1. Martha McCaughey, “The Fighting Spirit: Women’s Self-Defense Training and the Discourse of Sexed Embodiment,” Gender and Society 12, no. 3 (1998): 277.
2. McCaughey, “The Fighting Spirit,” 279.
3. Martha McCaughey, Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-Defense (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 7.
4. Catherine Hodge McCoid and Yvonne J. Johnson, “The Women’s Army of the Dahomey,” in Combat, Ritual, and Performance, ed. David E. Jones (London: Praeger, 2002), 53–65.
5. Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Random House, 1978).
Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to a great many people in both the academic and pugilistic worlds.
First, many thanks to my friend and mentor, Dr. Adam Rovner, who guided me through my academic career, as well as University of Denver librarian Peggy Keenan, who answered my numerous and obnoxious questions with enthusiasm. Truly, she is the librarian of librarians. I also want to thank William Mays, National Police Gazette archivist, who had what seems to have been a delightful time searching this historic tome for female pugilists.
My sincere thanks go to Sue Fox of the Women’s Boxing Archival Network for her assistance and inspiration. I am also grateful to Mary Ann Owen, who provided me with stunning photos, as well as Jack Pokress, boxing photographer, who graciously allowed me to use his photos in this book.
Thank you to Debi Purcell and Lana Stefanac, fighters and my personal heroes.
Many thanks go out to Christen Karniski, the editor who believed in this project.
To my tribe at Train.Fight.Win. Denver, which continues to provide me with inspiration and drive, thank you.
Thanks to my mom and dad for the support, love, and fantastic editing. To my siblings, Caroline and Scott, thank you for keeping me on my toes.
And to my husband, Mike, thank you for everything.
Introduction
Why We Fight
Boxing, wrestling, and running are the most primal of human sports. Although it seems unthinkable by our current standards of high-priced running flats and designer fight shorts, none of these activities, at their most basic level, require any equipment. Unlike snow skiing or mountain climbing, activities that require certain geographical features, or American football, a sport that necessitates a great deal of people and equipment (and thus, money), boxing, wrestling, and running are sports that are practiced in almost every culture throughout the world. The fascinating aspect of fighting sports is that they pit two people against one another and ask them to prove who the better athlete is. Fighting is often associated with drunken brawls or personal vendettas in film and television, but when organized and regulated by rules and structure, fighting is also a sport.
Definition of Sport
In the academic lexicon, sports are often defined in strange and rather obtuse ways. For instance, this definition from Cesar A. Torres in the Routledge Companion to Sports History makes the activity of sport almost unrecognizable: “Sports are artificial tests established by rules that not only prescribe the use of less efficient means to achieve the goal stipulated, but also require the implementation of physical skills to do so.”[1]
University of California, Berkeley professor Roberta Park recognizes the difficulty of defining sport as a universal term, given that sports have various social and historical implications depending on the culture. Prior to the nineteenth century, sporting events were comprised of a multitude of activities, from riding and jousting to bear-baiting and hunting. In fact, some theorists relate the concept of sport to the word disport—“to divert oneself,” which is how Michael Mandelbaum describes the emergence of sports as a “diversion” during the increasing amount of free time in the industrial world.[2] The industrial revolution and standardization of the forty-hour work week gave people more free time, but there were few entertainment outlets to fill the void. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, any “free time” was spent in religious endeavors, from reading liturgical works to spending time at church. Mandelbaum claims that the twentieth century “intensified the informal division of the arts into high and low or ‘mass’ forms.”[3] Sports could be categorized as an activity of the masses, since anyone could, in theory, participate, although it is highly unlikely that the blue-collar worker in the city had as much time as an aristocrat to play sports.
In modern American and European cultures, sports are practiced by a spectrum of people of varying ages, ethnicities, economic levels, and, of course, genders. There are levels of competitors in the sports arena, from the casual practitioner to the Olympic-level athlete. As anyone who has ever trained and competed in a sport knows, there is a monumental difference in the fitness workout of a layperson and the rigorous training of an athletic competitor. Hitting the heavy bag for a calorie burn at the local YMCA and competing in the Golden Gloves, while both are based on the sport of boxing, reveals two versions of a sport. To maintain focus and for the sake of being definitional, this book is concerned with sports at the highest level: the competitive athlete. This is not to diminish the more casual versions of boxing, but rather to focus on the cultural and social implications of the amateur and professional athlete.
