After 77 years, the wait is over
Murray ends 77 wait for British win
Our Golden Boy: Andy Murray ends 77 years of waiting for a British champion
This past weekend, tennis fans around the world, in particular those in Britain, hailed with joy the straight-set win of Scot Andy Murray on the grass courts of Wimbledon. Newspaper headlines such as those above, from
The Daily Telegraph,
The Times, and
The Daily Mail respectively, proclaimed Murray a new national hero, his accomplishment bringing to a glorious end a sporting drought second only to that of the hapless Chicago Cubs. But as
The Guardian pointed out in its
"PassNotes" column, "a humorous Q & A about a new issue of the day," the other newspapers had it wrong—unless, of course,
women's athletic accomplishments simply don't count. Ignoring not only Virigina Wade, the most recent British woman to captured the golden plate in 1977, but also fellow Brits Ann Hayden-Jones (winner in 1969), Angela Mortimer (1961), and Dorothy Round Little (1937), the newspapers made clear that gender hierarchies are alive and well in the world of sports reporting.
As they are in romancelandia. For if, as
The Guardian claims, Wade and her fellow female winners have been "airbrushed out of history" by the press, few women athletes ever even make it on to the romance land canvas. For example, a Goodreads list of
"Romance with Hero/Heroine are athletes" includes 118 titles, but fewer than 10 of these romances feature heroines in the athletic role. Of those, one heroine is a ballerina, one a former competitive figure skater who now performs in ice shows, and several are
former, but no longer competing, athletes. One featured a woman martial arts specialist in search of a man who can fulfill her submissive BDSM desires by beating her in a fight. Interestingly, the two books on the list that I read and enjoyed—Jennifer Iacopelli's
Game. Set. Match. and Patricia McLinn's
The Games—featured the intertwining stories of three pairs of both male and female athletes. Can a woman who devotes herself to sport only be attractive to a fellow athlete?
A
2008 study by the Women's Sports Foundation found that 69% of girls (as compared to 77% of boys) participate in organized or team sports, a major leap in the forty years since the passage of Title IX. I certainly see signs of this with my daughter and her friends— crew, fencing, swimming, horseback riding, and dance are only some of the many athletic activities in which they participate, and thrive.
More recent studies show that sports participation can result in "lifelong improvements in educational, work, and health prospects" for women.
Why, then, are there so few athlete heroines in romance novels? And such a glut of athlete heroes? Are there other female athlete romances that you would recommend?
Got Game?, by Stephanie Doyle has a heroine who's a pro golfer, and who's actually allowed to behave like a pro athlete.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rosario, for the rec. I'll check it out!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Lowell's Summer Games (Silhouette Intimate Moments, 1984). She later reissued it with padding as Remember Summer. I still have the first edition and never bothered to read the reissue. The heroine is an Olympic cross-country endurance rider and she is a real athlete. It was written before the 1984 LA Olympics actually took place and published to coincide with it so it doesn't mention the 1984 Soviet boycott and has Soviet competitors, etc. It's a great story though.
ReplyDeleteI'll see if my memory can come up with other books but you are right, there are far too few female athletes in romance novels!!!
Jenny, you took the words out of my mouth, er, keyboard. I just added _Remember Summer_ (which I bought but have not read because I loved _Summer Games_ so much I didn't see how it could be improved upon) to the Good Reads list referenced above. So now everyone can read it and go vote it higher up the list, right? I still have copies of the first Intimate Moments edition, too, by the way. Elizabeth Lowell is on my list of authors that I automatically buy in hardcover editions. I can't wait for the library or paperback, and prefer to own copies that will last years and years.
DeleteSarah Mayberry's Below the Belt has a female boxer (I haven't read it, but I do recommend Mayberry in general). (It's a Harlequin Blaze).
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jenny and Liz, for the recs. Any thoughts about WHY there are so few female athletes in romance novels?
ReplyDeleteI would venture a guess that a woman who concentrated so much on her athletic pursuits, that is, committed herself to being the best, would have less time and interest in establishing a relationship, and therefore be a more difficult character to create and make sympathetic.
DeleteI wonder if this connects to the social experiences/hierarchy of athletics in middle and high schools. The male athletes at my school were the teen versions of the alpha billionaire heroes - the golden boys who everybody was supposed to want. The female athletes, on the other hand, were the "in-crowd" who were not particularly sympathetic to the bookworm teens, which probably makes up most adult readers and authors.
DeleteWhat I'm trying to say, inarticulately, is that many of us may have been conditioned since puberty to find male athletes attractive, but to see female athletes and immediately look for a different lunch table.
Is it because athletic women get sweaty? Or maybe because all that training will lead to...muscles?
