The College Court | Female athletes misrepresented in media

Emma Carmichael Columnist

The Rutgers University women’s basketball team, which was ranked third in the country going into their season-opener last Sunday night, Nov. 11, lost to seventh-ranked Stanford University 60-58. Rutgers captain Essence Carson attempted a three-pointer with time winding down and the game tied at 58 points, but the shot clanged out and the rebound ended up in the hands of Stanford’s Candice Wiggins. As Wiggins turned up the court, Epiphanny Prince was whistled for a reaching foul, and Wiggins calmly sank two straight free throws with 0.1 seconds remaining on the clock to win the game for Stanford.

That basic summary of Sunday’s game, give or take a few numbers regarding leading scorers, lead changes, team records and coaching tactics. But it’s not enough. It’s missing that key citation, that necessary reference, that name that is forever linked to Rutgers women’s basketball. It’s missing Don Imus.

The story is nearly legendary by now, filed into our minds along with myriad accepted facts of athletes and their controversies: O.J. was innocent. Barry Bonds used steroids. Pete Rose bet on baseball. And now, Imus called the Rutgers Scarlet Knights “nappy-headed hos” on his national radio show. His remarks came last year, following Rutgers’ 59-46 loss to the Tennessee Lady Volunteers in the National Collegiate Athletic Association National Championship.

The backlash was serious. CBS Radio and MSNBC dropped Imus’ contract in response to immense pressure from the public, and the Rutgers team, along with Head Coach C. Vivian Stringer, held several press conferences regarding the comments. The team also met privately with Imus and accepted his apology. And on Sunday night, over seven months after the Imus controversy blew up and, in Carson’s words, “[stole] a moment of pure grace” from the team, they played basketball again. And they lost.

It was hardly the storybook beginning that the media longed for, after last year’s “improbable” run to the championship game and the “devastating” effect of losing the final game, and then the “stoic” response to the post-game controversy. Leading into Sunday night’s game, the team found itself back in the media’s attention: would they win, and symbolically “[move] past the controversy” (as Sports Illustrated phrased it) or lose, again drop out of the media’s consideration and fall to box-score obscurity along with the rest of women’s college basketball?

Rutgers is now left with what they most likely wanted: a basketball season with 28 remaining games, a blank slate with scores to be filled in and games to be won. Yet their team is still affected by Imus’ comments, and will be for years to come. The game against Stanford was broadcast nationally on ESPN (Tennessee, currently ranked first in the country, will not have a single regular season game aired on ESPN this year), Stringer recently signed a contract extension and a book deal, and her recruiting appeal has skyrocketed over the summer.

Evidently, this is what it takes for women’s college basketball, or even women’s sports of any kind, to earn the national spotlight. Consider the 2007 Sports Illustrated covers to date. As of last week, there had been 61 magazines published; just three of those had women on the cover. One, of course, was the annual swimsuit edition (featuring non-athlete Beyoncé), the second was the annual “March Madness” cover (which also had male players), the third was a special-order commemorative issue honoring the National Champion Lady Volunteers and, specifically, their “cute” (Imus’ words) star forward Candace Parker.

Parker is 6’5,” svelte and last spring was named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.” She is also light-skinned and tattoo-free, and at the time wore her hair in a long weave. In short, she is everything that Rutgers forward Kia Vaughn—6’4,” 200 pounds, darker-skinned, with a tattoo on her right bicep—is visibly not. But what we can’t see, and what Imus can’t see, is that what these two women have in common is their incredible basketball skill. They are not just athletes, they are female athletes, and thus we perceive them in a distorted manner.

Journalist Jane Gottesman spoke to this flawed recognition in her 2003 book entitled Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like? In it, she identifies what she considers to be the two main roles for female athletes to fill in the greater sports world, and specifically in sports media: They are either “victims or vixens.” In her introduction, Gottesman writes, “I reviewed all the [Sports Illustrated] covers since the previous ‘Swimsuit Issue’ and I discovered that from the ‘Swimsuit Issue’ of February 1993 to the one of February 1994, the only female athletes on the cover were featured at their most vulnerable: Monica Seles after being stabbed; Nancy Kerrigan after being hit; and Mary Pierce, whose father lost control at her matches.”

We see this same representation in the Rutgers-Imus controversy. The Rutgers women’s basketball team played in virtual anonymity prior to the Championship game and Imus’ show last April. Before they came under Imus’ and the rest of the sports world’s radars, they were incongruous; they could not be placed in media. They didn’t have the vixen figure that Tennessee had in Candace Parker, nor were they victims. They were simply talented female athletes.

But Imus took care of that by casting the victim role upon Stringer and her squad. And there they will remain—until they “miraculously” “overcome” “controversy” (to predict the media’s language) to win a National Championship. They have a fresh start ahead of them, 28 games to play, and all of the talent they need. But still, trailing behind them at every contest and burdening each victory or loss, they will have Imus. He isn’t going anywhere until we take female athletes away from being “victims or vixens,” and let them be, well, female athletes.

Emma Carmichael ’10 is an Urban Studies major and a member of the Vassar women’s basketball team. This semester she is editorializing on issues in all divisions of college-level athletics.