Even in the New York Times comment section, a lot of people pointed out to the lesbian sportswriter that the reason more people are nostalgic about, say, Muhammad Ali than about Pat Summitt, a lady basketball coach of the past, is became Ali was vastly, colossally more famous than what’s her name, because men like sports more.
What Would Happen if Women Athletes Got the Mythology Treatment They Deserve?
April 3, 2023
By Kate Fagan
Ms. Fagan is a journalist and the author of “What Made Maddy Run” and “Hoop Muses.”
But I think Ms. Fagan’s op-ed raises an interesting question that she doesn’t consider: Are males more oriented toward the past than are females, at least in a marketable fashion?
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The photograph of Muhammad Ali flexing over a fallen Sonny Liston is one of the most famous in sports history. The moment, and the image, are iconic, sold in every format imaginable, while also helping mythologize an athlete, a sport and even an era.
This 1965 photo is so famous because it’s from the opening of the mass marketing of black machismo. Postwar American athletes weren’t supposed to do touchdown dances: it was disrespectful. Ali helped change that. Of course, it’s a picture of one black man exulting over beating up another, which we’ve all seen a lot of since then.
I hadn’t thought much about this photo, or sports photography in general, until a year ago when I stumbled upon the work of Lynn Johnson, who in 1998 had intimate access to the legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt. Johnson had captured dozens of photos of Summitt that I’d never seen before, which was surprising. Like most girls’ basketball players who came of age in the 1990s, I have a deep affection for (read: mild obsession with) Summitt.
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My favorite Johnson photograph is a ground-level shot of Summitt in a crouch, a full arena at her back. I wanted a high-quality print for my office, signed by the photographer, numbered.
But unlike the Ali-Liston fight photo by Neil Leifer, nobody is selling her favorite picture because it’s really boring men’s sports are a nostalgia-fest while nobody cares about women’s sports after they are over.
… When you’ve made a life, as I have, of considering the place of women’s sports in our society, you assume you’ll eventually run out of insight. But there it was, anew: Ah, I’ve found another piece of the puzzle of what limits the growth of women’s sports.
… Time, instead of adding to the luster of women’s sports as it does men’s, erodes it.
One generation to the next, we’ve heard the stories of Babe Ruth and Jim Thorpe, of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Jesse Owens. …
The history of men’s sports is uninterrupted mythmaking, the kind through which momentum is created. … Time creates a kind of supreme hierarchy in the men’s sport; imagine how much the lack of that hierarchy impacts women’s sports.
Of the many explanations that exist for why men’s sports are more popular than women’s, the most prevalent is that men run faster and jump higher. Ergo, men are more exciting to watch. This isn’t a meritless argument; it’s just simplistic and incongruent with—and this is just one of many examples—our obsession with the Little League World Series.
What we don’t consider often enough is how stealthily men’s sports intertwines with history. Teams (and players) become time capsules for eras: the Michigan Fab Five and the rise of street fashion, or baseball’s Ted Williams representing the service and sacrifice of The Greatest Generation.
In other words, nostalgia. And nostalgia is a byproduct of history. Actually, more precisely, nostalgia is a byproduct of shared history. Maybe, just maybe, the issue isn’t an athlete’s vertical leap, but rather the rapid decaying of women’s sports history—its much quicker half-life.
In other words, people can get excited about tomorrow’s women’s big game, but they don’t stay interested in it years later. In contrast, men tend to be profitably nostalgic about whatever they liked when they were fourteen years old. For instance, the wonderful Twitter account @Super70sSports has three-quarters of a million followers for its foul-mouthed recollections of the Bad News Bears era of American sports. Guys who don’t like sports might still be willing to spend money on pop culture from the same era, such as Star Wars or Led Zeppelin.
Actually, I can think of some women’s sports history I’m nostalgic about: gymnasts Olga Korbut in 1972 and Nadia Comaneci in 1976, maybe Shirley Babashoff swimming the anchor leg in the 4x100m relay last event of the 1976 summer Olympics to finally beat the steroided East German women, probably some women’s figure skaters, what’s her name with the wedge haircut.
Do women tend to be nostalgic in the same way that men are?
My impression is that women, when it comes to marketable media, tend to be forward looking. What’s the new fashion? Who’s in? Who’s new and fresh?
Consider actresses. Do women obsess over their favorite leading ladies of the past? A little, but vastly less than gay men do.
Comedienne Tracey Ullman, whose insights into human nature I find more acute than almost any academic of her era, made one of her feature characters Linda Granger. A former TV star of a certain age (55), she had starred in VIP Lounge 20 years before. She was promoting her memoir I’m Still Here. Now, her career and income, such as it was, were dependent upon her “solid homosexual fan base.”
My wife, for example, is highly nostalgic about family matters. There is a certain brand of bar soap whose smell sets her to reminiscing about her grandmother, who stocked it in her bathroom in 1968.
But for popular culture, her nostalgia bar is set extremely high: She’s nostalgic about the Beatles. In contrast, I’m nostalgic about the Ramones. She sat rapt through Peter Jackson’s eight hour documentary about the making of the Let It Be album.
But the Beatles are about it for what she’s willing to spend time and money upon. The subsequent solo careers of the various Beatles? Nope, not good enough.
Maybe she’s nostalgic about Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, while I’m nostalgic about the Tubes, Plimsouls, and Specials.
