They golf, they swim, they dive, and they play soccer. This month's edition of pint-sized phenoms features some amazing young women performing some incredible feats.
1) The youngest of the bunch is 10-year-old Aisha Saini. While on family vacation in Spain, the Scottish girl played in a soccer tournament. Turns out some scouts from the famed Italian football club AC Milan were there and they were so impressed by her they invited her to play in a tournament. As if that's not impressive enough, turns out she is the first girl to ever receive this honor.
2) Annaleise Carr also recently became a first-- she became the youngest swimmer to ever swim across Lake Ontario (that's 31.6 miles!). At only 14, she completed the feat in 27 hours and she stayed in the water the whole time. Her swim raised over $80,000 for a childhood cancer center.
3) Fifteen-year-old Lydia Ko has quickly become the most talked-about pint-sized phenom since Lexi Thompson. Which makes sense since Ko broke Thompson's record; she is now the youngest champion at an LPGA tournament.
4) The elder stateswoman of this group-- though only 16-- Gracia Leydon-Mahoney recently won the AT&T National Diving Championship. She won the springboard competition but also did well diving from the platform.
These young women remind us that you don't have to participate in the most popular sports to succeed-- and you can win big at a young age these days.
There’s now solid evidence that there are huge differences in the effectiveness of teachers, even within high-poverty schools. The gold standard study, by Harvard and Columbia University scholars and released in December by the National Bureau of Economic Research, took data from a major urban school district and found that even in the context of poverty, teachers consistently had a huge positive or negative impact.
Get a bottom 1 percent teacher, and the effect is the same as if a child misses 40 percent of the school year. Get a teacher from the top 20 percent, and it’s as if a child has gone to school for an extra month or two.
The study found that strong teachers in the fourth through eighth grades raised the game of their students in ways that would last for decades. Just having a strong teacher for one elementary year left pupils a bit less likely to become mothers as teenagers, a bit more likely to go to college and earning more money at age 28.
Removing the bottom 5 percent of teachers would have a huge impact. Students in a single classroom with an average teacher, rather than one from the bottom 5 percent, collectively will earn an additional $1.4 million over their careers, the study found.
2) Sociology- As the sociologist in the family I've also been speaking out, often on NECN's The Morning Show (for all of my recent clips, click here). Last Tuesday I spoke about the evolving meanings of 9/11 and how we can commemorate the day with a new generation of children.
There's been some controversy over "A Terrifying Way to Discipline Children," though the basic facts of what happened to Lichtenstein's daughter remain undisputed. For a good piece on the topic, see this Time article, along with Lichtenstein's own website, which provides commentary and links to both positive and negative pieces.
3) Sports- As I blogged last Thursday I reviewed a new sociology book on female sports fans on The Rumpus, mentioning my interest and John's interest in sports. No word yet on Carston's athletic preferences though.
4) Pageants- Last Thursday evening I was thrilled to help select two new Miss America system queens-- Miss University and Miss Strafford County-- who will go on to compete for the title of Miss New Hampshire 2013. I was impressed with so many of the people I met during the experience and I look forward to following their careers. The most interesting, and difficult, part of the pageant wasn't the swimsuit competition, it was the interview. Going through it, it's easy to see why the process of competing for Miss America is one very long job interview.
While we don't yet know which social science will most interest Carston-- or if his primary interests will be around education, sports, or pageantry-- we do know that he is already a media maven. He especially loves social media, as his onesie reveals. My Little Man, who is "Famous on Facebook," got this new portrait taken last week in between Mommy and Daddy's media appearances!
Today a book review I wrote of the new book Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States, appeared on The Rumpus. This may or may not mean I am the next Cheryl Strayed...
This summer my husband and I had Olympics fever. We watched NBC’s tape-delayed broadcast every night and live online coverage of our favorite sports (gymnastics for me, track and field for him) during the day. But our viewing habits diverged in one significant way: he likes to fast-forward through all the fluff. What’s “fluff?” It’s the pre-recorded and packaged segments about an athlete’s training or family history designed to tug at the heartstrings. I like knowing about who to root for and the athletes’ stories matter to me.
According to Andrei Markovits, professor of comparative politics and German studies at the University of Michigan, and Emily Albertson, my love of fluff and my husband’s disdain for it is not at all surprising. In their new book, Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States, Markovits and Albertson examine the development of female sports fans since the passage of Title IX 40 years ago. Just as we have more successful female athletes than ever before—60% of the American Olympic medal haul, and two-thirds of the golds, were won by women—we also have more Sportistas than ever.
Despite the fact that I regularly write about women and sports, Markovits and Albertson would not regard me as a Sportista because I don’t religiously follow and have expert knowledge about what they label “hegemonic sports”—the Big Four of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. So Sportistas like Albertson almost always focus on male sports and on sports that offer very few professional opportunities for female athletes. Albertson knows her sports history and has even been accepted into the fraternity of University of Michigan undergraduate football fans, despite never playing football herself. According to Markovits the purpose of Sportista is to explain how a young female like Albertson becomes credentialed as a Sportista in the 21st century.
Fun fact alert! Toward the end of the review I write:
Despite sports generally being less important in female peer groups, some women do become serious sports consumers—they become sports journalists. In their discussion and analysis of female sports journalists Markovits and Albertson are at their best. They discuss the differences among women who report sports, women who analyze sports, and women who cover sports for print and radio and those who do so on television. They explain that while numerous studies have found that attractiveness helps build credibility in spheres like politics and business, for female sports reporters attractiveness is actually a liability. The earliest female sports reporters were known for their beauty and not for their knowledge (one was actually Miss America), a criticism that haunts female sports journalists to this day. Today some women create a niche for themselves by covering sports that aren’t part of the Big Four as a way to overcome the numerous barriers to entry, promotion, and credibility that a professional Sportista must face.
