The Male Gaze and the Women’s World Cup

By | July 16, 2011

My recent post on Louisa Necib has been the most visted post I’ve ever written on this blog. That’s a great testament to the burst of interest this Women’s World Cup has generated around the world. (France’s semi-final  game, for instance, attracted 4 million viewers in a country that has been very slow to adopt women’s football). But a small but significant minority of those who found their way to the article did so after typing in “Louisa Necib nude” or “Louisa Necib hot” – or in a few desperate cases, “Louisa Necib boyfriend” on a google search. Jennifer Doyle — who has, for years, written brilliantly on the topic of the representation of female athletes — reported similarly recently that the title of her blog post, “Allez les Nudes” created a jump in her blog traffic. It turns out, then, that our high-falutin’ blogs are partly being sustained by people looking for naked pictures of female soccer players.

In 1999, Brandi Chastain famously (or infamously) posed naked — though demurely covered with soccer balls — in a series of photographs published in Gear magazine. The photographs were partly an attempt to get attention for the Women’s World Cup team, and they generating tremendous debate at the time about the merits and consequences of such a strategy. That, coupled, with the famous “bra” moment at the end of the 1999 World Cup final, generated a memorable controversy at the time.

Times have changed since then for U.S. women’s soccer. But with the drama of the World Cup suddenly over, it might be worth asking how issues of sexuality and representation played themselves out in this tournament — particularly in the U.S. and France — and what that might mean for the future of women’s sports.

In the past days a flood of people have effusively praised the U.S. women’s national team. That’s a beautiful and just thing, and hopefully will end up producing at least some devoted new converts to women’s soccer. Some commentators have moved beyond calls for equality for women’s sport, insisting that female athletes are actually superior to men in crucial ways. We seem to be long way from the representation of Women’s soccer as it briefly appeared in the best sports series in recent years, “Friday Night Lights”: in the figure of a slightly crazed, mystifyingly angry female coach bandying a deflated soccer ball and demanding to know why she couldn’t get any funding while the football team got all of it. Though of course, as a number of more wary commentators have been noting all along,  all this enthusiasm may prove fleeting: it remains to be seen whether the profound inequality in the funding given and media attention paid of women’s sports gets addressed. Many seem eager to burden the U.S. women’s national team with the burden of converting a nation to soccer. But the reality is that if anyone is to blame in the comparative marginalization of the sport, it’s a soccer federation that has never given it as much support as it deserves, and a media that doggedly refuses to foreground women’s soccer even as they feed us a steady diet of mediocre spectacle from other sports.

Much of the explosion support for the team is very straightforward and simply enthusiastic. But there’s also been plenty of more coded twitter-love showered on the stars of the U.S. team — a quick search will turn up any number of amorous declarations, requests for marriage, links to photographs with descriptors like “hot!”, and banter — variously charming and smarmy — about the comparative sexiness of players. Today, @Futfanatico wondered what to make of the various marriage proposals proffered to Alex Morgan on her facebook pageOne response was pretty clear: “I think it’s creepy + pathetic.” There is similar chatter surrounding the French team, and I assume other teams as well. Some of the marriage proposals were made in a much more public way.

Crushing on athletes is, of course, itself an energizing and widespread sport. And the objectification of athletes — sexual or otherwise — is chronic and institutionalized. The endlessly entertaining and clever site, Kickette, excels at providing gregarious coverage focused largely on the sexiness of various football players. Princeton English Professor Jeffrey Nunokawa, who has recently been profiled in the New Yorker for his series of remarkable Facebook essays, considers Fernando Torres perhaps his greatest muse. And, as one visitor to this blog noted pointedly in a comment on an earlier draft of this post, there are certainly many women also gazing at and admiring the stars of the World Cup, and some who — at a WPS game in New York just after the tournament — publicly proposed marriage to Alex Morgan.

But as the World Cup wound down, the inimitable Sepp Blatter, head of FIFA, declared: “A great thing about the women’s football is they don’t cheat. It might not be the same in their other lives.” The statement, which I’m sure he and those who will rush to his defense in the coming days consider innocuous and amusing, is not only further proof — as if any such proof was needed — of just how geriatric, corrupt, and out-of-touch FIFA’s ruling class is with the sport they purport to represent. It’s also an important reminder of how thoroughly embedded sexism of various forms truly is within sporting institutions. And in a world structured by patriarchal power and discourse, sexual objectification doesn’t work the same way in both directions. That much is clear when you read certain pieces about the World Cup, of the “We’re guys and this is how we are, and if we poke fun at ourselves we’re allowed to be sexists” variety that occupies an important place in the sports blogosphere.

