Speaker 1: Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place,
Speaker 1: world history examined and science explained. This is one day university. Welcome,
Speaker 1: and we're back on the unsold history of sports in America.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we return our focus
Speaker 1: to the world of women's athletics by examining the Women's
Speaker 1: World Cup and the discourse that followed it. We cover
Speaker 1: a lot in this episode athletics and sexuality, gender roles,
Speaker 1: and of course sports bras. Here's Matt. Last time we
Speaker 1: discussed Michael Jordan's and I briefly mentioned his Gatorade commercial
Speaker 1: in which Americans were encouraged to quote be like Mike.
Speaker 1: A few years later, Gatorade in Jordan, they did another commercial,
Speaker 1: and this time Jordan was co starring with the women's
Speaker 1: soccer player Mia Hamm. It was Jordan's and ham and
Speaker 1: they were trying to outdo each other in a number
Speaker 1: of sports of basketball, soccer, fencing, tennis, judo. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a punk rock version of the song anything you Can Do,
Speaker 1: I Can Do Better was playing in the background. So
Speaker 1: I'm watching TV in which is when this commercial came out,
Speaker 1: and which was also the year of the Women's World
Speaker 1: Cup in the United States. I'll tell you that story
Speaker 1: in a moment. I'm watching TV with my sister and
Speaker 1: her daughter, Eva, my niece, Eva was probably six years
Speaker 1: old then, and this commercial comes on and we're watching
Speaker 1: it Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm and my niece looks
Speaker 1: at me and says, who's that guy with Mia? Well,
Speaker 1: I think this was a sign of just how much
Speaker 1: the American sports landscape changed in the year. Today, we're
Speaker 1: going to explore the story of the Women's World Cup
Speaker 1: as a way of gauging the state of American women's
Speaker 1: sports at the turn of the twentieth century. And I
Speaker 1: want to save some time to discuss the issue of
Speaker 1: sport and sexuality as well. And I'll use one of
Speaker 1: the players on that women's national team as the focus
Speaker 1: of our conversation. But let me begin by saying something
Speaker 1: else about Title nine, which we discussed a few lectures ago.
Speaker 1: I want to raise an interesting issue here. As you know,
Speaker 1: Title nine and the push for women's sports programs. This
Speaker 1: was part of the larger second wave feminist movement. But
Speaker 1: let me point out how Title nine and the women's
Speaker 1: sports revolution, how it's different from most aspects of the
Speaker 1: modern feminist movement. The goal of the feminist movement was
Speaker 1: to bring equality of opportunity for women, but the goal
Speaker 1: was also to integrate women more fully into American society.
Speaker 1: Integrate them into society with in Women should have the
Speaker 1: same opportunities as men to go to medical school and
Speaker 1: law school and to run a business or any other organization.
Speaker 1: And men and women should participate in business and politics
Speaker 1: and higher education together. They should not be sex segregated
Speaker 1: arenas well. Title nine and the larger women's Athletic Revolution
Speaker 1: are about equality of opportunity, but they are not about
Speaker 1: sexual integration. They are based on the idea that women
Speaker 1: deserve and need, to use a well known phrase, a
Speaker 1: league of their own. So even as the rest of
Speaker 1: society was moving in a more sexually integrated direction, sports
Speaker 1: remained that they remain to this day, segregated by sex
Speaker 1: when it comes to sports. Title nine is not part
Speaker 1: of the larger push for integration in American society. Kind
Speaker 1: Of ironically, what Title nine demands to use the language
Speaker 1: of that Supreme Court case plus e versus Ferguson which
Speaker 1: we talked about a long time ago. Title nine demands
Speaker 1: separate but equal, and so some critics of Title nine
Speaker 1: suggests that what Title nine and the Women's Sports Revolution
Speaker 1: have done kind of a weird way, is actually reinforce
Speaker 1: the idea of the difference between the sexes, rather than
