I overheard a conversation in a fast food establishment during the recently concluded Winter Olympics. Two guys expressed their admiration for female figure skaters. Or more precisely, admiration for their butts and crotches exposed in skimpy costumes on the ice. It was expressed crudely, but I certainly shared their admiration.
As an adolescent struggling to remain “pure,” I remember being enraptured by the flexibility of one skater. It wasn’t so much her athleticism but the suggestiveness of her poses (legs spread). And the sight of her exposed crotch. My naivety about the female body heightened my fascination. It amounted to a display of naughty exhibitionism.
A decade ago, The Globe and Mail came under intense criticism for printing on its front page a photo of a Canadian figure skater that prominently featured her crotch as she lifted her leg. Sour feminists complained that such photos sexually objectify female athletes and are a form of “upskirting” (defined as “the practice of making unauthorized photographs under a female’s skirt, capturing an image of her crotch area and underwear.“) My response is that any display of a nubile woman, her attractive body toned through athletic exertion and enhanced by a sexy costume, in which she teases an audience with tantalizing glimpses of her barely concealed private parts, is bound to attract male attention.
Katarina Witt won two Olympic gold medals for the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s, but her fame didn’t derive from her technical mastery of her routines. Dubbed “the most beautiful face of socialism,” she flirted with the audience while skating in revealing costumes. Time magazine called her “Sex on Skates.” (After the Iron Curtin fell, it was discovered in the archives of the Stasi that an agent had listened in on Witt having sex with an American at an East German hotel. The agent noted with bureaucratic precision: “Sexual intercourse took place from 20.00 until 20.07.”) No longer bound by the constraints of socialism, she went on to capitalize on her sex appeal and appeared in Playboy sans costume.
(Witt wasn’t the only ice skater whose sexual exploits were recorded. Tonya Harding’s sex tape was one of the best selling pornographic videos of the 1990s. I recently discovered it online and watched it – for research, of course. Her skill at riding cowgirl was impressive.)
Lutheran Guilt 