Another View Of ‘Power & Grace’

Tim Koch writes from London,

Yesterday’s HTBS item on ‘Power & Grace - The 2012 US Women’s Rowing Team’s Calendar’ was thought provoking. I always feel mildly uncomfortable when serious female athletes allow their images to be used in an arguably ‘sexual’ manner. Male athletes pose in such ways as well but, in our unequal society, they are not taken less seriously when they do it (see ‘Nude Men of Leander’). Perhaps it is a matter of degree, the difference between admiring an athletic form, which I think is acceptable, and the thinking of someone like Sepp Blatter, the President of the International Soccer Federation, who, in 2004, suggested that female soccer players should “wear tighter shorts and low cut shirts...” The HTBS item on a painting of a ‘topless’ female rower produced some interesting comments. While we are on the subject of sexism, below is a picture of the cover of Rowing magazine from December 1960. The image is fine, but the text......

(Click on the picture to see a large image!)