Speaker 1: subverting that idea. Men and women are fundamentally different, and
Speaker 1: we institutionalize that difference and our sex segregated sports. I
Speaker 1: suppose this is one of the paradoxes of the feminist
Speaker 1: movement with regard to sports. It asks for equality of
Speaker 1: opportunity with regard to sports, but it does not ask
Speaker 1: for integration in sports, and so some people argue that
Speaker 1: we should no longer segregate sports by sex. You may
Speaker 1: think that's a ridiculous idea. Of course, sports need to
Speaker 1: be segregated bisex, but remember it wasn't that long ago
Speaker 1: that American society mandated that sports be segregated by race,
Speaker 1: and that seemed completely natural to many people too. I
Speaker 1: think it's an interesting idea at the very least. Mia Ham,
Speaker 1: the soccer player, certainly raised awareness about women's athletic capabilities
Speaker 1: by playing and excelling in women's soccer. But what if
Speaker 1: she had not played women's soccer? What if she had
Speaker 1: just played soccer, you know. In other words, what if
Speaker 1: she had played on a sex integrated national team and
Speaker 1: scored goals against men, would her cultural impact have been
Speaker 1: even more significant? So I raised that issue is introductory
Speaker 1: food for thought, you know, in an intellectual appetizer, But
Speaker 1: that's a ridiculous phrase. Anyway. Having said all this, it's
Speaker 1: hard to think of Mia Hamm and American female soccer
Speaker 1: players having a more significant impact than they did playing
Speaker 1: in the Women's World Cup. Maybe the most remarkable moments
Speaker 1: in all of American women's sports history came in the
Speaker 1: very last year of the twentie century, and I think
Speaker 1: that symbolic It took a while. In other words, the
Speaker 1: moment was the Women's World Cup, and specifically the final
Speaker 1: game at the Rose Bowl between the United States and China.
Speaker 1: And if you were aware of the history of women's
Speaker 1: sports in this country, it was hard to watch this
Speaker 1: game and not see it as a vindication of the
Speaker 1: passage of Title nine past twenty seven years earlier. Title
Speaker 1: nine had triggered an explosion of girls soccer programs all
Speaker 1: over the country, and the women who made up the
Speaker 1: ninety nine World Cup team they had been born into
Speaker 1: the sports world that Title nine had helped create. Historians
Speaker 1: are not supposed to deal in in counter factuals, but
Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you that without Title nine, that
Speaker 1: mega moment probably does not happen. The star of the
Speaker 1: American team was Mia Hamm. Mia Hamm was the discovery
Speaker 1: of the one time US national coach again named Anson Dorrence.
Speaker 1: This is a guy who coached at the University of
Speaker 1: North Carolina women soccer and Dorance first saw Mia Hamm
Speaker 1: play when she was fourteen years old, and he said
Speaker 1: it was like watching someone who had been shot out
Speaker 1: of a cannon. She outran, out maneuvered, out competed women
Speaker 1: who were four or five six years older than she was.
Speaker 1: At age fifteen, mia Hamm became the youngest woman ever
Speaker 1: a girl really to play for the U S national team,
Speaker 1: and then she played collegiately at u n C. Mia
Speaker 1: Hamm of the University of North Carolina to four straight
Speaker 1: n c A championships between and many still regard her
Speaker 1: as the greatest women's collegiate player ever. And mia Hamm
Speaker 1: demonstrated that she was probably probably the best women's player
Speaker 1: in the world at the Women's World Cup, which was
Speaker 1: the first women's World Cup, although in the Women's World
Speaker 1: Cup was not technically called the World Cup yet FIFA,
Speaker 1: which is the governing body of international soccer, they thought
Speaker 1: that the prestigious title World Cup should only apply to
Speaker 1: the men's tournament, so instead this one women's tournament was
Speaker 1: named after their sponsor. It was called the Eminem's Cup.
Speaker 1: The Eminem's Cup was in China, and Chinese fans attended
Speaker 1: the matches in huge numbers. The popularity of women's soccer
Speaker 1: in China was actually quite shocking to the American players.
