Sex and the Olympics?

Over the last couple of days, I noticed that many of the twitter and webzine and blog sources that I regularly check had something to say about how the Olympics is, well, increasingly sexy.  Like this tweet from Salon, for instance:

Sexiest Olympics ever? Our lust for athletes goes back to “wealthy Roman girls running off with gladiators”

I don't know about the "our" lust--I don't remember the last time that I sat down to watch anything.  No opening ceremony. No closing. Nothing in between.  I merely read up the news later on.  But, the news has always reported enough for me to, including photos of attractive men and women Olympians.  

Anyway, Salon has a photo collection, of which this struck me the most (hey, I am no stuck-up prude!):

Andrew Sullivan cites a study in which the authors report that

[N]early three-quarters of the women’s coverage was devoted to gymnastics, swimming, diving and beach volleyball. Notice anything they have in common? The researchers did. "It is now customary for the participants in all of these events … to wear the equivalent of a bathing suit," they note in their analysis, which appears in the journal Electronic News.
Track and field, where the clothing is almost as minimal, made up another 13 percent of the women’s prime-time coverage.

What percentage of the men and women watching the eye candy events might have a comment comparable to the old one about buying Playboy for the articles? :)

The video that Sullivan has embedded there is funny, too:



A MSNBC report quoted this:

ALL of a sudden, the Olympics have got sexy. Really sexy.
The pin-up babes of the US Olympic football team arrived for their first training session in Glasgow yesterday.

 I preferred the straightforward approach here, in the usage of "pin-up babes."  No euphemisms.

And then, of course, that "sexy" athletes would get rid of the "y" from the word and get on with it :)  As this USA Today report put it:

the mayor of the Olympic Village is presiding over Sodom and its neighboring suburb of Gomorrah.

Hey, what happens in the Village, stays in the Village!

Of course, all these aren't new by any means.  All the way from high school through life, athletic people seemed to have always lived up the sexual reputations.  I mean, when was the last time you ever heard of the chess team being all sexy? Bobby Fischer was no pin-up babe! :)

Meanwhile, Slate wonders what's up with a lesbian kissing scene that was apparently shown in the opening ceremony ("apparently" because, remember, I rarely ever watch these events, whether or not the people are sexy!)

[The] question that dominated my Twitter feed was whether NBC had censored the transmission of Britain’s first lesbian kiss. This came in the odd pre-parade section, “Frankie and June Say … Thanks, Tim,” a celebration of digital Britain. As young Londoners Frankie and June enjoyed their first kiss, the big screen showed famous film and TV smackeroos, involving Hugh Grant, Shrek, Lady and the Tramp, and various other megastars. Immediately after the canine-spaghetti-eating make-out scene, two young women were shown locking lips. This scene lasted just half a second, but according to a few overheated news reports, since the ceremonies were aired around the world, this was the first same-sex kiss shown in some Middle Eastern nations.

Oh well, another day in the dull, boring, and uneventful life of Sriram's :)