Far off in another area of the magazine racks, away from such sports and news issues, were racy, titillating pictorials featuring a handful of Olympic female athletes on the front covers of the September 2004 editions of Playboy and FHM – For Him Magazine.
There was Playboy promoting on its cover “The Women of the Olympics – 12 pages of spectacular nudes” featuring U.S. high jumper Amy Acuff semi-clothed holding her athletic shoes – an obvious suggestion that if one were to open the magazine’s plastic bag upon buying it, he or she would find photos of her wearing a whole lot less.
On the cover of FHM were the words “Sexy Olympic Special! Team USA Bare Their Gold Medal Bodies” featuring 23-year-old Logan Tom, an outside hitter for the women’s volleyball team and 22-year-old swimmer Amanda Beard. Both were sporting white bikinis with their fingers playfully tugging down at their thongs.
FHM’s fold out cover would reveal other female athletes, including swimmer Haley Cope and long jumper Jenny Adams along with Playboy’s Acuff.
Needless to say, I wasn’t a bit surprised by some of their sexually suggestive comments. In FHM, for example, Logan Tom spoke of how she and her fellow female teammates enjoyed dancing with one another instead of with men.
“We’ll grind and do whatever, because I’d rather dance with them,” Tom said. “I am like, ‘Wait a second. I’m straight, right?’”
I wanted to say, “You’ve come a long way baby” after reading Amanda Beard’s comments in FHM about the skimpy outfits she wears while in training.
“I wear a two-piece a lot to train in, and I wedge it right up my butt,” Beard said. “We swim like we are Brazilian swimmers. We have it right up our asses.”
Hard to believe this is the same woman who, at age 14, had a teddy bear with her when she was on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” back in 1996, as well as at the Olympic games in Atlanta.
In Playboy, world championship Gold Medalist in the 100-meter backstroke Haley Clark (FHM used her maiden name, Haley Cope) commented about how her friends call her an “Olympic nudist.”
“I don’t walk through the door and strip, but I might paint my nails naked,” Clark said. “People are not comfortable with themselves. I am. I am a freak. I vote Republican. I worship Martha Stewart, and I do not mind being naked.”
It recalled the question – what was the focus of the 2004 Summer Olympics this year? Skin, or seeing female athletes compete?
Like most people last month, I had the television tuned into the Olympics for a few hours every night though I did not watch them. A lot of what I did watch when it came to the Summer Olympics was women’s beach volleyball – not because I wanted to see only that. It just happened that that was the only sporting event covered at the time I had the TV on. I took note of how skimpy their outfits looked and laughed at how their country was written on their rear-ends, thanks to the cameramen who, it seemed, focused right in on that quite often.“If people think we’re sexy because we wear this, let them come out, think we’re sexy, enjoy that part of it, and then see that we’re also pretty dynamic athletes as well,” said USA volleyball team member Kerri Walsh, according to an article found on ABC News.
None of that bothered me. I saw it as part of their uniform. Although, I could see how someone with a halfway dirty mind could be turned on to thoughts of lesbianism after watching female volleyball players like Walsh and Misty May embrace each other frolicking in the sand the moment they won the gold for the United States against Brazil. I would have to see it again to be sure, but I had sworn I saw one of them playfully slap the other on the rear-end upon scoring the winning point.
I did not see it that way. I saw it as two women congratulating each other in the heat of the moment, much the same way Brandi Chastain removed her jersey in celebration of winning the Women’s World Cup final in 1999 against China.
Times have changed. This isn’t like four years ago when swimmer Jenny Thompson spawned off controversy appearing in Sports Illustrated with only her fists covering her breasts before the Sydney Games in Australia, according to an Aug. 12, 2004 article in The New York Times.
“Any exposure in a sports magazine that minimizes athlete achievement and skill and emphasizes the female object is insulting and degrading,” said Donna Lopiano, who was then executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, according to The New York Times article.
“I’m not quite sure what other people think about the recent magazines, but, for me, personally, I have fun doing it and I enjoy it,” Beard said about posing in FHM, according to the same New York Times article. “It’s a chance for me to branch out of swimming and kind of experience some other things like modeling and stuff.”
As I look back on the 2004 Summer Olympics, I did not see these pictorials done by some of the USA’s top female athletes as degrading to themselves or the sport. I saw it as them celebrating who they are and the fact they are proud of their bodies.
What is wrong with that?
©9/22/04
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