Speaker 1: I mean, women's sports in China were just much bigger
Speaker 1: than they were in the United States. And so in China,
Speaker 1: the US players were celebrities. People packed the stands, they
Speaker 1: clamored for their autographs. Sixty thousand people were in the
Speaker 1: stadium watching the US defeat Norway two to one for
Speaker 1: the Eminem title. It was the first world championship in
Speaker 1: soccer of any kind for the United States men, women,
Speaker 1: youth teams, whatever, the very first. So the team returns
Speaker 1: to the United States conquering heroes, and there was nobody
Speaker 1: at the airport to greet them. You may have watched
Speaker 1: some of the recent Women's World Cups. There has been
Speaker 1: a ton of energy and excitement around these tournaments. Don't
Speaker 1: think for a minute it's always been like this. It
Speaker 1: was the opposite. The victory barely received mention in the
Speaker 1: US press. The standard line is that Americans didn't start
Speaker 1: to care about women's soccer until the World's Cup. But
Speaker 1: actually it was in that women's soccer began to take
Speaker 1: off in the United States, and this was at the
Speaker 1: Olympic Games in Atlanta. Men had been playing soccer at
Speaker 1: the Olympics since nine, now almost a full century later.
Speaker 1: In women's soccer made its debut at the Games, and
Speaker 1: at these Olympics, the US captured gold by defeating China
Speaker 1: two to one in the final. The nine gold medal
Speaker 1: game was not televised live in the United States. NBC
Speaker 1: did not think that people were interested, but seventy eight
Speaker 1: thousand loud, screaming fans were there for this game, which
Speaker 1: was played at the University of Georgia's football stadium in Athens.
Speaker 1: And included in the crowd were the organizers for the
Speaker 1: nine Women's World Cup, which was scheduled for the United
Speaker 1: States three years later, and these organizers saw the number
Speaker 1: of people in the stands. They that they sensed that
Speaker 1: women's soccer was becoming popular, and so they took a chance.
Speaker 1: The matches for the ninety nine World Cup were scheduled
Speaker 1: to be played in in smaller college soccer stadiums five
Speaker 1: thousand to fifteen thousand seats stadiums, the types of stadiums
Speaker 1: on college campus where you see soccer often played today.
Speaker 1: But after seeing almost eighty thousand people come out for
Speaker 1: the gold medal final in the World Cup, organizers decided
Speaker 1: to play their matches in football stadiums, big stadiums. They
Speaker 1: were optimistic that people would come, but there was tremendous
Speaker 1: skepticism about this. And as the World Cup got closer
Speaker 1: and the organizing committees and now it's the ticket sales
Speaker 1: were pretty strong. The organizers were literally accused by members
Speaker 1: of the press of lying about the numbers. You are
Speaker 1: lined to drum up and drift when we all know
Speaker 1: there isn't any. The soccer columnists Jamie Trekker, a man,
Speaker 1: he posed a question that indicated what he thought was
Speaker 1: going to happen. He wrote, what if they threw a
Speaker 1: World Cup and nobody came? But what dubious reporters like
Speaker 1: him did not realize was how hard the US women's
Speaker 1: team had been working to publicize this moment, as opposed
Speaker 1: to the male athletes and most big time team sports.
Speaker 1: The members of the women's soccer team, they were actively
Speaker 1: working to sell the game of soccer and the World
Speaker 1: Cup tournament. In the spring of they traveled the United States.
Speaker 1: They put on soccer clinics, They played exhibition matches that
Speaker 1: they met with the fans after the game, signing autographs
Speaker 1: and selling tickets. The members of the US women's national team,
Speaker 1: they were both athletes and promoters. It was grassroots marketing.
Speaker 1: After the break Bedlomb at the Rose Bowl, there's a
Speaker 1: great story from the opening day of the World Cup.
Speaker 1: The members of the U S team. They're in their
Speaker 1: bus heading to the Meadowlands in New Jersey, the football
Speaker 1: stadium where the NFL's Giants and Jets play, and they
Speaker 1: had no idea how many people were actually going to
Speaker 1: show up for the game. And as they neared the stadium,
Speaker 1: they got stuck in a tremendous traffic jam that the
Speaker 1: kind you saw on Sundays in the fall for NFL games.