As Brandi Chastain did in 1999, some in France this year  tried to put the sexual attractiveness of players to use in campaigns to gain attention and support for women’s football. French photographs featuring nude players — including striker Gaëtane Thiney —  sought to pull in viewers with sultry, seductive photographs and then, in the corner, admonished them: “Is this what it’s going to take for you to watch us?” In a very different vein, photographer Sandrine Lambletin also made a set of photographs of players, including Louisa Necib and Elodie Thomis.

The situation in France is very different from that in the U.S. on so many levels, as the recent Dominique Strauss-Kahn case has illuminated. And women’s football is much better supported and established here than in France. But I’m curious to hear how people view the experience this roller-coaster World Cup, the sudden shift from general indifference to passionate and patriotic attention, the marketing campaigns, twitter conversations, and everyday discussions surrounding the team. What difference does it make that the athletic heroes of the moment are women? How different is the situation today than it was in 1999? Should we celebrate progress and simply enjoy the fact that these athletes are finally gaining the attention and adoration they have long deserved? Does the adoration, by men and boys, of women’s players represent something “wicked cool and a big step forward in gender relations,” as one writer has put it? Or does all of this just cover up how far there still is to go in the struggle for true sporting equality?

Category: France United States Women's Soccer World Cup

About Laurent Dubois

I am Professor of Romance Studies and History and the Director of the Forum for Scholars & Publics at Duke University. I founded the Soccer Politics blog in 2009 as part of a course on "World Cup and World Politics" taught at Duke University. I'm currently teaching the course under the title "Soccer Politics" here at Duke. My books include Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France (University of California Press, 2010) and The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer (Basic Books, 2018)

11 thoughts on “The Male Gaze and the Women’s World Cup

  1. Beach Cruiser

    Even if i’m a man, I truly believe that women athletes are better than Men athlete.
    The most notorious example we have in my country is called Jeannie Longo.
    You can have an overview of her career on this page http://velokustom.fr/
    She is a very famous bicycle champion.She’s undefeated from 20 years now.

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  3. Laurent Dubois Post author

    Thanks, Sportsbabel, for your comment — the point is certainly well taken, and certainly deserves it’s own detailed conversation at some point too.

    Reply
  4. KO

    Another interesting dynamic in all of this is the social media. Many popular male athletes were chiming in with support of the US women’s team on Twitter. When the male studs of the sports/entertainment complex give their stamp of approval, I think that opens the doors to broader(as it were) social acceptance. I did find it fascinating still that local news organizations were still pushing the WWCup stories to the last slot of a broadcast. I think that when this older generation of media presidents and news/sports directors move on, we may see an improvement on this front. As for the soccer, it was fantastic and less “brutish” than in years past. The grace of the game and the women was on display, and I think that may have “sold” this World Cup to more people than ever. It also doesn’t hurt that Abby Wambach is great at the most dramatic(and difficult) aspect of the game–great to have this dialogue, glad I found it.

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  5. sportsbabel

    The broader point is taken, but there is a *huge* case of heteronormativity that underpins this entire article — as if there are no women out there on the internet also googling “hot” female soccer players. Now whether we would also consider this female searching consonant with a “male gaze” could be a good conversation, since the term isn’t so defined here. Objectification as such begins with our discourses….

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  6. Laurent Dubois Post author

    Thanks, Alicia! It’s interesting to hear about the kinds of conversations that have been going on around this. I sensed that all of this is changing, and as Elliot suggested there’s probably no way to totally untangle issues of sexuality from fan culture. But I also think you’re right that we’re not on equal terrain by any means, and that just because objectification happens in both directions doesn’t mean that it’s implications and effects are the same. But things are changing, I think, in positive ways — or so I hope…

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  7. Alicia Ratterree

    Fantastic article. I had a discussion with a couple of men late last week about this. One said that women objectify male soccer players as much as men do to female players. I have to admit I didn’t really feel like getting into discussions of male privilege and how that tips the power dynamic no matter how equal actions are across the gender divide. In addition, I may be a minority, but as a woman, I do not choose my favorite players by their looks. I know there are male fans who do likewise for female players, but I think there is a long way to go to get to an equal footing as far as looks and talent. For example, not to hit below the belt, but I wouldn’t consider Zinedine Zidane very attractive. But he became an absolute superstar, regardless of his looks, and rightly so. If Hope Solo was as good as she was but wasn’t nearly as attractive? She’d get some in-game props on her game and among fans in the know, but the broader public would not have her on TV interview after TV interview. It really irritates me that in order to ‘sell’ the sport or women’s sports it is necessary to bring the more attractive ones to the fore.

    All of this is to say I think there is still a huge disparity. But as I noted already to Laurent, I think male soccer fans, at least in the USA, are among the most progressive fans of women’s sports I know of. So I am bolstered by their example for everybody.

