perhaps, then, the
most sexually appealing photographic images of sportspeople are not those in
which they are playing at being sexy, but where they become unconsciously so
by playing their sport well (although, obviously, some sports lend themselves
better to ‘balletic’ moments of beauty than others). But returning sports
photography to the field of action leaves vast quantities of imagery sprinkled