Stern vs. Spurs

Two weeks ago, as San Antonio Spurs were about to play The Miami Heat in Miami, Spur's coach, Popovich, decided to send his key main players (Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili) back to San Antonio. Popovich's intentions of keeping the squad in healthy conditions after playing five away games in seven nights, lead to Stern's decision of fining the Spurs franchise with $250K, for "showing disrespect to the NBA and its fans." To the surprise of many NBA followers, Spurs only lost the game by five points which ridiculed Stern and top-officials who were involved in such decision. Critics focused on Stern's historical trouble in marketing the Spurs, despite the four championships they've won in ten years, and explained that he had found another reason to stand against them. Instead of celebrating Spurs' exciting exhibition of basketball, his mainly concern was to darken an institution's reputation that does not favor the NBA structure. His clear posture of maintaining an equilibrium and the status quo in the sport, will find no evolution in the sake of the sport until those with power in charge of re-enforcing and designing the structure of the NBA, forget about their economic investments.

Santiago Guiter.
KIN332I.

Title IX

It's amusing to me that even lawmakers are still continuing to question the application of Title IX. This past Monday, May 14th, a California lawmaker, Assemblyman Chris Norby, took an opportunity to state his opinions about Title IX in front of one of the biggest supporters of Title IX and all it has done and stood for, for women in sports, Brandy Chastain. According to MercuryNews.com Norby stated, "We need to be honest about the effects of what I believe are faulty court interpretations or federal enforcement of Title IX, because it has led to the abolition of many male sports across the board . . . It was never the intention to attain equality by reducing opportunities for the men." It blows my mind that despite research and reports by numerous educated individuals, people continue to believe that Title IX is misused and should not be in effect. Brandy Chastain of course was not happy to hear what Norby had to say, but could not interject because it wasn't a public hearing. There were, however, numerous other assemblypersons who spoke out in support of Title IX, and for this, I'm sure not only Brandy Chastain is thankful, but many other female athletes benefitting this minute from Title IX.

-Sarah Garcia

Women in sports have long faced stereotypes simply for their participation in sport. Female athletes are plagued by stereotypes created by the patriarchy that is the male dominated sports media. Huge media corporations and mainstream sports media outlets portray female athletes as anything but athletes. Most female athletes are portrayed as sex objects, lesser then males, submissive, and ultra feminized. In a way, the representation of female athletes in that way assures men’s position in the male dominated sport world. By portraying women as submissive and sexualizing them in photo shoot the mainstream media consequently conditions millions of viewers to develop a misconception of what female athletes are “all” like. Even big sport companies, such as Nike, part take in the type casting of female athletes. In a commercial by Nike linked below, Nike tries to portray women as strong athletes. What the commercial also does is show snippets of women’s body parts, like focusing the camera on the women’s butt and legs. What that does is objects the women down to body parts and dehumanizes them. A women in the commercial also says she wants to be “hot”. Media images and messages like that are troublesome because they portray female athletes inaccurately.

\http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B5sfE1fjLs

Edgar D

Kin 338i sect 2

Sex Truly Sells

In the 21^st century women’s sports has developed into quite an empire, but it is usually carried around by the “sexiest” female athletes. Take mma (mixed martial arts), a sport that was coined by men, is making its way towards women. But what would sell for a great men’s fight is just two brutes beating the hell out of each other; but what would sell for a women’s match would be two sexy women grappling and pulling each others hair. Some women have an unfair advantage in being unattractive, losing endorsements because they are not the image the company wants to portray. Being talented will get your foot in the door, but all in all, it’s the looks of the female athlete that make her famous and well known. These are the women who will make the pay per view advertisements, sell the tickets, and cash in the big checks. It doesn’t matter what sport, sex appeal sells. 

Amanda Kemblowski 

Kin 338 Sec 02

Women and Body Image

One of the subjects we talked about in class this semester was about women and their body image.  We have learned so much in class that relates to women and how their body image is affected. The media  plays the biggest role in why women are so worried about their body image.  This video sums it up perfectly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Ajvix6DXs&feature=related

Everyday girls, teenage girls, and women are exposed to magazines, advertisements, commercials, and etc. that show women who are skinny, with long hair, and pretty faces.  This greatly effects women, and I know has affected me!  It makes me question, who deemed these women as "beautiful"?  Why is it that in our society, skinny is the dominant trait for a women?  Not only has media affected my views on how I should look, but I know it has affected many of my friends views.  I've known people who have become bulimic and anorexic because they don't look like these women on the covers of magazines- it truly is sad!    Although I do believe that being healthy is extremely important, I don't think the women should strive to look like these models/actresses/sport athletes that we constantly see.  Women forget that these people probably have trainers, plastic surgery, private chefs, and etc. to help get them that way.  They're photo shoots are also photo shopped to make them look better.  As spoken in class, this is what causes our society to have "fat phobia".  We are scared to not be "fat" because media tells our society we should not be that way.  As I said before, healthy is what we should all strive for, not a certain look.  I have noticed that being fit is becoming the new in thing, rather than being extremely skinny-which I think is not necessarily the best, but better.  Women should be happy the way that they are and not let media cause them unhappiness.  If a woman is truly unhappy with her body, she should do something about it because she wants it for herself, not because society tells her too!

Alyssa Salindong
Kin 338I

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:7920704

I’m assuming that Our Lady of Sorrow is a catholic school and due to its religious beliefs forfeited their team’s baseball champion Their belief that girls should not be placed on the same field as boys to avoid “the difficulty of maintaining proper boundaries” is a ridiculous reason. Like the article comments, I think Our Lady of Sorrow needs to catch up to modern times. What kind of message and prejudice are they teaching to their students? I am imaging the students going home and telling their parents that the school made them forfeit the CHAMPIONSHIP simply because the other team had a female on their roster. I bet that if it was up to the players they would want to play and compete for a championship and the fact that there was a female on the other team would not matter in the slightest. On the reverse side, I am really glad Meza Prep is not focusing on Our Lady of Sorrow's decision but rather celebrating their championship. I think it was very a very stand-up thing for the head coach to say “ I don’t necessary agree with their view but I accept their decision and am happy to celebrate the victory.” Because really what could the coach from Meza Prep do about this but to accept Our Lady of Sorrow’s religious views, move to a different league and try to defend their championship.

            Its my belief that religion and politics should be left completely out of sports, especially with sports involving children. The point of sports is to have fun, learn to work as a team and grow as a person together. Creating biases of which sex should be allowed to compete in which sport is a horrible view to cultivate, especially to middle school students.

Also, what kind of name is Our Lady of Sorrow? Kind of dark no? Not the point of the article but it came to mind. 

-Sean Boyd 

006946756 

Closing Statements 

To my fellow 338ers this class has most certainly been one that was different from the rest. From the first day icebreaker where we walked in reverse circles to the panel debates where Damien chewed out the opponent. I thought i was pretty open minded before this class but i really do believe that this class has shed more insight into my life. I never knew how heterosexist we all  are or how saturated our society is in inflated claims of beauty, or the fact that america the land of the free is still oppressing women and homosexuals through out its free land... I honestly though that i would be doing a research paper on the Williams sisters but wow I was mistaken through it all I would like to close this semester by saying it has been an honor to learn with you all well some of you... no I kid, this class was one that I will remember. thank you Coach K and Kiola as well as all of my fellow equalist 338ers. 

David Rehm

Kin 338i section 02