Sports in American Media
But sports are more than just a set of rules. Sports bring people together as fans and athletes in a community bound by the love of a particular activity. In the United States, the “big three” of men’s sports—football, basketball, and baseball, with hockey making an appearance as the fourth in some parts of the country—are the center of sports news coverage. These sports are large team sports, generate enormous sums of money, and dominate the sports media coverage. In a 2009 study, researchers found that these “big three” sports dominated 68 percent of combined (main, plus ticker) local TV sports news and SportsCenter, with men’s football at 21 percent, men’s basketball at 23 percent, and men’s baseball at 24 percent.[4] Of the remaining 32 percent, women’s sports were covered only 3 percent of the time. In addition, the longitudinal study found that coverage of women’s sports has actually declined since 1989: In 1989, women accounted for 5 percent of news coverage, and 8.7 percent in 1999, but in 2009, women’s sports news coverage plummeted to a shocking 1.9 percent.[5]
Various factors contribute to the dominance of the “big three” male sports in the United States, including the aforementioned economic aspect and prevalence of those three sports in youth sports. Outside of the center of American sports, in the periphery, various men’s sports, including soccer, golf, tennis, and various Olympic sports, combined to generate 20 percent of the SportsCenter and local sports news coverage, according to the 2009 study. Women’s sports, again, generated only 3 percent of total televised sports news stories. Thus, men’s sports outside of the “center” are not necessarily marginalized, but they do not have the power and ascendancy of men’s football, basketball, and baseball.
Fighting sports have a long and storied history that far surpasses the new sports that dominate American culture. And while they may not make up the majority of sports news coverage, the community of fighting fans and athletes is large and much more international than the “big three” American sports. The most revealing aspect of Cooky, Messner, and Hextrum’s study, however, is that the media’s interest in women’s sports is on the decline. Women have always held tenuous connections in the sporting world in the United States and Europe, depending on the time in history and specific location.
Gender in Sports
Female athletes are always defined by that qualifier of female. Male athletes are simply athletes, while women are defined first and foremost, by their sex. Professor Michael Kimmel said it best when he related an anecdote about two women at a feminist conference discussing how they self-define. The white woman explained that when she looks in the mirror, she sees a woman. The other speaker explained that when she looks in the mirror, she sees a black woman, r
evealing that race is a qualifier as important as sex. But Kimmel realized that when he looks in the mirror, he sees a human, because, in a way, gender is invisible to men because they have the privilege of centrality. Such qualifiers as race, class, and gender are steps away from the center. The more qualifiers one has to contend with, for example, a poor black woman, the further she moves away from the central, the position of power. Kimmel explains, “When you are the dominant power in the world, everyone else has to be named.” And in the sporting world, where men remain the center, women must always be qualified, or named, before they can be called athletes.[6]
Sports are gendered male for two primary reasons. First, men are, again, the cultural center. Second, and more importantly for the sake of this book, women have been involved less in sports throughout history than their male counterparts. While we explore the history of female athletes during the past three hundred years in the body of this book, suffice it to say that women have not always been welcome in the world of sports. They have always participated in sports, albeit in varying levels through both time and place, but never as extensively as men; however, the idea that women did not participate in sports prior to the twentieth century neglects historical truths. Women have taken part in sports and play throughout the globe and at various times in history. Although women’s sports have not generated (and still do not generate) the same amount of interest as men’s sports, the news media started publishing articles and stories about female athletes beginning in the eighteenth century. Female athletes were largely treated as anomalies, being depicted in humorous or scandalous examples of what women could do outside of the normative female role. While not all historical accounts pass judgment on female athletes, those that do either criticize them for being too masculine or poke fun at them for being physically inept.
Women’s Sports in the Media
Unfortunately, this trend continues today, as Professor Michael Messner has identified, with sports coverage that makes jokes about female athletes. In his qualitative study of SportsCenter and the astonishingly sparse amount of coverage of women’s sports, Messner and his colleagues identified two types of approaches to female athletes. Broadcasts might present a segment on what would be considered a “nonserious” sport, for instance, bungee jumping or professional wrestling, to make fun of women. Or, oftentimes, a segment will cover a serious sport but sexualize the female athletes. In Summer Olympic coverage, networks have dedicated an inordinate amount of time to discussing the rear ends of beach volleyball players Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor. Tennis player Anna Kournikova famously received a great deal of media coverage about her looks and an equal amount of critcism, often from the same news source, about her inability to play. Kournikova may not have been as good as some of the other women on the professional tennis circuit, but she was still an elite tennis player who did not deserve to be called “awful.” Yet, this is how much of the commentary regarding female athletes has progressed. Women who are skilled and not stereotypically beautiful are insulted and even referred to as men by some commentators. That insult reveals part of the fear that remains embedded in women’s sports, even today: that the women who play sports could, in some way, become masculine.
Historically, sports have been a decidedly male practice. The Victorian era introduced the notion of exercise for both men and women. Although Victorian ladies were still constrained, both socially and sartorially, with long skirts and corsets remaining normative attire, women participated in competitive sports like archery. In the 1920s, the American flapper girl defied normal gender behavior through a “debaucherous” lifestyle consisting of drinking, smoking, dancing, and, of course, the famous short hair and even shorter skirts.
