Britteny Griner,
Baylor’s basketball star, could be crucial for women’s basketball in the media.
Griner brings aggression, power, and command to the court. Her intensity is
exemplified in her statistics:
14 career dunks and numerous NCAA records; most recently she became the first women’s
player to reach 2000 career points and 500 blocks. Her dominance on the court
is not consistent with typical views of women in sports, but this is not a bad
thing. When an abnormal performance occurs, society reinforces gender views
more vigorously, but in the case of Griner, perhaps her masculine play can help
bring more viewers to women’s basketball and women’s sports in general.
The question
hinders on the sexuality of Griner, because her performance in the game, as a
whole, is so crucial given the current presence of women’s sports in the media,
and society immediately tackles the topic anytime a female athlete performs
masculinity. There must be at least some pressure on her to keep up image as
heterosexual, but she seems not to mind too much. This could be very
attributable to her feelings towards the game. She is not one to believe that
sexuality and sports mix. Thus,she keeps her performance to the court without pushing the gender boundaries.
Some may question, but they more than likely will not find an answer. Griner is
regulating societal views of women’s
basketball. When people see Griner play, there are too many similarities to
men’s basketball that it can be hard not to watch, and these performances gain
media attention as well as questions of sexuality.
So it
becomes clear that women in sports are stuck in a paradox when dealing with media
attention. When players behave masculine, it is not something society views as
pleasing, yet it is precisely masculinity that most viewers want to see. This
view of gender in sports eliminates the role of women entirely. If Griner can
continue to inspire and lift the players around her to a heightened level of intensity/masculinity
while ignoring the negative comments about sexuality, then women’s basketball should
see an increase in viewership, provided that sexuality only be questioned with
probable cause (similar to testing male athletes for PEDs). I do not doubt that
numerous people disagree with what I am saying because I am suggesting that
sexuality be ignored, but society has already begun to naturalize this belief, meaning Griner is just another step towards
righteousness. Like Caster Semenya who fractured society’s gender lines,
Griner’s outstanding performance on the court is picking at the same fragile
wound, and the gender lines are dying. As they do so, a new door opens in the
realm of women’s sports.
