I saw this image on a bunch of websites yesterday. It’s Olympic winning athlete Lindsey Vonn dressed up as Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct, the role that made Sharon Stone famous.
Now this pisses me off on so many levels.
I’m pissed at Lindsey for buying into this crap. She should know better, but hey it’s a magazine cover and it’s a sports magazine and they don’t put a lot of women on the cover. So what the hell. It’s great visibility and she’s sexy and straight and can get away with this. In fact it will probably help her get more endorsements.
But what a terrible message she is sending. Remember the movie? The Tramell character was an icepick murderer. That’s the character our most visible Olympic winning athlete chooses to emulate? I’m surprised the photo didn’t have her legs wider open. IN fact I’m surprised they didn’t have her boiling a bunny ala Fatal Attraction.
Speaking of ESPN covers, I had a hard time finding a single cover with a woman athlete where she was fully clothed. Candace Parker was on a cover a while ago when she was about 8 months pregnant. And from what I can tell basketball player Diana Taurasi who is not known for provocative photos was on one of the covers of this year’s Body Issue naked as were the women from the USA women’s water polo team. I know that there were male athletes naked on other body issue covers, but the question I have is has there been a female athlete on the cover of ESPN the Magazine this year fully clothed? Roger Federer was able to keep his clothes on. Why can’t the women?
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Thanks for writing this post.
I’m really tired of female athletes who are so eager (and desperate) to pose for men’s & sports magazines, wearing bikini’s or participating in photo shoots like the one above of Lindsay Vonn. The worst example of this is Danica Patrick. Just google “Danica Patrick” and the results immediately come up with revealing photos of herself in bikinis. She is better known for being SEXY than the first woman who won an Indy race.
What are you trying to prove, ladies?
Doing this stuff won’t allow them to be taken seriously as female athletes.
Anyway… when are we going to see a sexy, racy photo shoot of Rafael Nadal, posing seductively and naked for Vogue or Cosmopolitan?
Gotta respectively disagree with you on this one. Ms. Vonn is on the cover of a ‘Movie’ issue of a sports magazine, so she is dressed like an instantly recognizable female film character. She’s not nude, in fact she’s dressed in what is a perfectly normal outfit. Unless we’re still in an era where showing off arm and leg is considered scandalous, it’s just a white sweater/skirt combo. As for the morality of Sharon Stone’s Basic Instinct character, that is completely irrelevant and shows a baffling double standard. If a male athlete was on the cover dressed as The Joker, Hannibal Lecter, or Darth Vader, would we be decrying the immoral character whom this male athlete chooses to emulate? It’s not Vonn’s responsibility to pick a female film character who is a ‘good role model’ (Clarice Starling, Erin Brockovich, etc). It’s just a female athlete dressed as an instantly recognizable film character. She’s basically just wearing a somewhat form-fitting outfit and sitting in a chair with a very ‘I mean business’ expression. Sorry, this isn’t too far from the people who got Katy Perry booted off of Sesame Street because she was too pretty.
Seriously, Scott? Catherine Tremell is already a character pretty much entirely constructed out of the sexist trope of the “maneater”, the woman with a massive sexual appetite who devours (kills) men through it. (Would it have been that difficult to find a character less sexist than the one in Basic Instinct?) The Joker, Lecter and Darth Vader are not sexist stereotypes so there’s really no comparison here.
A male equivalent must be equally titillating, say two half-naked men dressed like Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. Yes, there’s no iconic sexually charged scene in Brokeback Mountain and I have to admit other movies don’t come to mind. There’s a reason for this, though: sexual content for women is not considered mainstream enough to actually make the cut.
“a perfectly normal outfit”.
And why must an athlete be dressed like a villain? Their talents alone don’t warrant our attention?
And in the image of a character known for flashing her stunt hoochie? Really?
Tremell is basically a somewhat more direct variation on the classic femme fatale found in so many classic film noirs. Would we have been as upset if Vonn had dressed up as Kathleen Turner from Body Heat or Lana Turner from The Postman Always Rings Twice? Those that went nuts over Basic Instinct (basically an old-fashioned B-movie with A-level stars and production values) back in 1992 either couldn’t stomach the (then ‘groundbreaking’, now eye-rollingly overdone) bi-sexual overtones or weren’t properly versed in classic film noir.
I’m not saying Basic Instinct is a great film, it lacks the truly subversive anti-corporate satire found in Robocop and Starship Troopers while lacking the epic sweep of Black Book (it’s closer in spirit to Paul Verhoeven’s toss-offs like The Hollow Man). But Trummel was never meant to be a symbol of anything other than the classic archetype found in hard-boiled mystery movies (it’s not exactly like Michael Douglas’s cop was a good role model either).
Scott, do you really want to try to make that argument? “It’s a [sexist] variant on something [sexist] that happened in the [sexist] past, so you shouldn’t care, and even if you do care, you probably only care because either you can’t deal with a little bisexual hinting or you don’t know anything about classic film noir.” I doubt you meant to have what you wrote read that way, but it does.
The question here isn’t why did one person in one photo of one spread dress and pose like a character best known for a specific shot involving nudity but, instead, has ESPN magazine really only featured female stars on its cover this year naked or, as in the case of this photo, dressed and posed to reference a woman flashing a certain portion of her anatomy, again, naked? Instead of responding with “Yes, you missed examples X, Y and Z”, you’re just quibbling about the characterization of the movie.
And about that, rather than comparing a random-guy-as-the-Joker/Lecter/Vader to Vonn-as-Trammel, why not think about some really good female comparison characters for those characters? For Lecter, what about Charlize Theron’s Aileen Wuornos in Monster? She hasn’t got Lecter’s suave cunning, but both are well-rounded characters who happen to qualify as serial killers. For the Joker, how about Kim Novak’s Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster character in Vertigo? Both characters kept us guessing. Or perhaps Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, if you want to stay in the Batman oeuvre. For Vader, how about Sissy Spacek’s Carrie? Perhaps you’re thinking that all of these characters are too likable. Maybe Cruella de Vil? Nurse Ratched? There are lots of options without going straight to an implied shot of an Olympian’s naked privates. The problem is that ESPN seems to be making a habit of skipping straight to the nudity – at least where women are concerned.
I understand what you’re saying about this but I don’t completely agree. Male athletes are very frequently posing in sexy ways on the covers of magazines — it’s almost expected. When a female does it’s different? It’s only different if you perceive that men should be allowed to show case their bodies and sexuality, but women should not.
Jihad Punk 77 — you say “Doing this stuff won’t allow them to be taken seriously as female athletes.” If you are not taking them seriously because they are posing in a sexy way, then maybe you are the one who has a problem with women. Women are entitled to be sexual and sexy and it does not mean you should not take them seriously. She’s not a lawyer in a court room parading around in front of a jury in a mini skirt. She’s a public figure, in entertainment, posing on the cover of a magazine, with an issue dedicated to movies. There’s a difference — a place and time.
Athletes are known for their strength, skill and …toned bodies! Just because she is emulating a character who is a killer, does not automatically mean that this is sexist. Maybe it was her idea and she has a sick sense of humor.
Also, you ask “why can’t she keep her clothes on?” She’s wearing a dress! And your question is oddly close to something that some puritanical, patriarchal man would say about women — they need to cover their bodies and keep their clothes on. No, they can express sexuality if they want to. It’s normal, and probably a fun photoshoot.
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