Racing History Made

So, race car driver Danika Patrick has made history. We're celebrating with the first woman ever to win an IndyCar race, the Japan 300. Three years after finishing fourth in the Indianapolis 500, the race car driver can finally -- what? Prove hard work pays off, regardless of gender? Prove that athletes are athletes? Prove she's the best driver on the track? No, AP writer Mike Harris writes, she can now finally "avoid comparisons to Anna Kournikova, who built a reputation based on glamour but never won a title." Say what? This is what matters? Beating out the last sex symbol? What's historical about that? Proving she's more than just a Sports Illustrated swimsuit pin up? Will that go down in the books? Of the win, Patrick says, "I'm definitely just part of a wave of women that are doing different things, great things, outside of the normal world. I think it's showing we're capable of anything.There's so much gender crossover now than there ever has been. So I really just believe that I'm part of a really big picture." Oh, and she won by beating Helio Castroneves. Funny, no one reduced him to his sexy moves on Dancing With The Stars!

Comments

[Mommy B]

Sadly, the whole sexual aspect of the female body is impossible to escape for even the most skilled athletes. If it's not talk about Serena Williams' backside, it's how "smokin' hot" Anna K is. That type of mentality trivializes women's participation in sports to a huge degree.
Danica kicked butt royally on the track, but we still have a ways to go.

[Shaping Youth]

Heads up, folks: Danica is complicit in CREATING that desire to be perceived as a 'sex symbol'...

If you've followed any of the backstory on her own marketing tactics, she stripped for GoDaddy as part of the 'exposure' Superbowl series of ads that got nixed by Fox and didn't make it on the air (fueling her 'hottie' hijinks all the more)----She vamped for the camera, with a 'beaver' double entendre for a spot titled 'exposure' (see for yourself: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/jump_pages/blog_video16.asp?ci=11600

It's not as if the AP writer pulled that sexy bit out of nowhere, she's 'branded' her bod that way from the get go.
http://www.namedevelopment.com/blog/archives/2008/02/go_daddy_builds.html

Both Danica and Anna are playing both sides of the femme fence, marketing their 'babeliciousness' for profit and endorsement deals...

Even films like "Playing Unfair" that look at the representation of female athletes don't spend much time on the culpability of the women who CHOOSE to 'hold the soccer balls in front of their chest to strike a pose' etc.

'Just say no' could apply here, for it trivializes the experiences of all women athletes when some choose to go the objectification route.

As that film makes clear, "while men's identities in sports are equated with deeply held values of courage, strength and endurance, the accomplishments of female athletes are framed very differently and in much more stereotypical ways."

Yah. But the female athletes that are stepping right into that frame to go for the gold, quite literally, shouldn't get a hallpass any more than the reporter in the story.

'Third wave feminism' bah.

[help with research papers]

You know Patrick made her acting debut in the February 10, 2010 episode of CSI: NY where she played a racing driver suspected of murder