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If you really think about it there have been a lot of female athletes who have come up over years. There was a time when we couldn't do anything and now we have lots of female athletes. There is nothing wrong with it. I LOVE being a female athlete. Dena, track and basketball When I first started playing, it was to keep my grades up, and then I really started to enjoy basketball and it's like number one thing. That's reason why I just fell in love with sports. Running track-just anything that came towards me, I did it. Jasmine, basketball and track Adrenalin rush. I just love it. Now practicing is not always so much fun, but when you're on court and you have clock up and score and you're playing against people you've never played, it's just so much fun. It just brings joy to my life. Kerry, basketball player With exception of military, sports is most masculine, male-identified institution in United States, and from its inception, it has been a closely cultivated arena for males to demonstrate their privilege and power. Unsurprisingly, entrance of women into this sacred sphere has been carefully monitored and regulated (Cahn 1994; Griffin 1992; Park 1987; Sage 1990). While individual women have continuously contested their exclusion from or limited entry into sports arena, feminists and advocates of women's rights have expressed ambivalent feelings about women's entrance into world of sports. This ambivalence was evident in early deliberations of many female physical educators who, on one hand, pushed for women to be physically active and, on other hand, sought to remake sports into a more feminine sphere by downplaying competitive and aggressive aspects of sports (Cahn 1994; Nelson 1994). However, by second wave of feminism in 1960s and 70s, prevailing discussion among feminists in regard to sports was how to increase women's participation in sports so they could enjoy same rights, privileges, and benefits of male athletes. Sports was seen as a critical arena for women to contest stereotypical images of docile, passive, inert, incapable female body, thus challenging patriarchal control and regulation of female body. The feminist hope, as culminated in passage of Title IX in 1972, was that if women could crack world of sports, then patriarchy, which manifests both literally and symbolically in sporting institution, could be dented. Dena, Jasmine, and Kerry, high school athletes quoted earlier, can be viewed as evidence of challenging of this masculine stronghold.i These girls have been playing sports since they were very young, and being an athlete is central to their identity. They are quite comfortable in their athletic skins, taking pride in their sporting accomplishments and boasting of their desires to get physical, knock opponents down, and win at all costs. Perhaps this isn't surprising since these are post-Title IX girls who have grown up with WNBA, Mia Hamm, Williams sisters, and 1999 U.S. women's soccer team World Cup win. Indeed, since passage of Title IX in 1972, girls' participation in sports has increased more than 800%, and athletic high school girls are recipients of a form of power, prestige, and status once relegated solely to cheerleaders and majorettes. Yet, how these girls talked about themselves as female athletes and about their experiences playing sports suggests that cracking patriarchy may involve more than simply allowing girls to enter playing field. As we listened closely to female high school athletes' stories about athleticism, power, strength, and competition, we also heard traditional feminine narratives about being attractive and exhibiting heterosexual appeal. Numerous feminist sports scholars (Krane 2001; Veri 1999) have documented how adult female athletes negotiate an athletic terrain that requires them to be heterosexy athletes (Griffin 1992), but as Shakib and Dunbar (2002) point out, little research has focused on the contemporary meanings adolescents make of gender and athleticism (354). …
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