Olympic Porn

There is a growing backlash against NBC's recent video collage titled "Bodies in Motion". In the video, female Olympians are shown in slow motion as they jump, dive, run, and leap in tight and revealing "uniforms". Care is taken to ensure that none of the more delicate and personal aspects of the female anatomy are neglected. The video has been described as tasteless and offensive, even soft core porn. Female athletes, critics assert, should not be treated, or viewed, as sexual objects. (Well, not exclusively as sexual objects. Let's be realistic here). It is contended that is precisely what the video sets out to do.

The condemnation of the video is undeserved. Athletes are not required to wear the smallest and tightest uniforms available. They choose to. Many female tennis players wear the shortest of dresses knowing full well that those dresses hide nothing. Women's field hockey, another favorite in the video, is another a sport that has attracted the male eye with its short dresses and frequent tumbles in which those dresses fly upwards. Men have also displayed an interest in watching women's soccer no doubt due in part to the willingness displayed by some players to remove their tops to celebrate. In tennis, though it is becoming more fashionable for female players to wear shorts under their dresses, it is by no means universal. Dresses have all but disappeared in female skating. Only the cold of the ice keeps them in stockings. It is difficult to believe that swimsuits cut to 3 or 4 inches below the belly button make swimmers any faster in the water. For their own reasons, many athletes, male and female, choose to wear apparel better designed to titillate than serve any competitive purpose. If athletes want to compete in uniforms that look as if they might have been painted on, viewers should not be blamed if they take up the invitation to look.

Whatever the video's producers claim concerning its intent, the video has served to save many male viewers hours of time. Why sit through boring footage of swimmers warming up in their sweats if you can go straight to wet swimsuit shots? Why put up with large, overweight shot putters and hairy weight lifters if you can zip straight to pubescent girls in waist high tights prancing and bouncing about? Why waste time watching a whole gymnastic routine if you can cut to the crotch shots?

Whatever pretext or defense NBC might offer on their behalf, they knew exactly what they were doing when they created the video. NBC was not trying to create a new porn niche. The movement to sexualize athletes has been going on for some time (think of Michael Jordon's Hanes underwear ads). I am sure there is nothing on the video that has not already found its proper place in the world of porn. NBC was hoping to cash in by meeting a demand. In doing so they simply called attention to something that was already in plain sight. No, don't blame NBC for sexualizing the Olympics. It is the Olympics that sets the rules on uniforms, not NBC. NBC is just trying to make some money. If the NBA can get by with shorts extending to the knees and below, the Olympics ought to be able to get by without athletes competing in mini skirts, bikinis, bras, glorified jock straps, and hot pants. Needless to say, it won't even try.