Athletes share their passion and celebrate their differences

The first day of preschool is full of crying, screaming and holding on to your parents until your teacher pulls you away. Emily Orr was one of these children with tears in her eyes, begging her mom not to make her go. But rather than wanting to go back to her familiar and comfortable home, Orr simply wanted to leave the regular daycare and go to the Special Needs program where her mom worked. Orr admitted, “I would say, ‘Mom, they’re so much nicer. I want to be with your kids.’”

Since a young age, Orr has loved being around special needs people and last year, she decided to combine this passion with her commitment to athletics. After speaking with Dr. Joseph Dennin, a Fairfield University professor of mathematics and father of a Special Olympics athlete, Orr was inspired to create an event on campus. On Saturday, Dec. 1, the second annual Special Olympics Dodgeball event took place in the Fairfield University RecPlex.

Fairfield University student-athletes and Special Olympics athletes teamed up to play games of kickball and dodgeball. After last year’s success, Special teams were calling Orr in September to make sure the event was still taking place. Because the University suffered a norovirus earlier that week, there was a smaller turnout of Special athletes than anticipated. There were, however, a greater variety of teams represented from Fairfield.

Though it is only the second year that the event has occurred, Orr began planning it three years ago. “I tried to start it my sophomore year, but the planning wasn’t right,” explained Orr. With the help of both Dennin and Senior Associate Athletic Director Alison Sexton, Orr was finally able to implement the program her junior year.

“It’s great when you have student-athletes who contribute on the field, do good things as far as being involved in the community and on campus, and then find a way to be a part of the program, even when they’re not playing,” commented Sexton. “I think that sums up Emily.”

While this is her first official involvement with Special Olympics, Orr hopes to continue this type of work. “It’s something that I really wished I was involved in more,” she explained. “It’s tough when you’re playing a sport in school…but it’s something that I really see myself doing after school.”

Orr has incorporated her understanding of a special needs lifestyle into her future career path. Currently, she is earning her certification in elementary education and will begin her work in the Master’s program for special education next fall. She enjoys working with the adults because she is able to form a relationship with them; however, Orr explained that she is willing to work with any age of special needs.

Howie Rosas ’14 stated, “Emily’s interest in elementary education made her the perfect candidate for the job. She’s well-organized and genuinely cared about making sure the special athletes and student-athletes would have a great time.”

Despite all the hard work that Orr put into creating the event, she attributes her work ethic to the ideals her parents have instilled in her since a young age. “I’m very much my parents’ daughter,” commented Orr. “It’s the kind of thing they would do.”

Combining Special athletes with Fairfield athletes allowed both parties to learn from each other and gain a unique lesson from the day. “I learned that it does not take a lot to make someone’s day or week,” stated Juli Bassett ’14. “We were only there for about an hour when the special athletes were already talking about how they could not wait for next year.”

Orr added, “We really take it for granted. We complain about our sports all the time, but we’re so lucky to have our 15 best friends to play our favorite sport with every single day of our lives.”

The Special Olympics dodgeball event encouraged those involved to reevaluate what’s important in life. “My mom used to tell me, when she taught special needs, that you never see God’s eyes more than through special people,” Orr reflected. “That’s what it’s about, and that really was true. That’s how we’re supposed to live.”

Digital Journalism: 5 Shots

Ryan Gosling, Feminist?

Most students can recall at least one point in their academic careers when they found themselves secluded in a corner of the library, coffee in hand, cramming for a big test.

University of Wisconsin graduate student Danielle Henderson was in a similar situation, struggling to remember and differentiate among numerous feminist theories. So she came up with a plan to help herself out. It all began at lunch one day when Henderson and her friends were talking about Ryan Gosling in the movie Drive.

Henderson was inspired to combine her academic struggles and her feminist lifestyle in a fun way to make difficult feminist subjects and mounting exams easier to tackle. She created a Tumblr account called “Feminist Ryan Gosling” based on “Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling“, and what she thought would remain a fun study technique among friends quickly turned into an overnight sensation. Since its creation in October 2011, the Tumblr has garnered more than 3,000,000 views a month. With her wild success rate, Henderson decided to publish a book.

Feminist Ryan Gosling: Feminist Theory as Imagined from Your Favorite Sensitive Movie Dude includes 100+ feminist-themed quips that supposedly come out of Gosling’s mouth. After studying about 35 books during her winter break, she had collected enough feminist theory to write the book. Says Henderson,

They are all legitimately flashcards for me. It still feels really selfish because everything is based on assigned homework and my thesis. … But that doesn’t mean it’s all right. I put my opinion into what I read.

Henderson admits that she is still surprised by the success of the site. She explained that if she had known it would get so popular, she probably wouldn’t have chosen to feature someone as famous as Ryan Gosling:

All I hope is that he doesn’t completely hate it. My goal is not to out him as a feminist or put words in his mouth. … It’s just something I like to do.

