February 18, 2010

Outfits

Men's figure skating should have a rule that the skaters can't wear any styles of clothes that weren't worn in dance scenes in Hollywood musicals by either Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, or Jimmy Cagney.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

39 comments:

Whiskey said...

Ice skating is done for the female audience. Its no suprise that they want the most Princess like woman, and the "twirliest boy" out of the process. The gayer the guy the better.

The more feminized and gay something becomes (Ice Skating in the West, Dance and music in general) the more straight men flee it. The contrast between the gay-mannerism straight guys in the pairs competition (the married/engaged Western guys) and the Chinese and Russian guys was striking. The latter had not picked up all the gay mannerisms and managed masculine grace without gayness (that seems to be demanded by the female audience and gay choreographers in the West).

Anonymous said...

"The more feminized and gay something becomes (Ice Skating in the West, Dance and music in general) the more straight men flee it."

How long before gay pairs in the Olympics?

Anonymous said...

How long before gay pairs in the Olympics?

Good God, don't put ideas in their heads.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree more. This is very similar to the suggestion I made this afternoon on the other thread about how to widen the audience for men's skating.

Whiskey,

While the average woman appreciates the tremendous athletic skill all the skaters exhibit, it would be an even more enjoyable viewing experience for us if the male performers were masculine. It should come as no surprise that we like manly men, and anyone who watches the NBA or the NFL realizes the number of manly men who are graceful. The position of wide receiver is the best example.

I'm guessing that a kid like Weir has an audience of pre-adolescent girls who follow his tweets, but hey, those girls grow up.

The kind of training that produces world caliber skaters requires money. That shrinks the pool of potential world-class skaters right off the bat. In addition to the expense is the isolation of the participants in the sport, at least for Western kids. While the old Soviet bloc countries and China take the kid from his parents and put him in a school for sports where he can at least be among other kids, the American or Western male child skater will find himself isolated from his peers, a scenario that doesn't appeal to most boys at the age they wish to be with other boys.

As for women wanting the "most Princess like woman"--well, Peggy Fleming, while very feminine, was not, at least in my estimation, a picture of princess-ness; Dorothy Hamill and a number of other well-known American skaters, was built more along the lines of a Lindsey Vonn, the downhiller; Katarina Witt, the East German champ, was more femme fatale/vixen than princess...

Anonymous said...

"How long before gay pairs in the Olympics?"

Gawd, I thought about that the other day. Please, Lord, no.

Lesbian Luge?

Anonymous said...

I take it you didn't like Johnny Weird's corset?

Anonymous said...

Lesbian Luge?

They already have double luge, which is pretty gay already. One guy lying on top of another guy. Both in tight spandex.

Matra said...

Whiskey is right about US television.

Today NBC chose ice dancing over the USA v Canada hockey game on Sunday night.

Link

With an Olympic audience that skews heavily female, NBC will opt to show figure skating's original dance programs live, rather than the hockey rivalry that will air at 7 p.m. ET.

Christopher McCloskey, vice president of communications at NBC Sports, says the three-hour time commitment makes for a difficult situation, in part because hockey fans want to see games in their entirety.

"Everybody knows it's an important game," he said. "The hockey fan who wants to watch the games and others in their entirety can see more games during this Olympics than any Winter Games in history.

"Hockey fans sometimes feel slighted. But basketball's Team USA doesn't air in prime time for three hours."


Even basketball! There aren't too many countries in the world where their major league sports take a back seat to those females prefer.

Anonymous said...

Whiskey still hasn't accepted the fact that female choice drives sexual selection. No one is forcing you to watch figure skating, Whiskey. Why don't you go back to your "crypto-Jew pretending to be Scots-Irish" act.

Anonymous said...

Lysacek beats Plushenko!!!!

Good deal, the skater beats the mere jumper. Had to follow it on ESPN chat because we in California get nothing live. It stinks--Vancouver is on our time, yet we still don't get events live. I hate NBC.

Captain Jack Aubrey said...

While the average woman appreciates the tremendous athletic skill all the skaters exhibit, it would be an even more enjoyable viewing experience for us if the male performers were masculine.