Speaker 1: And they realized that this great crowd was there to
Speaker 1: see them, and then the bus pulled into the stadium
Speaker 1: parking lot and there were tens of thousands of soccer fans.
Speaker 1: They were they were tailgating, they were barbecuing, they were
Speaker 1: playing impromptu games of sock and very significantly in this
Speaker 1: crowd were thousands, tens of thousands of young girls. Like
Speaker 1: we talked about with Jackie Robinson and his meaning for
Speaker 1: Black Americans. Think of the power the meaning of this
Speaker 1: moment for young American girls. You two can play sports
Speaker 1: and people will come and cheer. The US won that
Speaker 1: first game in the Meadowlands, and then they continue to win.
Speaker 1: There was a rolling momentum to that team in the
Speaker 1: summer of and there was a lot of pressure on
Speaker 1: the team. They were the draw. If they lost, the
Speaker 1: momentum of the whole tournament might sputter. But they kept
Speaker 1: winning and they made it all the way to the
Speaker 1: final game played in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California,
Speaker 1: a college football shrine, one of the temples of American
Speaker 1: men's sports, was in People packed the stadium and they
Speaker 1: were treated to one of the greatest, one of the
Speaker 1: most tense sporting events in American history. The game was
Speaker 1: scoreless after regulation, and then scoreless still after sudden death overtime,
Speaker 1: so the game went to penalty kicks. The American goalie
Speaker 1: Brianna Scurry, she managed to stop one of the five
Speaker 1: penalty kicks from the Chinese team, and so the American player,
Speaker 1: Randy Chastain, she stepped to the mark and drilled the
Speaker 1: ball into the goal for the win. And it was
Speaker 1: bedlam at the Rose Bowl. And you know, in the aftermath,
Speaker 1: one could not help but think that this was a
Speaker 1: sign that women's sports had finally arrived in the United States,
Speaker 1: although in the immediate moment you weren't really thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: this is a transcendent moment in women's sports in American history.
Speaker 1: It really you were thinking, wow, that was one of
Speaker 1: the greatest games I've ever seen in any sport. And
Speaker 1: those were the immediate national reactions for a couple of
Speaker 1: days at least. But then the moment that everyone seemed
Speaker 1: to want to talk about was when Brandy Chastain converted
Speaker 1: the winning penalty kick and she ripped off her shirt
Speaker 1: and joyous celebration, and in doing so, she unveiled the
Speaker 1: most famous sports bra in American history. All Right, this
Speaker 1: might sound weird, but let's intellectualize the sports bra. The
Speaker 1: sports bra is a key character in the women's athletic
Speaker 1: revolution that we've been talking about, and like the women's
Speaker 1: sports Revolution and Title nine, the sports bra also has
Speaker 1: its birth in the nineties seventies. As the rates of
Speaker 1: female participation in sports began to go up and up,
Speaker 1: there was no accompanying growth in gear and equipment for women,
Speaker 1: so female athletes had to improvise. Female athletes wore shoes
Speaker 1: made for male feet a small male feet. They wore
Speaker 1: uniforms that had been designed for teenage boys. I think
Speaker 1: these facts reinforced the idea that men played sports and
Speaker 1: women were interlopers. Women would have to adapt. I told
Speaker 1: you about Katherine Switzer in the nineteen sixty seven Boston Marathon.
Speaker 1: When Katherine Switzer ran the New York Marathon a few
Speaker 1: years later nineteen seventy four as an accepted official entrant,
Speaker 1: she ran the twenty six miles in a tennis dress
Speaker 1: that was the most comfortable women's athletic gear that she
Speaker 1: could find. And one of the biggest problems for female
Speaker 1: athletes was the absence of a functional bra that women
Speaker 1: could wear while being athletic nineteen seventy seven a female
Speaker 1: marathon or named Lisa Lindall. She grew tired of bouncing
Speaker 1: breasts while she ran, and so she asked a question,
Speaker 1: why isn't there a jock strap for women? Men can
Speaker 1: find they're bouncing testicles in a jock strap, why can't
Speaker 1: women do the same for their breasts? And in that
Speaker 1: year seven, her ingenious solution was to literally take two
Speaker 1: men's jock straps, cut them and sew them together. She
Speaker 1: called it the jock bra, and it worked for her,
Speaker 1: so she began to market it. Sporting goods stores objected
Speaker 1: to the name jock bra, so she changed it to
Speaker 1: the jog bra. Now it's usually just called a sports bra.
