|
|
| © Steve Lowe |
"Black+White", the Australian photography magazine, published a special issue on the 2004 Olympics which featured
shots of 35 Olympians naked. The picture above is of Lauren Jackson, the Australian basketball superstar who now plays for
the Seattle Storm. The photograph below is of Australian swimmer Brooke Hanson, posing with her boyfriend and fellow swimmer
Jared Clarke.
The athletes in the ancient Olympics competed naked. This should never have changed. Associating nudity with prowess,
fitness, power, discipline and pride would go a long way to redeeming the naked human body from the commercial exploitation
it now suffers under in our culture. Female nudity today, especially, constitutes a kind of tease or reward, oriented towards
a male gaze intent on objectifying the female and thus controlling her -- not so much in practical terms as in psychic ones.
A collapsed and insecure patriarchy, unwilling and largely unable to fulfill is traditional role in domestic culture, fears
the female as a measure of its own impotence and existential nullity.
The Olympics are alive with sexuality, in a broader sense than the term is usually used. Watching the human body at the
extreme limits of what it can do is a way of undressing it, knowing it, appreciating it, cherishing it. It is usually the
case that feats of great physical prowess require a grace and economy of action which are lyrical, sensual, seductive. They
echo the lineaments of sexual delight.
Cat Osterman, a pitcher on the 2004 US women's softball team, is tall and willowy. She doesn't throw as hard as the other
pitchers on the roster but her ball has a lot of movement on it. In one game she struck out eleven batters in 8 innings in
a US victory over Japan. Her set up is a thing of great beauty to watch, as she stretches slightly to her full height, throwing-hand
and glove-hand clasped and raised above her head, shifts her hips slightly as she goes into her full wind-up -- and then races
into the underhand delivery almost faster than the eye can follow.
Misty May and Kerri Walsh, the awesome beach volleyball duo, are also tall and lithe. They fly about the sand court like
like half-clad naiads, like the floating nymphs painted on Greek vases, and in motion become mythological, as great ballet
dancers can.
The range of female body types in the Olympics is broad, too, and each type has its own kind of beauty, of perfection,
geared to the perfect execution of the tasks these bodies have trained to master.
It's all very sexy -- but a universe away from the crude bumping and grinding, the largely symbolic sexuality, we associate
with a pole or lap dancer.
The Greeks were wise in their odd way. The ancient Olympics featured only naked men performing for a mostly male audience
-- but Spartan boys and girls exercised together, naked. It was a way of resisting the commodification of the human body,
of celebrating it frankly, in the open air. In the end it was a way of incorporating animal attraction into a system of humane
values, into a culture of respect.
When the Olympic athletes went back to Greece in 2004 they should have left their uniforms at home.
|
| © Black+White |
|