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  8. Laurent Dubois Post author

    Thanks, Elliot: Perfectly put, I think. Things are clearly changing, but untangling how the media-spectacle-fan nexus is working out is difficult. I actually am impressed in many ways at how this worked in the U.S. this time around — less so in France, for various reasons. Thanks for your comment!

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  9. Elliott

    This is the tension.

    On the one hand, good-looking male athletes with strong personalities make a team’s PR office smile. They rake in the bucks by preying on those traits.

    On the other hand, do we create a double-standard for good-looking female athletes with strong personalities? Is sex appeal for a female inherently sexist and to be rejected? Or does it serve to break down the butch-athlete-never-female stereotype?

    A lot of frat guys jumped on the Alex Morgan-pink bra-bandwagon. I’m sure the sponsors are pleased.

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  10. Laurent Dubois Post author

    Thanks, Madeleine, for these really interesting comments. You’re right that there is such a complex set of issues at play particularly in the U.S. given the peculiar place of soccer here. It’s really interesting to note how male friends who were enthusiastic about the women’s game nevertheless also make you feel uncomfortable when you watch with them. I’m hoping to learn more about how all this is playing out in Japan, as well. Thanks for contributing!

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  11. Madeleine Brink

    Interesting observations! I have played soccer since first grade, and have idolized many male soccer players throughout my life, females whom I knew, but mostly male basketball players.

    There are a million ways to go with all that you wrote.

    Re: is the game better/male gaze, I believe that the game has gotten better, primarily because opposition around the world is better. The women play much cleaner, and they played with a lot of skill and precision. I am amazed at how different various teams’ styles were. In 99, it was strong and trained US Americans v. teams that seemed much less trained and scared. After this one, I saw a post from a Mexican male friend who wrote, “WHAT A FUCKIN GAME!!!!!!! YOU CAN KEEP UR LAST YEAR’S FINAL MATCH SPAIN VS HOLLAND UP U KNOW WHERE!!!!!!” His friend (male from Turkey) responded, “I agree. these women can play !” The original poster responded, “they showed us what soccer is all about dude!!!”

    Unfortunately, I elected not to watch with them because one of them, while speaking equality, treats me condescendingly when we watch soccer. Instead, I watched at another bar and met a Chinese woman who obviously knew soccer well and was really a fun, laid back personality. It was great to have a soccer conversation and not feel condesceded to by the men around. Also, I tend to feel men suddenly be sexually attracted to me if I know what I’m talking about soccer-wise, which also makes me uncomfortable because I want comraderie, not sexual tension, while watching games.

    The US women’s team has always had more flair, confidence, pizzazz, than the men…mostly because they were well-trained and because they pioneered national soccer for their gender in the world, whereas US men trailed far behind in national soccer culture. It’s often felt to me that the US men took their style from the success of the US women. But men, internationally, play a different game, from more theatrics to more individual shines, to faster pace. Point is, internationally, US women have generally been better. But we slowed a bit in rebuilding between the 99 team and now. Also, as MLS has grown and anti-US feeling among younger liberalish Americans grows, along with more American college students travelling abroad and idealizing soccer in European countries, young Americans think of soccer (default: men’s) as rebellious and/or glamorous. Plus, US Americans on the right tend to generally root for US sports on the world stage no matter what, as a part of patriotic pride. Therefore, though it is billed as an American upsurge on the world stage, it has quite a strong identity crisis, which ultimately, I think, will impinge development a bit.

    On the other hand, women’s soccer has gone from pushing the boundaries of how women are/should be seen (99) to being one of the best systems of skilled training for female athletes in the country…especially for children of the upper middle class. (Sidenote: The parents of a girl I played with in high school calculated the amount of money they spent on her soccer ‘career.’ They said that even if she got a full ride to BYU (at least $15K a year there) they would not be reimbursed for the money they’d spent on her soccer life until college.) And as a space wherein (privileged or scholarshipped) women can really develop skills and become some of the country’s best athletes, US women’s soccer is getting the attention it deserves. But, for me, world women’s soccer is the story. It’s developped incredibly in 15 years.

    So, I think that of course the male gaze still exists in this sport. Everyone deals with it as best she can, and they go on to succeed. But what about Japan?! Speaking of a male-dominated culture! And those women were so composed, collected, precise, unfluffable. Oh, and I thought Sweden was great too…Traditional braids right and left, and amazing skill, especially in 3rd place game. Overall, the women around the world showed up and made sure that even if men went to the bars to watch sexy women and to make annoying jokes, they would come away with an appreciation of the game.

    And, final point about objectification of athletes anywhere: that is actually part of the skill of the game…to deal with the gaze of the spectators. It’s different, and unequal in real terms, for men and women, but it’s a part of the reality of being a professional athlete!

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