The most masculinely-dressed men seemed to be the three Japanese skaters. Apparently the Japanese don't put up with that gay-dressing shit. Lysacek still rocked, and seemed to be pretty masculine (for a figure skater) - even if he did have a snake sewed into his outfit.

I do so say it would be better for the future of the sport in America to see more masculine (and more masculinely-dressed) victors. Maybe Lysacek will help that along. At 6'2", he also seemed pretty tall for a figure skater. I haven't heard him being interviewed so if he talks like a friend of Dorothy I take it all back. And at least he bothered to put his hand over his heart during the medal ceremony unlike that asshat speed skater Shani Davis.

Anonymous said...

My son, age 11, frustratedly zipped past the figure skating portion of the Olympics he had recorded trying to find the speed skating. I asked him what he thought of the male figure skating. He replied it wasn't a very manly sport. Even the kids know.

Dahinda said...

Matra: "Today NBC chose ice dancing over the USA v Canada hockey game on Sunday night."

Much TV is just for women since they buy more of the products advertised. How many of those goofy Swiffer commercials, where the broom or mop sends their former owners flowers or love letters, are geared toward men? They wouldn't make a commercial like that since men would find it queer and it wouldn't sell prouct anyway. Since these type of products are the main sponsers of TV in general the programming is made to attract purse string holding women.

anony-mouse said...

Still no women's ski jumping, though.

MacSweeney said...

Many of the Ice Dancing pairs are brother/sister.

Man, that's kind of hot!

DYork said...

Whiskey said...

Ice skating is done for the female audience. Its no suprise that they want the most Princess like woman, and the "twirliest boy" out of the process. The gayer the guy the better.


So now women want nonthreatening gay guys, the ultimate beta male.

I thought your paranoid rap about women was that they preferred alpha male bad boys and that they "hate, hate, hate, the beta male".

But now they all love, love, love the prissy fag?

DYork said...

Anonymous said..

How long before gay pairs in the Olympics?


SNL, 1984 - "SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMERS"

Kylie said...

I stopped watching figure skating when disco replaced classical. So Johnny Weir's ensemble came as an unpleasant surprise to me when he made the news for wearing fur.

What next, I wonder? Vogue on Ice? Glammed up Opening Ceremonies? Bling added to the medals?

Of one thing I am sure. They won't stop till they've totally ruined it.

Whiskey said: "Ice skating is done for the female audience. Its no suprise that they want the most Princess like woman, and the 'twirliest boy' out of the process. The gayer the guy the better."

You're doing it again.

George said...

Joubert always looked the best. No one beats the French for couture!

l said...

What's the evolutionary biology/psychology explanation for why women like to watch effeminate males, like figure skaters and morning TV show meterologists? Is it all women, or is it young girls and women past child-bearing years?

Dudes do not like to watch butch women.

Anonymous said...

"How long before gay pairs in the Olympics?"

There's a thought...

Sideways said...

How long before gay pairs in the Olympics?

Sexual dimorphism is one of the keys to the functioning of pairs figure skating. You'd need a very small man to pull off the woman's role. A quick look at flyweight boxers to get a male athlete size baseline at 112 lbs (which is more than any of those women weigh, I'll bet) puts them at around 5'5"-5'6". It would take a really exceptional pair to pull it off, needing the rare tiny male athlete on one side and an unusually large and strong skater on the other.

Of course, I understand you probably weren't serious with your comment.

Anonymous said...

"What's the evolutionary biology/psychology explanation for why women like to watch effeminate males, like figure skaters and morning TV show meterologists? Is it all women, or is it young girls and women past child-bearing years?

Dudes do not like to watch butch women."


Most women would prefer not to watch fem males. Young girls, on the other hand, like them as they fantasize them as males who can be their close, loyal friends since they are unthreatening in a number of ways at a time when the straight boys in a young girl's life are quite mocking, quite capable of betraying a secret, and/or quite vulgar--you know, indulging in burping and passing gas contests among other dumb and gross stuff.

Some elderly women in the audience might actually be in denial about some of the male skaters too. My mother was, most of the time, a pretty savvy person, yet years ago, I recall an Olympics when she and I sat watching Brian Boitano being interviewed after one of his performances. We had both been pulling for him, of course. I happened to say as I listened to him, the first time I had really heard him speak, "He sure sounds gay, doesn't he?" My mother was was stunned I had said that.