As Babe Ruth made a name for himself on the baseball field, another babe, Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson, trounced the conception of the weaker female sex by excelling in multiple sports, including track and field, basketball, swimming, boxing, and tennis. In a famous interview with a sports journalist, Didrikson was asked if there was any sport she did not play. She responded, “Yeah, dolls.” Didrikson epitomized the cultural fear that surrounded this new, modern woman. She was considered masculine and unnatural to her sex. New York World-Telegram journalist Joe Williams remarked that, “it would be much better if she and her ilk stayed home, got themselves prettied up, and waited for the phone to ring.” Williams’s sentiments were echoed by some, although many fans and journalists praised Didrikson’s athletic prowess and skill in a multitude of sports.
The Female Body in Sports
It is no secret that the female body is one of the most reproduced figures in cultural history. Because of this deep obsession with the female form, it can be hard for women to escape stereotypes regarding the body, whether they are scientists, athletes, writers, or mothers. When a woman participates in an activity, even one as gender-neutral as politics or writing, the body is always present. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were both judged on their looks in the 2008 presidential campaigns at a much higher rate than their male opponents. Elizabeth Angell, an editor for Allure magazine, complains in her article “Sex and Female Politicians” that a “female politician should never be judged for her physical attributes or her sexuality.”[7] Many people would agree with Angell’s sentiments. Yet, beauty remains at the forefront of nearly any discussion involving a prominent and powerful woman.
American culture is obsessed with the female body. The female form is used to market a variety of products, including clothing, cosmetics, food and alcohol, cleaning products, household goods, automobiles, hotels, and lifestyle products. Our cultural conception of the female body is largely driven by the presentation of women in the media, but our personal experience also provides a broader definition. Part of defining a woman is taking into account the way the female body functions in society as a mother, sister, wife, and daughter, but also as a lawyer, student, doctor, army captain, or fighter. Sadly, a preoccupation with appearance often makes women feel like their ability to perform their jobs, activities, and hobbies well is subsumed by the initial (and continual) judgment based on their looks.
The “Centerfold Imperative”
Historically, teenage girls who participate in sports have been deemed tomboys whose femininity, and often sexuality, is questioned. According to Lawrence Wenner’s book MediaSport, female athletes in the twentieth century sought to assert their heterosexuality by promoting traditional feminine practices, assuring “themselves and others that sport can (and should) be highly consistent with what this culture deems to be womanhood.”[8] Any deviation from socially normative female behavior endangered the female athlete’s public persona.
There is a point for most female athletes in their rise in popularity where a photo shoot in Maxim, Sports Illustrated, or even Playboy is required. These pictorials are always sexualized and often eroticize the sport of the athlete or simply put the woman in a bathing suit. A female athlete who is talented in her sport and fulfills current ideals of beauty creates media frenzy, often overshadowing the sport and focusing solely on the athlete’s appearance. There is a silent requirement, which I have dubbed the “centerfold imperative,” where an athlete must eroticize her image to garner media attention. Tennis stars Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova are both famous for their looks; Kournikova’s beauty quickly surpassed any expectations of her as an athlete. As a result, she was never taken seriously as a tennis player. This critique is often applied to female athletes who are celebrated and highly publicized for their beauty. As chapter 5 of this book reveals, in 2011, Miesha Tate complained that the upstart fighter Ronda Rousey was only creating headlines because of her looks. Although Tate’s argument was proved wrong, Rousey’s beauty has absolutely helped her achieve the media zeitgeist necessary to promote and arrange the fight with Tate.
Gina Carano was considered the face of women’s mixed martial arts (MMA), but most people commented on her beauty before detailing her skill as a fighter. In 2009, Carano faced off against C
ris “Cyborg” Justino for the Strikeforce championship title. The match was referred to as “Beauty versus the Beast” by certain sports media outlets. Cris was an incredibly talented fighter, but she was given the unfortunate title of the “Beast” in this matchup. Internet pundits and commentators alike seemed disgusted by the Cyborg because she apparently looked “too masculine” and did nothing to promote her femininity. Even after a devastating defeat by Justino, Carano’s popularity far exceeded that of her former opponent. In 2012, Justino tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, prompting many “I knew she was a man!” conversations, and it may have ultimately ended her career. Still, beyond the confirmation of drug use, MMA fans seemed most displeased by Justino’s physical appearance.
Although her promoters attempted to follow the centerfold imperative, Justino did not make the same “hot” lists as Carano. Unfortunately, a female athlete must be beautiful to receive publicity and subsequent endorsements. In fact, female athletes must not only be beautiful, they should be sexy as well. Many female athletes pose for risqué and sexualized photography to promote their image as an athlete and a woman. For many women, their popularity as an athlete is invariably tied to the presentation of their sexuality. Auto racer Danica Patrick received little public attention until famously posing for Playboy magazine in 2009. For women who participate in historically male sports, posing in bikinis for men’s magazines is a way to reassure viewers that while they are competing in a male arena, they also fulfill the expectations of conventional femininity. The fifth chapter of this book continues to explore the issue of the centerfold imperative within the context of MMA and the digital world.
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