“Nobody ever really asks us about our suits anymore,” May-Treanor said last week. “I think that’s because they are realizing how much hard work goes into it, the athleticism of the sport itself. They’re just used to it. So it has moved past that point.”
Anyone who still had questions could meet her in the gym.
The Washington Post’s Steven Goff writes about D.C. United and Major League Soccer and has covered seven men’s and women’s World Cups. Here he previews the gold medal game against Japan, an almost identical team to the one the U.S. lost to in the 2011 Women’s World Cup final. Find out the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. women’s team as they seek redmption against a disciplined and talented Japan.
“If they want to arm wrestle, I’ll get clothed and we can go lift weights in the weight room,” she said.
Pound for pound, has there been a stronger performer than all-around gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas? Douglas is 4 feet 11 and weighs about 94 pounds. “All muscle, though,” her mother, Natalie Hawkins, said at a pre-Olympic event in May. When Douglas went to get a pre-event physical, according to her mother, the doctor couldn’t believe her abdominals. The nurse said, “Oh, my God. It’s like steel.” The doctor said, “Never in all my medical career have I seen this much muscle on a tiny person.”
“She has muscles in her face,” her mother said.
It’s entirely possible that Shields, a 17-year-old middleweight from Flint, Mich., will become another darling of the audiences by the end of the Games. She is the only one of the 12-member American boxing team to have a shot at a gold; all nine men were eliminated, stunningly, a first for the winningest team in Olympic history. Women’s boxing is debuting in these Games, and Shields has displayed hand speed, a devastating right, and glittering personality. She regularly spars with men because “most women can’t handle me,” she says.
What explains this overwhelming trend? It probably has to do with a wave breaking. The wave began to form in 1976, when women’s basketball was first included in the Olympics. It built in 1984, when it was finally decided that women wouldn’t get the torpors or the vapors from running a marathon. But as late as 1996, it was still just a large swell — 26 nations that year sent male-only teams to the Olympics.
At last, most athletic federations seem to have chosen success over the pathetic trope that female athleticism comes at the expense of men. Not that the battle is over: Too many women still have to worry how they’re going to pay for the gas to get to the gym.
But there appears to be a growing mainstream appreciation of the fact that quite often at the Olympics, women are doing better work for less pay. What’s more, audiences find their passionate quests, their willingness to compete for relatively small but pure rewards, immensely appealing. With that in mind, it seems worth quoting the great heptathlon champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who put it best so many years ago.
“I don’t think being an athlete is unfeminine,” she said. “I think of it as a kind of grace.”
It also seems worth quoting the late, great Nora Ephron. “Don’t be the victim of your own life,” she said. “Be the heroine.”
For previous Sally Jenkins columns, visit washingtonpost.com/jenkins.
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