"Nooo, you think? What makes you say that?" I couldn't believe she couldn't tell, not my mom. HOwever, the more she listened, the more she agreed. Maybe age takes away the gaydar?

As for guys not liking watching butch women? No, you don't, but you sure don't seem to mind watching women on women which is *totally gay* and incomprehensible to us women. Yuck, ick, and more ick. Blahhhhh.

That would be like straight women liking watching guy on guy---the minute a guy would do that, he loses all appeal to us.

Even the most masculine-looking guy, say an actor who has been closeted, then is outted as gay, loses his sex appeal to us.

Back to a previous skating related topic--the ridiculous costumes. I don't know which is worse, the skating costumes or the snow boarders'.

We watched the women's half pipe last night. The clothes those kids wore made them look as butch as the sequined costumes of the male skaters made them look fem.

Boy do I feel old.

Anonymous said...

"Still no women's ski jumping, though."

Did you see the piece they did on the American gal who participated in a competition this year in which she beat most of the male ski jumpers who participated in these Olympics?

The women have been pushing for ski jumping for a long while, but the Olympic Committee continues to deny its inclusion, and it seems to be because they realize that a female can beat a male and that would cause them problems. That is, if women can beat men off the same hill, do they mix genders in the same competition, or do they have separate events for them as they do in almost everything else (curling is an exception I can think of).

However, if they hold separate events for them, what happens to the male event's credibility if a woman or women beat their distance and equal or surpass them in style points?

I don't know that much about ski jumping, but from what I watched, it seemed the men were not at all muscular or heavy; in fact, they seemed slight. To what degree is skeletal structure/bone density/musculature and strength an advantage in this sport?

Anonymous said...

The SNL parody of synchronized swimming is my favorite SNL piece of all time.

One of my closest friends was a member of the American synchronized swimming team in the '64 Tokyo Olympics, when it was still an exhibition sport. (She still received a gold medal.) I had known her for years before I ever found this out.

Thinking she would find it funny, another friend taped the infamous SNL routine when it was re-run, and we presented it to her as a gift. Unfortunately, although she tried to maintain a stiff upper lip and laugh, we think she was hurt by our "gift."

Thing is, as a young girl I belonged to a swim club and for a time was on a syn. swim team. It's very, very difficult, requires a lot of discipline, breath control, concentration, etc. When I found out my friend had been an Olympian in the sport, I was truly impressed and our little gift was not our attempt to make fun of the sport or her participation in it but rather to laugh at the idea of men in the sport, something incongruous with our ideas about masculinity.

Little by little, I think she "got it," but we found out that she had endured a lot of mocking of the sport when she was quite young. I think she was only 14 when she went to Toyko.

Anonymous said...

Did you see the piece they did on the American gal who participated in a competition this year in which she beat most of the male ski jumpers who participated in these Olympics?


No.



However, if they hold separate events for them, what happens to the male event's credibility if a woman or women beat their distance and equal or surpass them in style points?


I give up. What happens to the female events credibility if the men beat their distance in this or any other sport?

I'm all for scrapping the separate categories for men and women. I doubt that any women athletes will like the idea though. And it seems screwy to say "we'll do unisex competitions in those sports where women want it, and not in the sports they don't".

Anonymous said...

What's the evolutionary biology/psychology explanation for why women like to watch effeminate males, like figure skaters and morning TV show meterologists?




In fairness I don't think that women watch these sports for the men, but for the women. Of course you can ask what the evolutionary biology/psychology explanation is for that behavior. In general women seem to be much more into looking at attractive members of their own sex than men are. I've never figured out what evolutionary purpose that serves.

Concerned Netizen said...

"The gayer the guy the better."

Johnny Weir lost. The three winners all looked straight enuf. Plushenko looks positively masculine.

Lysacek though....looks a dead ringer for a young Sandy Koufax. And we all know that Sandy Koufax is gay because it says so somewhere. And if it says so somewhere a guy is gay.

Whoever used the phrase "friend of Dorothy" - are you sure you're really straight?

Anonymous said...

As for guys not liking watching butch women? No, you don't, but you sure don't seem to mind watching women on women which is *totally gay* and incomprehensible to us women. Yuck, ick, and more ick. Blahhhhh.

