[UA] Eternity

[Eric]

Greg --
    Given that you co-wrote a game whose tag line is "What price will
you pay for power?" this is an interesting post.
    I agree that gymnastics is creepy because it is little girls, but
fewer athletes die on the balance beam than do in boxing rings and on
football fields.
    Do you think socio-economics play into it?  For Americans anyway,
all the girls who do gymnastics come from homes and families where
they don't have to be professional athletes to "get out" the way so
many basketball and football players do.  If gymnasts were coming from
the same neighborhoods as the OJ Simpsons and Chamique Holdsclaws of
the world, would we think their priorities made more sense?
    One the sex angle side, my memory is that the sport started with
young women and moved to pre-adolescents because those girls can
simply do things at those ages that post-adolescent women can't.  In
other words, gymnasts got younger for the same reason that football
players have been getting bigger.  Not because the fans are sexually
turned on by seeing 250 lbs linebackers instead of 200 lbs ones, but
because the 250 lbs linebackers are better at the game.
     I had season tickets to the WNBA Mystics their first year in
town, so I'm not going to deny that there is a sexual aspect to sport,
but I don't think it penetrates to the playing field.  It didn't hurt
that Michael Jordan is a very good looking man, and maybe that got
more men and woman to watch than would have it he'd looked like
Patrick Ewing, but it certainly had nothing to do with why the Bulls
kept him on their team.
        -- Eric

----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory Paul Stolze <holycrow at mindspring.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 8:52 AM
Subject: Re: [UA] Eternity


> At 08:08 PM 09/20/2000 -0600, you wrote:
> >Well, sure. And this list is delighted to tell you lots of high
weirdness
> about Pythagoras and other ancient Greeks. What if those "gymnastics
w/
> props" girls are spelling out some weird algorithms with their
ribbons? It
> might be the only reason to explain why that's a sport. And
synchronized
> swimming--what do those shapes *really* mean--some watery tribute to
the
> deep ones? It's creeping me out.
>
> So where does women's gymnastics fit into it?  Personally, I get a
very
> creepy "Jon Bonet Ramsey" vibe off a lot of the women gymnasts,
though it's
> a lot better now that they have to be at least 16 to compete.  Is it
some
> kind of symbolic strike against the Mother, by creating these
amenorrheic*
> gamines?
>
> -G.
>
> *"Amenorrheic" = "non menstruating."  Lots of hardcore girl gymnasts
don't
> get their periods because of the extreme stresses to which their
bodies are
> subjected.  (Neither do women who are starving to death, I believe.)
If
> they start early enough, their development can get delayed quite a
while.
> (I learned this from a source that's quite possibly biased: An
article
> arguing that women's gymnastics grew from a sublimated fascination
with
> prepubescent girls.  I suppose it might not be sexual, as that
author
> implied.  On the part of girl/woman fans, it could be a Peter Pan
thing
> where they want to remain children and have some Father/Coach figure
making
> the tough decisions, while for the male fans it's the enticing
prospect of
> having that kind of respect and power.  But I don't know.  Still,
when I
> see a sixteen-year old jumping hard onto a leg with a titanium rod
in it --
> a rod that got put in TWO YEARS AGO -- I can't avoid the feeling of
> misplaced priorities.)



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