This sloppy Rosen piece represents a lot of what is wrong with contemporary media. But hear me out, or if you prefer just go click on the links and you will get a lot more pictures.
- rather than go to original sources, she relies on the Daily Mail hit piece and simply relays all inaccuracies that are there.
- the "original source" in Russian is not an "official site" as suggested here. It is an art and design site called AdMe that presents contemporary photography, advertising and objects. It is quite tasteful and nice. It is something like Wallpaper and happens to be the 160th most popular site in Russia according to Alexa. In contrast, Slate is ranked 222nd in the United States. The site is relatively more popular than Slate and she can't even bother to identify it.
- the AdMe feature pulls photos from a variety of different sources. The full slideshow is here. Some from a similar feature in ProSports.Ru others from private photographers. Many of the women seemed to commission these portraits themselves, which if you have any experience with Russian women should not be surprising. They are publicity shots, not "sports porn." Note that the UK feature publicized the most sensual profiles.
- The frame in the original Russian pieces is femininity: “our Russian Olympic team defies stereotype that women in sport are just a heap of muscles and masculine shapes” a statement that Rosen attributes to a "Russian official" (no, Hanna there is no Borat or KGB official involved) while it is very clearly the editor of the feature for the art magazine. Even the artsy intelligentsia in Russian can celebrate femininity.
- This is where W.F Price nails it in an essay today. By using the false dichotomy of forced pixie femininity (in figure skating) to the more masculine image of most American athletes (in snowboarding and skiing), she argues the cultural force behind the pictures is a backlash against the most recent feminist waves. Of course she is culturally blind. These Russian women - from the full gamut of winter sports - are just as talented, hardworking and the self-presentation here is exactly that... it is of their own hand. This is unfathomable. In her world view, they must be coerced.
The last point that needs to be mentioned is the prosports.ru piece above. It highlights the women's history, passions, interests. It offers their thought, inspirations, favorite books (Dostoevsky), academic pursuits. Figure skater Yekaterina Bobrova knits and writes poetry. Irina Avvakumova fought to compete with neighborhood boys on her path to becoming a champion ski jumper. It also provides a schedule of their upcoming events. Rosen is absolutely oblivious to them as people and athletes.
Instead of mentioning their accomplishments or stories, she offers her "close reading" of some of the photographs. Anna Prugova - who is 20 - is described as “
barely legal” and Rosen basically asks us to imagine her being violated by a hockey stick (that "
might have more interesting uses"). This feminist fantasy about the above picture - either hyperbole or sickness - ends with an odd critique... at least Sports Illustrated models smile (evidently displaying their teeth) like normal people. Someone should remind Rosen that smiles like most everything in human life are socially relative and not everyone can afford an orthodontist.
The young Russian woman is the "other" of our feminist western women and they cannot understand their existence, not even their smile. I wonder if they know that the majority of young women actually look this good.
p.s. There are nude features of Russian male athletes as well... but that is a whole other story. Off to the gym.
"Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact."
"Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!"
"It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time."
Balzac, Physiology of Marriage