Imagining Ryan Gosling talking about feminist theory is a creative way to engage and inform about sometimes hard-to-grasp topics. While it is not clear if real-life Gosling is a feminist, Henderson skilfully pairs feminist comments and Gosling’s expression in complementary settings to make each “Hey girl…” seem surprisingly realistic. Although Gosling has not commented on the Tumblr or upcoming book, he was quoted in 2010 discussing Blue Valentine’s NC-17 rating. The problems he addressed definitely support the imaginary feminist Ryan Gosling:

You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how  women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is OK supporting scenes that  portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away  from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario which is both complicit and complex. It’s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman’s sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film.

While many continue hoping that Gosling will officially call himself a feminist, for now, we can continue to be entertained by Henderson’s book. Its goal is to allow feminism to be fun and personal, says Henderson:

I’ve spent so much time as feminist feeling really alone and isolated. It’s cool that people are interested in talking about feminist in a different way. We can address difficult things in a more lighthearted way, while still being part of struggle and sisterhood.

Feminist Ryan Gosling: Feminist Theory as Imagined from Your Favorite Sensitive Movie Dude will be available Tuesday, August 14.  Until then, check out the Feminist Ryan Gosling Tumblr.

Top Photo of Ryan Gosling from Wikimedia Commons.

Bottom photos reprinted with permission from Feminist Ryan Gosling by Danielle Henderson, Running Press, 2012.

Reevaluating How and Why Women Watch Sports

Amid celebrating the 40th anniversary of Title IXthis year and the Olympic Games, a study addressing women’s media consumption of sports has sparked some controversy.

“Women (Not) Watching Women: Leisure Time, Television and Implications for Televised Coverage of Women’s Sports,” recently published in the journal Communication, Culture & Critique, centered on the question, “Why, despite exponential growth in sports participation among girls and women, have we not seen a similar rise in women’s sports viewership?”

Researchers Erin Whiteside, an assistant professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Marie Hardin, an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, studied 19 heterosexual married women (all white except for one black woman and one Latina, and 15 of them with children) between the ages of 26 and 43 years old. They found that, for women, watching sports was associated with “emotion labor” rather than leisure.

Some of their other findings included:

• The women watched sports by chance rather than choice, if their personal schedules paralleled the sports’ schedules.
• The women rarely watched a whole game or event because of conflicts with other responsibilities that took preference.
• Although they admitted they do not often watch women’s sports, they still think the media should give those sports equal coverage and focus less on the sexual appeal of athletes such as Danica Patrick.

Despite these intriguing findings, media sources such as the Los Angeles Times only reported on one element of the study: “Wives watch sports for husband’s sake,” as the Los Angeles Times’ headline put it. Instead of considering the study as a whole, the article focused on women “using sports as a way to connect with men.”

But a closer look at the study shows that rather than watching a game or event to please their husbands, the women tended to root for their husbands’ favorite teams because it created stronger bonds in the marriage. Says Hardin,

We wanted to talk to women about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ in terms of consumption of media sports. We didn’t want to talk to women who identify as avid sports fans. … People are going to spin it different ways. It’s more complex than you might want to talk about in 200 or 300 words.

The most common and valid critique of the study is the small number of women who were interviewed, but Whiteside admits that the study did not use a random sample to accurately represent all women:

Our goal was not to describe a social trend at a meta-level but to interpret it. We hope that folks will read this and take ideas and pull those threads to approach these issues on a much bigger scale.

Another criticism of the study is the dominance of white women. Hardin explained that because they were working in small focus groups, she wanted racially homogeneous groups because they tend to make subjects feel more comfortable while speaking about their home lives. When cultural norms conflict, Hardin explains, “it changes the way people talk.” She would like to do additional research with women of color, but no studies have been set up yet. She would also like to study women in lesbian households to see if there is a “difference in the power dynamic of the remote control and if household chores are shared.”

In fact, the study was much more about how households operate than whether women watch sports just to please men. Whiteside and Hardin observed that media consumption has a lot to do with relationships in a household, and how factors such as childcare and domestic chores affect women’s leisure time. By focusing on heterosexual married women, they were able to analyze how leisure time and household responsibilities were distributed between men and women spouses.

But the Olympics transcend all other notions about women’s interest in sports. Most of the women in the study explained that while they do not watch much sports media, they were looking forward to watching the Olympics. Whiteside attributes this to the “condensed style of coverage, something they described as easy to follow.” The sports that the women were most interested in watching, however, are often described as “feminine sports”–including gymnastics, tennis and, in the Winter Olympics, figure skating.

This small study is not claiming to represent women as a whole, and a larger, more diverse group of subjects will provide a wider range of tastes and experience. But the study’s much more interesting–and feminist–than one would know by reading the rather sexist take on it from the mainstream media.

Photo via Flickr user brizzle born and bred via Creative Commons 3.0

Olympian Leisel Jones Proves the Body-Image Sexists Wrong

Leisel Jones is the first Australian swimmer to compete in four Olympic Games. She has earned eight Olympic medals during her swimming career, three of which were gold medals. This morning in London, the 26-year-old was “so proud” to finish fifth in the 100m breaststroke final, which was won by 15-year-old Lithuanian swimmer Ruta Meilutyte.

