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Women's History Month Linkage
Lindsey Vonn: Athlete
Sports Illustrated is getting some heat for this month’s cover of Lindsey Vonn shown on the left. Some people are saying it’s too suggestive, but I’m willing to give the magazine a pass and save my condemnation for its next sexist swimsuit issue. Fewer than 4% of SI covers showcase female athletes, so I’m celebrating that Vonn is being featured. I am also old enough to remember its 1992 cover featuring A.J. Kitt shown to the right, which
pictured him in a similar pose.
When all is said and done, this time Sports Illustrated got one thing exactly right. Just as its cover proclaims, Lindsey Vonn is America’s best woman skier ever, and she makes it look so effortless that it is a joy to just watch her. She has the grace, skill, and poise of a natural athlete who has taken years to perfect her style.
Jim Tracy, a United States ski-team coach, described the first time he saw her ski this way: “She’s hauling down the mountain, her skis probably going 60, but the rest of her was hardly moving. It was like watching water flow down a hill.”
There is a lot of hype surrounding Vonn and the 2010 Winter Olympics. People have high expectations. In an excellent article published this week, New York Times’ reporter Bill Pennington shares a conversation he had with the 25 year-old athlete. Penn asked Vonn about the expectations that she would win multiple Olympic medals and shares the moment with his readers:
“Five gold medals?” Vonn said, staring into the distance. “Well, it’s possible. But I haven’t won even one Olympic medal yet. I’d like to win the first one and let’s see from there. But people are getting pretty amped up. Kids yell to me, ‘Lindsey, win a couple of gold medals for me.’ ”
Vonn spent much of her childhood in Apple Valley, Minnesota, and Pennington describes her as “Minnesota nice.” I don’t take that as a 
bad thing. She is a much more positive role model for young women than the countless number of anorexic, narcissistic, promiscuous, Hollywood airheads that our media applauds on a daily basis.
Our modern culture is sometimes so obsessed with the accoutrements of success (trophies, medals, money, and fame) that we dismiss the pursuit of excellence for its own sake. In doing so, we overlook a prize that has more intrinsic value than gold.
I celebrate Lindsey Vonn. I don’t know what she will win or even if she will win in Vancouver. I just celebrate that she’s there, and I hope I’m not alone in feeling that way.
- BJinAmerica's blog
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Vonn is awesome and h/t to SI for giving her the cover. I thought maybve you were posting the crap someone named LaVoi posted. She thought the cover was sexist.
An athlete, a down hill racer, posing doing what she does is only sexual in the sick mind of some who look.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/does-this-si-cover-of-lindsey-vonn-make-y...
Go Lindsey Go!
Civil Discourse - ERA - A Mother President - Women's Rights - Primary Reform
so I googled and found her very nice site at: http://nicolemlavoi.com/
I think she made the wrong call on the SI cover, but I think LaVoi's heart is in the right place. Her site shows a caring educator who perhaps played defense this time when she should have sat on the sidelines. Here's what she says about herself:
I love that she says her goal is to make a difference in the lives of people through sport and physical activity—especially for girls and women. It looks like she has dedicated her life to to making athletic competition a level playing field for women, so I'm giving her a pass.
The body of a well-toned athelete is such a beautiful thing, and to boot she wasn't put on the cover just because of her long blonde hair. She is the real deal, and sounds very grounded.
If women can't do things others might sexualize them for, then put us in straightjackets. Oh wait - that too could be sexualized. Can we just surrender to the fact that everything will be sexualized by somebody and get on with our lives?
Great cover. Go SI.
While it's great to see a woman pictured on a cover that isn't blatantly sexist, it is there.
What person, fully engaged in her sport, would turn her head to smile enticingly at the viewer? The male skiier obviously tended to business.
So it would appear that the picture of her was posed while the one of him was not. Would any skier of her calibur race down a mountain with long hair blowing about to blind her?