Every child goes through a phase when they are determined to be someone famous. My sister wanted to be the first female president. I wanted to be the first female manager of the Red Sox.
As a female, I had a lot of trouble finding role models in the sporting world while growing up. Boys grew up wanting to be like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Joe Montana, and Roger Clemens. But I could never be Roger (a blessing in disguise) because girls didn't play professional baseball. I could never play football, and I was way too short for basketball.
The Olympics, however, were the one real chance I had as a child to watch athletes who I could identify with. Figure skating and gymnastics are two of the few sports (tennis being another) where prominent female athletes can become superstars. These sports received national attention in a way that no other sports did, and medalists in these sports become instantly famous.
Like most of my childhood peers, I had a short-lived soccer career from first through fourth grade. At the time, there were no professional soccer teams, and I could never aspire to be a big time soccer player. Part of this was because in the four years I played soccer, I never scored a goal and kicked with my toes instead of my inner foot - but part of it was also because there were no soccer stars for little girls to identify with. Mia Hamm was still a teenager, and, at least in America, World Cup soccer had yet to achieve the popularity it has today.
When I started taking gymnastics in the second grade, I became fascinated with the famous female gymnasts because I could be like them. My then-best fried, Sara, who competed with me for title of shortest in our class, brought me into the world of Kim Zmeskal and Shannon Miller. We could watch the national gymnastic meets on television and dream that one day we could be those gymnasts.
I never really thought I could be an Olympic gymnast, though. I was afraid to do a backhandspring, and my parents wouldn't let me join the competitive gymnastics team because it conflicted with religious school. Still, when I watched Shannon Miller in the Olympics, I was intrigued by the fact that someone like me could succeed. She was short like I was, and I played the same game that she did.
I have a similar fascination with Michelle Kwan. Though my career as a figure skater was limited to a few free-skates at a local arena on the weekend, I found solace in Kwan's fame. The fact that she was my age allowed me to think that I wasn't too young to be something. She was graceful and beautiful, and her snazzy costumes and artistic flair as a skater made her intriguing to watch.
Identifying with famous role models plays a great role in the development of character for children. Sports heroes reinforce the cultural values that comprise the American dream - like the idea that any person can rise above humble roots to achieve national fame, that hard work and dedication are the keys to success, and things are fair and the best man (or woman) wins. A key part in buying into the ideas that sports represents is being able to see oneself as a part of sports - usually by identifying with the sports heroes and trying to find ways in which one is like them.
Though national gymnastics and figure skating championships are widely-televised, the sports really only receive the attention of the American public as a whole during the Olympics. I highly doubt that many of my current male friends spent last night watching the figure skating short programs on television, but among the public as a whole, these sports are two of the most popular Olympic events. Women's figure skating is held off until the last week of the Olympics and aired at prime television-viewing times. This year, figure skating ranks second only to ice hockey in ticket prices, which demonstrates its popularity among spectators. And for me, the only sports I make the time to watch during the Olympics are figure skating in the winter and gymnastics in the summer.
There are some people who would read the popularity of these two sports to mean that athletics reinforce gender stereotypes. They teach men to be masculine and rough and girls to be elegant and graceful. And they may in fact be right. But I would like to hope that the rising popularity of women's sports as a whole would lead to the breakdown of such stereotypes.
During my lifetime, I have seen tremendous advances in women's sports. Title IX has caused a proliferation of athletic opportunities for women at the high school level, and it will only be a matter of time before this creates a demand for professional opportunities. America now has a women's basketball league, women's tennis has gained popularity, and young girls can identify with professional soccer stars.
Turning girls into sports fans and participants, no matter what sports they watch or play, causes females to see athletics as not a male-dominated world. There are still leagues of improvements that need to be made, and team sports for women lag drastically behind individual sports in popularity and professional opportunities. But the door has been opened a crack, and it can only continue to be pushed from there.
I would hardly say that my penchant for sports like figure skating and gymnastics has made me any more "girly" - it would be my fondness for emotional overreactions and cooking that do that. My main passions undeniably lie with baseball, and I would choose to watch Pedro over gymnastics any day. Rather, watching sports with stars who I could identify with has increased my love of sports as a whole.