Unfortunately though, none of Jones’ accomplishments seemed to matter when the media posted unflattering pictures of her in a swimsuit.

Instead of boasting about her personal accomplishments before the Games started, the Melbourne-based newspaper Herald Sun questioned her athleticism and even posted a poll questioning if she should compete in the London Olympics. (The poll has been removed.) Some of the photo captions read, “The Olympic veteran’s figure is in stark contrast to that of 2008,” and “Leisel is relaxed, but is she ready?”

Some have argued that these statements are valid because Jones does not have the typical athletic figure. However, her coach, Michael Bohl, claimed that Jones was prepared and in shape, saying “She’s been doing nine sessions a week, and two gym sessions a week coming into this, and we were really happy with her from coming off Santa Clara (in California, where she swam faster than at Olympic trials).”

Despite the debate over the Herald Sun‘s article, Australian Olympic team chef de mission Nick Green was extremely upset at last Wednesday’s press conference and suggested that this was an example of sexism, contrasting coverage of Jones with that of 332-lb. Aussie weightlifter Damon Kelly. He commented,

I think they’re disgraceful, to be honest. I’m disappointed with the articles and I think they’re extremely unfair on Leisel Jones and the work she’s done for the country at this level.

Green is not the only one who supported Jones. Twitter has allowed friends, fans and other Olympians to reach out. Teammate Melanie Schlanger tweeted:

I’m embarrassed by the Aussie media having a go at Leisel, one of Australia’s greatest Olympians. Support athletes don’t drag them down

Recently retired Olympic swimmer, Alice (Mills) Tait explained the effect that media criticism based on body image has on the younger generation, saying, “The questioning over Leisel Jones fitness due to an unflattering photo is exactly what many girls have body image issues! Makes me so angry!”

Despite the media coverage, Jones appears unaffected, saying, “I’m so relaxed and I’m just really enjoying everything about these Games and the lead-up.”

On Friday, there’s one more chance to root on Jones: She’ll swim on Australia’s 4x100m medley squad, which had the third lowest qualifying time coming into the Games.

To support Jones or read tweets from other fans, check out these hashags on twitter: #layoffleisel and #goleisel.

Photo of Leisel Jones from Wikimedia Commons. Screenshot from Twitter.

Top Women Athletes Are Just Lucky?

Men are skilled and committed, but women are only good-looking and lucky? According to a study conducted by the University of Delawareregarding NBC’s commentary at past Olympic Games, sexist statements dominate the feedback that fans are exposed to.

Researcher James Angelini published the study this month in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. As he explained, “It’s all about luck with the females. It’s all about ability with the males.”

Angelini gathered the network’s prime-time coverage from NBC, which maintains exclusive U.S. rights to cover the Games on TV, and categorized clips based on 17 criteria, including commitment, intelligence, strength and luck.

Not only does NBC’s Olympics commentary unfairly compare men and women athletes, it also gives more coverage to U.S. athletes and includes racist remarks, a second study found. Those remarks include references to white athletes being committed and composed, while black athletes have physical strength and Asian athletes are intelligent.

Past studies regarding Olympic coverage of women have shown similar results. For example, women often don’t receive equal coverage as men and must verify that they actually are women.

Will this new study affect the future of NBC commentary? We’ll have to await the London Games, which begin on July 27. Take notes.

Photo from Flickr user sawyerlaw via Creative Commons 3.0

“1 is 2 Many” PSA

Vice President Joe Biden, Los Angeles Galaxy soccer player David Beckham, Houston Rockets basketball player Jeremy Lin and New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning are some of the men who have come together to raise awareness of dating violence.

A PSA titled “1 is 2 Many” was launched by Vice President Biden earlier this summer as part of his plan to address the responsibility of a younger male audience to end dating violence. The hook? Violence against one woman is already affecting too many women.

Cynthia Hogan, counsel to the Vice President, explained the tactics of the campaign, which includes text, email and Twitter access to resources against dating violence: “We’re trying to go where the young people are.”

The PSA’s overall message is simple: “No one should ever hit a woman … No woman should ever have to fear violence.” Viewers are encouraged to act against dating violence by speaking up and getting help. By playing the PSA on the Fox Sports, ESPN, NFL and MLB networks, the campaign has become part of the daily lives of many young men. Not only are viewers exposed to the PSA on their favorite channels, but they also hear the message from famous male athletes who are role models to countless young people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXox6ma1gtE&feature=player_embedded

The campaign began in September of 2011 in response to alarming dating violence statistics. Its goal has been to decrease that violence, especially against women between the ages of 16 and 24. The campaign focuses on “changing attitudes that lead to violence and educating the public on the realities of abuse … in an effort to stop violence against women before it begins.”

Statistics on dating violence and sexual assault, as well as ways to take action, are posted on the official White House website.

The “1 is 2 Many” PSA will continue to be played for the remainder of the summer.

Top Left Photo from “1 is 2 Many” public service announcement.

Bottom Right Photo from www.whitehouse.gov.