The Best Things I Read on the Internet: Sports Edition

I like sports a lot. I like pretending to invest in my fantasy football team and then forgetting to set my line-up and accidentally starting three players on bye week and two who are nursing busted knees or ankles. I like following Chicago sports so I can nod along with the sandwich guy about Charles Tillman’s wife, and damn, I hope she has that baby before Sunday!

I like sports because they raise so many other issues, about entitlement and academics, about fitness, health, beauty, gender, safety, parenting, money, community and values. I also really like when people write well about sports, like these folks:

• “The Hard Life of an NFL Long Shot” – The New York Times (Charles Siebert): Following his 21-year-old nephew through the the ups and downs of a maybe, someday, hopeful NFL-er, Siebert captures some of the frenzy we see on the surface of the NFL, and some of the loneliness and struggle of the almost-made-its.
• “The Favorite” – Grantland (Brian Phillips): Serena Williams is my favorite, and Brian Phillips’ too. He explores why (and other stuff, like race and privilege and pressure) in this excellent profile.
• “Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer” – New York Times (John Branch): In this epic three part series, Branch examines the life and career of one of the NHL’s most notorious brawlers, and his death by accidental overdose at age 28.
• “The Woman Who Would Save Football” – Grantland (Jane Leavy): Dr. Ann McKee is a Packers fan. She is also the woman to whom brains are sent when athletes die.
• “A Basketball Fairytale in Middle America” – New York Times Magazine (Sam Anderson): Kevin Durant is the Oklahoma City Thunder, and in exchange, Oklahma City has devoted itself to Kevin Durant. This is a fabulous profile of a player (the youngest scoring champion in league history) and a city who levied a sales tax to build him a home.
• “Venus and Serena Against the World” – New York Times (John Jeremiah Sullivan): I know this is my second piece about the Williamses, but I just really like them, ok? Also, it’s really good.

Female figures are, by definition, “feminine.”

Let’s take a break from our regularly scheduled rape programming today and talk about something else. Back with more rape news, rape commentary, rape apology, rape debate, and legitimate/forcible/date/stranger/marital (and more!) rape next week.

Is Serena Williams a bombshell or what?

Via Huffington Post

I love Serena Williams. When I play tennis, I literally pretend I’m her and I placebo-effect myself into being better at tennis. When I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and my butt looks enormous, I channel her. Her big butt is the product of genetics and incredible effort and fitness and I smile at myself because my big butt is the product of genetics and (slightly less) exercise and fitness (and also cupcakes and pasta, but those are fabulous things too).

The Huffington Post headline with the bombshell pic was this:

Serena Williams’ Tight Dress Shows Off Her Feminine Figure

The dictionary definition of “feminine” is “pertaining to a woman or a girl,” but what do we mean when refer to a “feminine” figure? We usually mean voluptuous, right? Large breasts, hourglass shape, round hips. We think curves. We think Kim Kardashian, Venus de Milo, Sofia Vergara, Jessica Rabbit. We think va va voom, hubba hubba, and men yelling out SUV windows with raunchier iterations of “damn, girl!”

But which women are we willing to say have unfeminine figures? Flat-chested women? Narrow-hipped woman? Thin women? muscular woman? Trans women? Obese women? These all sound like women with figures that are “pertaining to a woman or a girl,” no?

New York Times Magazine

Here’s another picture of Serena Williams with her sister Venus on the cover of the New York Times Magazine (side note: The profile is good too). Same woman, same figure, but I doubt that most people, including the HuffPo titler, would describe her figure as feminine in this picture. Powerful. Strong. Ripped. Awesome. Inspiring. Probably not “feminine.”

Some bodies are curvy, some are not. Some have breasts, some do not. Some will bear children, some will not. Some will win Grand Slams, most will not. But female bodies are all, by definition, feminine.

Related Post: Does Kim Kardashian widen the spectrum of “acceptable” body types?

Related Post: Curve Appeal and American Apparel’s Next Big Thing contest.