Speaker 1: And now here in we have Brandy Chastain tearing off
Speaker 1: her US jersey and revealing her sports bra, and there
Speaker 1: was controversy. People were scandalized. Some American newspapers actually refused
Speaker 1: to print photographs of that iconic moment because it was
Speaker 1: a picture of a woman and a bra. What was
Speaker 1: so strange was that these were newspapers that often ran
Speaker 1: ads with photographs of women in bras on their pages,
Speaker 1: ads for bras, But somehow that woman in that bra
Speaker 1: was unacceptable. Some male newspaper columnists. They wrote about this moment.
Speaker 1: They insisted on seeing it not as an athletic moment,
Speaker 1: but as a sexual moment. I vividly remember a sportswriter
Speaker 1: for a newspaper around me. He wrote an article saying
Speaker 1: that he was half intimidated by Brandy Chastain's muscles and
Speaker 1: half turned on by her breasts. People are entitled to
Speaker 1: their opinion, but come on, man. The inability to see
Speaker 1: that moment as anything other than an expression of athletic exhilaration.
Speaker 1: It It baffles and and disappoints me. To somehow set
Speaker 1: shalize this moment as if it were a sort of
Speaker 1: strip tease was ridiculous. But having just said that, let's
Speaker 1: switch gears at the end here, let me complicate this.
Speaker 1: I want to use this moment to briefly explore a
Speaker 1: trend or a phenomenon in American sport history. The trend
Speaker 1: of what I think is fair to call the the
Speaker 1: sexualization of the female athletes. I believe it's a fair
Speaker 1: word to use, other than the fact that I don't
Speaker 1: think sexualization is a real word. But you get my
Speaker 1: drift here. And to discuss this, let's go back to
Speaker 1: Brandy Chastain, she of the game winning penalty kick and
Speaker 1: the famous sports bra. But let me tell you about
Speaker 1: some other photos of Brandy Chastain. Brandy Chastain appeared in
Speaker 1: some other photographs that summer photos taken over just weeks
Speaker 1: before the World Cup kicked off, and these photos appeared
Speaker 1: in something called Gear magazine. I had never heard of it.
Speaker 1: In these photographs, Brandy Chastain was naked when she was
Speaker 1: wearing soccer cleats but nothing else. In one photo, her
Speaker 1: oiled up body was curved around a soccer ball. In another,
Speaker 1: she was bent over with a big smile on her face,
Speaker 1: and she held two soccer balls that covered her bare breasts.
Speaker 1: And Brandy Chastain defended these photographs by saying that she
Speaker 1: was proud of her athletic body. She had worked her
Speaker 1: butt off to get in shape, and she saw nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with showing it off. Some other people argued that
Speaker 1: photographs like those they undid much of the good from
Speaker 1: events like the World Cup. They said, those are not
Speaker 1: photographs of an athletic woman. Those are photographs of a
Speaker 1: woman displaying her body for the male gaze and Gear
Speaker 1: magazine was marketed towards men, and these photos they kick
Speaker 1: started a pretty intense conversation about a trend, a trend
Speaker 1: in which more and more female athletes were were posing
Speaker 1: naked or opposing scantily dressed, presenting themselves as both fit
Speaker 1: and sexual. And sometimes these images were in sports magazines,
Speaker 1: sometimes they were in men's magazines like Gear or Details
Speaker 1: or Esquire, and sometimes they were in magazines like Playboy.