ReplyDeleteThere's only a novel I remember with a professional sport heroine, which is The Thrill of Victory (1989), an old Harlequin/Silhouette written by Sandra Brown. She is a professional tennis player that has to make the choice about treating her illness or going to Wimbledon. She has to suffer the scorn of the hero, a sport journalist that is somehow dimishing her athletic achievements because she is attractive. But I wouldn't recommend it, it certainly hasn't got a feminist POV, because I think that the hero never takes her achievements seriously.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit late here, but while a lot of girls do play sports at a younger age, the obvious parallel would be YA/NA, and I think there are some sports-playing heroines those genres; actually, the first example that came to mind for me was Miranda Kenneally's YA books, Catching Jordan and Stealing Parker, in which the heroines play high school football and softball, respectively. Title IX did open sports to a lot of women at the collegiate level, but unfortunately professional opportunities afterward are often fewer (and not as visible/well paying, as you've noted) for women than they are for men. Of course, this doesn't mean that authors can't write romances featuring tennis players, cyclists, WNBA players, golfers, winter Olympians, and so on. Certainly there are a lot of interesting female athletes to draw inspiration from.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that one of the books you did see listed is about a figure skater - that's actually one sport in which women are no less successful than men in terms of recognition and earnings, if not more so. Michelle Kwan is probably the most recognizable skater in the US, nearly a decade after she last competed; Yuna Kim is a superstar in Korea and earns more money than anyone currently competing. Being a skating fan, I'd also love to see more books that focus on skaters beyond the pretty ice princess stereotype.
Yes, professional sports opportunities for women are much more rare, much less publicized, and much less well-compensated than opportunities for men. Maybe it would be worth asking the opposite question: not why are there so few women sports heroines, but why are there so many male sports heroes in romance?
ReplyDeleteProfessional male athletes are in the right age range for a romance hero and are successful in their field, wealthy, and, being athletes, it's easy to believe that they'd be in good shape. Also, sports romances are usually about top athletes in pro team sports, not minor leaguers, Olympic hopefuls, or basketball players playing abroad (too bad, that would be interesting). So I see it as being very much like all the billionaires and members of the nobility that populate the romance genre.
DeleteI remembered another good one, on a female fencer: Eileen Nauman (aka Lindsay McKenna), The Right Touch (Harlequin Temptation, 1986). It's another of my keeper romances. Nauman/McKenna did a lot of very strong successful female heroines. I haven't read her newer books but I really liked the older ones.
ReplyDeleteI thought of another one, Susan Andersen's On Thin Ice (1995) which features an ice skater. Romantic suspense and very good.
A question to ask is why we are all coming up with older romances. Where are the current romances that feature female athletes???
Oh, I remembered another one, Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Summer's End (1999). Heroine is a figure skater.
ReplyDeleteI'll keep trying to remember others...
I think this was the one mentioned in the original post. I don't know if the author meant to sound a bit dismissive of the heroine (Amy) but I did feel as if the author felt that there was something "wrong" with being a "former competitive figure skater" or something frou-frou about ice shows. I hope that's not the case, because first of all, it's not Amy's fault that Olympic skaters age out by their twenties, and second, Summer's End celebrates Amy's fitness and athletic body. There's a great scene in which the hero needs to pick someone to canoe with him to go get help after an injury, and he realizes that Amy is far fitter and a better choice than all of the males in the group - and probably better than him.
DeleteI agree with you, that this book (_Summer's End_) is actually a stand out book about a female athlete. I can't believe I forgot about it/didn't recognize the description. In fact, I believe most of Kathleen Gilles Seidel's books would be right at home on this blog. I think the female characters are almost always in the process of growing and recognizing their own strengths. My particular favorite is _Don't Forget to Smile_ about a pageant queen!!! who learns that she is her own person and doesn't have to please her mother or anyone else. I think I'll go back and read it to refresh my memory. It has been a few years.
DeleteI agree that all of Kathleen Gilles Seidel's books would be worth reviewing on this blog. They are firmly on my keeper shelves.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Sarah Mayberry's Her Secret Fling. The heroine is a former Olympic? swimmer.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the recommendations, folks. Didn't mean to diss figure skating women-- they are definitely athletes. But there's a distinct gendered component to figure skating, no? Otherwise, wouldn't we have some romances with MALE figure skaters?
ReplyDeleteI think there's a perception of figure skating as a feminine sport in some countries, including the US with the focus on ladies' singles (making it among the few sports in which the women's competition may be more popular). But it's not true in every country, and even in the US, there were times when there was a lot of focus on the men. There are quite a few sports that don't get much attention in the romance genre, and figure skating is a niche sport in the US - as noted, even figure skating heroines are few and far between; I actually can't think of any romance novels from the post 6.0 era.
DeleteI do know of an author who's published a couple of NA romances in which the hero is a former skater who has turned to coaching. And of course, there are The Cutting Edge movies, and Chazz Michael Michaels is supposed to be quite popular with the ladies :)
I read Offsides by Julianna Stone. The heroine is a female hockey player, who played professional hockey in Sweden. After an injury ends her career, she comes to her hometown. Playing on the all male league causes a lot of heat. I was thrilled with the book. It also deals with the obstacles women face when trying to be a professional athlete in a male dominated field.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Flip, for the recommendation. OFFSIDES sounds intriguing!
ReplyDeleteAfter Wimbledon by, well, me, has a female tennis pro as a heroine.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jennifer, for stopping by, and for adding your book to our list.
ReplyDeleteI crave these types of books being an athlete myself, a few that I liked was Pepped Up by Ali Dean which is the story of a girl who is a cross country runner trying to make it to nationals whilst dealing with highschool drama and Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally which is about a daughter of a famous NFL player and she, herself, is a quarterback player and discovers relationships
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anonymous, for the additional recommendations. I've been meaning to check out CATCHING JORDAN for a while now--I'm off to request it from the library right now!
DeleteBully? That's really good has a little of car racing in it as well as cross country and half court press which is Basketball galour ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recs, anonymous. And thanks for stopping by!
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