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Gina Carano. Photo from Sports Champion Blog.
Gina Carano. Anna Kournikova. Gabrielle Reece. Julia Mancuso. Jennie Finch. I give you the hot girls of their respective sports. All have considerable athletic resumes but they also receive(d) equal, if not more, attention for their looks win or lose. The question I pose here is - do attractive and SUCCESSFUL female athletes help promote a positive image for female sports or do they further hinder female sports by turning them into spectacles for drooling men?

I am going to use Gina "Conviction" Carano, the so-called "face" of women's Mixed Martial Arts, as my example because, well, I just wanted to blog about her. She has a Muay Thai record of 12-1-1, an MMA record of 7-1 and a Superman punch that can knock you into next year. In 2008, she was listed ahead of Michelle Obama as one of the Most Influential Women of the Year in a Yahoo pole. You may also know Carano from the re-made version of American Gladiators as Crush, or from her upcoming movie Haywire which stars Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas. Carano, like many attractive female athletes, has received a lot of flack for pursuing activities outside of MMA and her fitness and dedication are constantly questioned because of her extra-curricular interests. As I've mentioned in my previous blog "Elite female athletes - where do they belong?" we rarely notice this type of scrutiny of male athletes for their non-athletic pursuits. Even Sports Illustrated has acknowledged that Carano has "been asked to strike a balance not often required of her male counterparts." So the argument runs that attractive and successful female athletes engage a wider audience and are therefore a benefit for women's sport, but is this true? Given that women's sport receives only 8% of ALL sports coverage I suppose any additional attention could be positive. However, let's take a particular commentary from one of Carano's fights, which was definitely more locker room talk than impartial play-by-play.

Commentator #1: You do not want to get anywhere near Gina's strikes. That's not something you would want to touch with a 50 foot pole.

Commentator #2: No, but it is something I would like to touch with a 12 inch one.

Overhand cross thrown by Carano vs. Cyborg Santos.
Photo from Sports Illustrated.

Carano push kick vs. Kobald.
Photo from Desktopsportswallpapers.
You're kidding me right? I can only imagine what kind of reaction would occur if a female commentator were to make a suggestive comment like that on air about a male athlete, but men sexualizing female athletes is merely run of the mill. Is ANY attention for women's sport better than no attention? I doubt it. If all the extra spectators drawn by attractive female athletes are only those who lust after them, then does not the sport turn into a type of pornography? Perhaps, some start watching because they enjoy seeing attractive women run/jump/wrestle (the reason why Baywatch stayed on for so long) and learn to appreciate these women as athletes, but I believe they are the minority because the numbers tell a different story.

Kimbo Slice, one of the bigger names from MMA, received half a million dollars for a 14 second LOSS, at an EliteXC fight night, the same group which represented Carano at the time. Half a million dollars for 14 seconds of "work" means he made almost $38,000 PER SECOND! At that same event, Carano made a total of $35,000 for her win ($25,000 for the fight and a $10,000 bonus for winning). Not a bad haul for one night's work, but keep in mind that MMA fights in general are far and few in between and that is even more true for women fighters. So if she only fights once a year then she only makes $35,000 in prize money. Kimbo Slice earned more per SECOND than Carano did for her entire win! Yes, I know - "but Gina makes lots of endorsement money"- blah blah blah. She gets endorsements because she's hot, but her CAREER earns her only $35,000 a fight because she is a woman competing in a "man's" sport, OR because she is a woman. Women go on the Bachelor to become actresses and get exposure, but no woman becomes a cage fighter to parlay her fighting career into movie and magazines. Gina Carano may be a name who brings attention to women's MMA, but make no mistake, she (like every other female fighter) is a side-show for MMA as a whole.

Do attractive female athletes draw bigger crowds? Absolutely. If you have ever tried to get a seat at a Kournikova match you know there are a LOT of non-regular tennis fans in attendance, but increased attendance does not help raise the respect of women's sport. It may raise the dollar figures but I question how "good" they are for the sport. As stated in a recent Time article on the perils of advertising female sports:

"What female athletes choose to do to empower themselves personally does often times chip away at the collective power of female athletes and of women's sports." Marie Harden, Associate Director of the Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

I do not accuse these women of intentionally drawing negative/counterproductive attention, but how they are portrayed, discussed, and in some cases, exploited for financial gain does little to improve the condition of women's sport as a whole. When we have regulations on the size (or lack thereof) of women's beach volleyball "uniforms" and badminton players are regulated to wear skirts in order to draw and maintain viewership, the state of women's sport remains in an uphill battle that not even the prettiest face can alter. Unfortunately, the success of attractive female athletes reinforces gender norms more than it breaks them down.

Billie Jean King said it best when she explained that there is this a common misconception that women are trying to dominate or take over traditional men's arenas, when in reality women's sport seeks to share in the respect that is so naturally afforded to men's sport.

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