Speaker 1: The phenomenon of female athletes posing nude or or presenting
Speaker 1: themselves as beauty objects this is part of what the
Speaker 1: feminist scholar Jan felsh And called, way back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, the feminine apologetic. She argued that because sports
Speaker 1: have historically been so closely linked with men, female athletes
Speaker 1: who do not want to be thought mannish, or or
Speaker 1: or or masculine, they have felt compelled to play up
Speaker 1: and emphasize their their femininity, their their female heterosexuality, and
Speaker 1: female athletes do this in a number of ways. Felshin
Speaker 1: said it might be through dress or grooming, that the
Speaker 1: wearing a makeup while playing sports, or the feminine apologetic
Speaker 1: might come in the form of stripping off one's clothes,
Speaker 1: having your photograph taken, allowing oneself to become an object
Speaker 1: of of of of the male gays male sexual fantasy.
Speaker 1: Maybe the best example of this feminine apologetic at work,
Speaker 1: and slightly different from what Brandy Chestain did. Maybe the
Speaker 1: best example comes from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Speaker 1: During World War Two, some baseball men were looking for
Speaker 1: extra revenue and they created a professional baseball league for women.
Speaker 1: And one of the demands of the All American Girls
Speaker 1: Professional Baseball League was that the female players had to
Speaker 1: emphasize widely accepted feminine beauty standards. So the players didn't
Speaker 1: wear traditional baseball attire. They wore pastel colored short skirts
Speaker 1: while they played the game. Every member of the league
Speaker 1: had to attend charm school classes where they learned so
Speaker 1: called feminine manners. They were taught how to apply makeup,
Speaker 1: how to do their hair so they might be more
Speaker 1: visually appealing to the spectators. In this league, if a
Speaker 1: batter came to the plate and was not wearing lipstick,
Speaker 1: the umpire sent her back to the dugout. The league
Speaker 1: was fairly successful. It lasted from the beginning of the
Speaker 1: war until nineteen four, though it ended up folding because
Speaker 1: of lack of interest. TV had something to do with it,
Speaker 1: but I think so did the fact that the dominant
Speaker 1: feeling in nineteen fifties America was that real women don't
Speaker 1: play baseball. But those rules about makeup and charm school,
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize that they were exactly that they
Speaker 1: were the rules. If those female athletes wanted to play baseball,
Speaker 1: they were re fire to dress and ornament themselves in
Speaker 1: those ways. What people were critiquing here in and in
Speaker 1: this era was an American culture that seemed to be
Speaker 1: more interested in female athletes in various states of undress
Speaker 1: rather than female athletes performing strenuously in various sports. Now,
Speaker 1: the argument that is often given in defense of images
Speaker 1: like those is that, look, this is publicity. Women's sports
Speaker 1: are so undervalued that female athletes need to do whatever
Speaker 1: it takes to drum up interests, and sex sells sports.
Speaker 1: And there is definitely something to the idea that women's
Speaker 1: sports need all the publicity they can get because they
Speaker 1: are under appreciated in the United States. But the critics say,
Speaker 1: here's the problem with saying that sex sells sports. Studies
Speaker 1: suggest that's not really true. What is true is that
Speaker 1: sex sell sex. Do young men who look at female
Speaker 1: athletes in Playboy magazine? Do they find these female athletes hot?
Speaker 1: I suppose they do, But do they find them more
Speaker 1: interesting as athletes? And are they more likely to watch
Speaker 1: them compete? The data says no. I'm not sure there
Speaker 1: is any discussion that I have in my sport history
Speaker 1: courses that prompts more disagreement from my students than this
Speaker 1: critique that I'm just offering up the feminine apologetic. A
Speaker 1: lot of my female students, in particular, they object to
Speaker 1: me even raising this issue and suggesting that these images
Speaker 1: might be in any way problematic. Maybe I possess an
Speaker 1: outdated mindset. Could it be, of course, it could be
Speaker 1: that I wonder what you think about this issue. That's
Speaker 1: all for now. Next time on the Untold History of
Speaker 1: Sports in America, presented by One Day University Athletes who
Speaker 1: Cheat School of Humans