One of the photos which accompanies the blog entry is that of Voula Papachristou, the Greek female athlete who has been at the center of controversy over her politically incorrect Tweets. I know that male readers might object to her photo being used to illustrate the 'Amazon athlete' discussion, because she is the pinup-of-the-moment among the ethnopatriot/non-PC right. Many male commenters refer to her as ''smokin' hot'', (which always sounds like ghetto terminology to me). But her general form is rather masculinized; note her narrow hips in the photo. They look not much bigger than her waist. And she is very muscular.
Granted, female athletes are expected to be more well-muscled and to have a smaller percentage of body fat than the 'average' woman, especially in the kind of sport in which Ms Papachristou participates. They also tend to have low estrogen levels.
The Thinking Housewife piece discusses the conflict between the 'naked Amazon' image and the traditional ideal of feminine modesty. The photo of the women soccer players does not necessarily illustrate the near-nakedness referred to, but Ms. Papachristou's costume is skimpy, especially the shorts. There are some photos of her online which are borderline soft porn, in that they display her bare backside very prominently as she somersaults, or walks away from the camera. I would post some of the photos, but I'd have to include a warning. Now, I know that this may simply reflect the hypersexualizing of our society, and it may just be a desire to draw in more male viewers for this kind of display. But I do think that this kind of thing reflects a feminist and egalitarian obsession. From the blog post:
''In Plato’s Republic, Socrates imagines an egalitarian, communistic world ruled by the select. The key to erasure of the distinctions between the sexes, he says, is to rid women of shame and induce them to practice athletics in nakedness with the men.''
One more thing that puzzles me about the adulation directed at the 'Amazon athletes': I thought that most right-wing males loathed feminism, and hated the masculinization of women, and their reputed aggressiveness and competitiveness with men. Yet they seem to prefer the well-muscled, androgynous look of some of the women athletes, a look that at one time would have been considered too unfeminine. The old standard of femininity and modesty is all but gone, while the ideal of beauty veers more toward the same muscular and lean standard which epitomizes male attractiveness.
It seems to me there is some confusion here, and people's standards for the two sexes are becoming much more blurred. Our girls are more imbued with feminist ideals than ever before, and it seems as if there is little resistance to this. The media publicize female athletes, many of whom seem quite sexually ambiguous, and our popular culture is full of images of the 'tough chick' or the 'woman warrior' who saves the day when the inept males fail.
If girls and young women see the lean, muscular (and skimpily dressed) female as being the most desirable to the opposite sex, we can expect to see femininity diminishing even more, and probably an increase in eating disorders, as girls try to eliminate natural feminine softness in order to achieve the 'Amazon' look.