Men enjoy watching girl-on-girl action only insofar as they can fantasize that the women are just pretending to be lesbians. The idea is that they, the men, might be able to join in their action. Watching girl-on-girl action between two women known to be lesbians - even if they're not butch - would not be appealing to most men.

Peter

Anonymous said...

you sure don't seem to mind watching women on women which is *totally gay* and incomprehensible to us women.




I think it's only a subset of men who get off on that stuff.

Anonymous said...

"Men enjoy watching girl-on-girl action only insofar as they can fantasize that the women are just pretending to be lesbians. The idea is that they, the men, might be able to join in their action. Watching girl-on-girl action between two women known to be lesbians - even if they're not butch - would not be appealing to most men."

Thanks for clarifying this, Peter, but when I have asked some guys if knowing the women were truly lesbian would matter to them, many have answered, "Not as long as they're hot." I am glad to know not all guys feel this way.

Now, about the opposite --two really attractive guys "servicing" one woman. Most of us women just can't get this fantasy to work, not because we aren't amenable to the idea of two guys or to variety...we are..but we just can't put more than one guy w/out his clothes on in the same room together with us. The minute we do that, the fantasy falls apart because in our heads any guy who'd be caught dead naked in the same room with another guy is not masculine and the minute we see him as not masculine, that's it, fantasy turns to "yuck."

At least that's how my brain and the brains of the other women I talk to work.

Anonymous said...

I just read an article about Weir's career plans. He wishes to be a fashion designer, wants to study in NYC.

He was the designer of the costumes we saw him wear this last week. Well, I can't say that I saw the least bit of talent in that area.

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"In general women seem to be much more into looking at attractive members of their own sex than men are. I've never figured out what evolutionary purpose that serves."


Sizing up the competition.

l said...

As for guys not liking watching butch women? No, you don't, but you sure don't seem to mind watching women on women which is *totally gay* and incomprehensible to us women. Yuck, ick, and more ick. Blahhhhh.


First off, for a lot of men, seeing another guy's junk ruins the view. Secondly, like Peter says, in the male porn consumer's fantasy, two good looking women in a lesbian scene are only going at it because he's not there. The G-rated version of this is the all girl pillow fight. The R-rated version is the hot babe oil-wrestling match. In all of the above fantasy scenarios, the guy steps into the picture and it becomes a different game.

I know, ick and yuck.

Glaivester said...

That would be like straight women liking watching guy on guy---the minute a guy would do that, he loses all appeal to us.

As I recall, the main audience for Brokeback Mountain was female. And there's also the phenomenon of slash fanfiction...

Matra said...

"Still no women's ski jumping, though."

A Jewish group is on the case:

Human rights group slams exclusion of women ski jumpers from Vancouver Olympics

TORONTO, January 4, 2010 – The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada, has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to reconsider the continued exclusion of Women’s Ski Jumping from the upcoming Olympic Games. According to the League’s National Chair Allan Adel, and its National Director, Ruth Klein, although the recent Supreme Court decision technically places the IOC outside the ambit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the position taken on women’s ski jumping violates the spirit of the Charter, which prohibits discrimination based on gender.

In a letter to John Furlong, CEO of VANOC, the League recalled the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the IOC turned a blind eye to Hitler’s fascist regime, which was even then implementing discriminatory policies against Jews that impacted Games that year. The League asks the IOC and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to focus on its policies and practices relating to discrimination, “and that includes eliminating discrimination against women now, just as it should have included resistance to discrimination against Jews then”.


B'nai Brith Canada

Anonymous said...

"As I recall, the main audience for Brokeback Mountain was female. And there's also the phenomenon of slash fanfiction..."

Yes, but

1) there was, thankfully, no scene that showed anything
2) most importantly, women knew that both male actors were straight men

l said...

Of related interest -- Maine schools struggle with how they're going to accomodate the toilet and locker room needs of transgender students. Wear a dress and they might let you shower with the girls.

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/137047.html

I wonder what Oswald Spengler would think of this.

Anonymous said...

In answer to a question asked by another poster: ski jumping is a sport that favors the lighter athlete - the less you weigh, the farther you can go. Assuming you have reasonable mid- and lower-body strength, to hold your airborne pose, of course.