My mother actually crowned that Miss America I mention, Phyllis George Miss America 1971. Small worlds collide, huh?
Like many others, including hundreds of pageant moms, I think the TLC series Toddlers & Tiaras is pretty harmful to the child beauty pageant community and to many of the kids. I've written about kids and reality TV before as well (like here and here), so know just being on camera in front of a national audience can be problematic for some children-- let alone shown in a prostitute outfit, in a costume with "enhancements," or smoking a cigarette.
Now there's legal evidence that the show is being used in family court, as my Slate piece details. Here's a short excerpt, but click HERE to read more:
Even if the Verst case shouldn’t be a referendum on whether or not child beauty pageants are a form of abuse for all children, family lawyer Mark Momjian acknowledges that most people will “impute” to all child-beauty-pageant families. In other words most people will assume this means that child beauty pageants are now legally recognized as a form of abuse and can be the basis for altered custody arrangements and other legal action.
What sets the Verst case apart, according to Momjian, is not just that Maddy participates in child beauty pageants, but that she has done so on a television show with her story broadcast to the world. Momjian knows a thing or two about children on reality TV, having represented Kate Gosselin, former star of another controversial TLC show, Jon & Kate Plus 8, in her divorce and custody case. He believes that regardless of the outcome, the fact that child beauty pageants have become such a public issue in this case does not bode well for future participants on this show, or others featuring girls in competitive activities like dance (see: Dance Moms) and cheerleading (see: Cheer Perfection).
Jackson has asserted that, within the context of pageants, costumes like Maddy’s police-officer getup and the dance moves that accompany them are not considered sexual. Having studied child beauty pageants for over a decade, I agree with her. Within that world, they are just seen as “cute,” not sexual, and are what you must do in order to win the biggest crown. They are just moves. But that shared understanding in the pageant ballroom isn't present in the wider world, and once these routines are broadcast to a wider audience, they are rightly seen as having sexual elements in them—batting eyelashes, blowing kisses, and thrusting hips. Which is why allowing young children to be on these television shows is problematic.
In my opinion the Verst case should worry many moms, not just pageant moms. Especially divorced moms like Melissa Ziegler whose two daughters, Maddie and Mackenzie, star on Lifetime’s Dance Moms. In Season 1 her ex-husband appears saying that he will no longer allow his daughters to compete with their dance studio—though nothing has yet come of that threat in Season 2. It's the combinationof being involved with a controversial activity (especially those that can sexualize young girls like pageants, dance, and cheerleading) and being on television that is the real issue. Either on their own can cause problems though—just ask Amber Portwood of MTV’s Teen Mom who lost custody of her daughter and is now in jail after footage of her hitting her child’s father in front of her daughter aired.
According to a source close to Lindsay Jackson who was present at the Campbell County Courthouse this past Friday, the judge closed the court proceedings to outsiders (including media). Given his previous gag order and the increasingly high profile nature of the case, this wasn't surprising. Maddy and her parents are still awaiting a decision from the judge though, and it is unclear when that decision will now be announced.
I personally am not surprised that more time is being given to make a decision. When I spoke with Mark Momijan for the piece he told me that in 25 years of practicing family law he had never heard of a parent releasing a custodial evaluation, especially one that was less complimentary than it could be toward the mom. He thought that would worry the judge. Seems Judge Woeste has a lot to process, and his decision will impact not only Maddy but lots of little girls like her, so it's good that he is taking time to consider all aspects of the custody case.
UPDATE: It was reported on November 30, 2012 that Jackson and Verst will share custody, with Jackson as the primary custodian. Maddy will be allowed to compete in pageants, so long as both parents agree in writing-- but this is expected to continue to cause legal issues.
The XX(X) Olympics were an enormous success for women-- especially the Americans. If the US women had been their own country they would have placed fifth in the medal count standings. Even more noteworthy is that 60% of the all the US' medals came from women and 2/3rds of the American gold medal haul were won by the females on Team USA.
Of course a year from now we're not very likely to care as much about our amazing female athletes. As this piece from Fortune explains, female athletes are hot commodities every four years, but in between even the professional basketball players suffer. According to the author a lot of this has to do with the fact that marketers aren't quite sure what to do with non-traditional female bodies, which helps explain why Gabby Douglas and the Fierce Five are doing so well. (Side note: My favorite tidbit from this article is that the first sports bra was made in 1977 by a grad student sewing two jock straps together!)
Sure, the numbers in sports like synchro and gymnastics in general skew female. That is also true for a sport like football, though in this case men dominate. This year for the first time ever a female, Shannon Eastin, refereed an NFL game. Perhaps in sports where the numbers are so lopsided the way for the opposite to really participate is through officiating and judging, or perhaps coaching (if you watched women's artistic gymnastics you know that the head coach of the Team USA and most of the athletes' primary coaches are male)? I'm not sure this is a fair trade-off for those who want to compete themselves but in cases where parity isn't possible due to numbers perhaps this is a way to include both sexes.
I understand that most "serious" Olympic sports fans think synchro and rhythmic should be excluded anyway (despite this wonderful New York Times article on how athletic synchronized swimming really is), perhaps because they are so feminine and competitively marked as such due to the subjective nature of judging, but does it both anyone else that the fact men are excluded isn't given the same amount as concern as when women are excluded?
