Positives and negatives of the Olympics.

If it helps a bit re the closing ceremony, the Brazilians with the green lights on their heads were physically fit men in what looked like black speedos, so pretty scanty!

It was the go go dancer in the inflatable octopus (behind Fat Boy Slim) that made me really cross. I assume Jessie J had an input into her own outfit but this just seemed gratuitous.

Positive - Japanese women's football got upgraded on their flight home. Only cos they won the silver medal, though!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19248413

"Right, you've had your two weeks of powerful inspiring women with beautiful strong bodies, now back to ultra-skinny sexualised models again".

Thank fuck I fell asleep before the models arrived - I've seen some photos today. Seems so entirely inappropriate, and I've loved these Olympics (never have i watched so much sport) - bit of a flop ending to then.

For me the proper ending was watching the women's modern pentathlon, and the brilliant Sam Murray saying after winning silver "I'm just a normal person - give sport a go".

It is like banging your head against a brick wall isn't it?

What can we do to pressure the powers that be to increase their coverage of women's sports? Any ideas?

"The ?fashion biz? segment in the Closing Ceremony was an unfathomably regressive bit of choreographed objectification. It felt deliberate, as if designed to rein in any aspiration or hopes that briefly glimpsed light this past month."

This is exactly how I felt about it. It was like "Right, you've had your two weeks of powerful inspiring women with beautiful strong bodies, now back to ultra-skinny sexualised models again". I gave up and turned it off a while after that.

www.womensviewsonnews.org/2012/08/lizzie-armitstead-talks-about-overwhelming-sexism-in-cycling/

www.womensviewsonnews.org/2012/08/lizzie-armitstead-talks-about-overwhelming-sexism-in-cycling/

Interesting article on the closing ceremony -- it's worth a read in its entirety but the site sems to be having some issues today and I can't get it to work on any mobile device so I'll C&P the bit about gender here:

Kim gave a similar bashing to gender, sensitivity perhaps heightened by how the past three weeks has been an extraordinary Olympic Games for women; with significant, real steps taken. The ?fashion biz? segment in the Closing Ceremony was an unfathomably regressive bit of choreographed objectification. It felt deliberate, as if designed to rein in any aspiration or hopes that briefly glimpsed light this past month. Huge photos of girls in posh frocks. Superstar models appear, celebrified, apeing their runway work on flatbeds. It wasn?t a fashion show in itself, or a true celebration of design (which would?ve told us something about design). It was more like the revenge of the owner of the commodified clothes-horse: as if womankind needed to be ritually re-objectified, after a short respite month of being valued in a better way. Ramming back home the wider truths of rape culture and wealth-based costumery idealism

The closing ceremony was rubbish in about 900 different ways. I nearly went up in flames when the friend I was with pointed out the model-type women accompanying each flag. It seemed so odd to put on a closing ceremony to the world's biggest sporting event with hardly any sport in it. They could have done a really good job with some imagination - why not reference London 1908 and 1948 as the opening ceremony did? - but instead it was a dull parade of pop has-beens. Total waste of public money.

I don't even want to watch the closing ceremony from what I've heard.

What a joke to follow 'The Equality Olympics. :(

Yes, complete let-down the closing ceremony. Flag bearers ugh. I kept saying why? why? And WHY did we need to honour women's fashion? The token male was an insult. I didn't get any sense of it celebrating sport at all. We didn't need a repeat of the Jubilee concert. No wonder the Queen sent Harry. Shame on you director(whoever you are)

I noticed that about the flag/sign bearers that accompanied each country too - though, for what it's worth, they seemed to be slightly more "respectably" dressed in the opening ceremony.

I have nothing against having attractive people on TV. Note the word "people". If whoever produced it had chosen to have conventionally beautiful people only in this role (which is a whole other argument in itself), why on earth no men? If they had, for example, had no non-white people there, there would have been an outcry.

On the whole the olympic games were great, but the closing ceremony was dire, for all the reasons everyone has stated.

I thought it was really striking that the volunteers who were honoured were all different ages, sizes, ethnic backgrounds, sexes, but the flag carriers (at the opening and closing) all had to be decorative looking young women, who looked like they'd been sourced from a model agency.

I think it is fair enough if most of the nurses dancing in the GOSH section were women, as that is representative of nursing. But why could they not have had an equal opportunity approach to the flag carriers and escorts as being all kinds of people - not women chosen for their decorativeness.

How can I MAKE my (D)H agree with me on on this! He really doesn't seem to see a problem!

I have been to Rio, and other places in Brazil, and as a youngish woman (even a slightly dishevelled looking backpacker) you are apt to get catcalled in Portuguese/wolfwhistled on a regular basis, unlike in the UK. The way females are portrayed in the media will make you want to bang your head against the wall, though that is in no way singular to Brazil! Macho is the word, and behaviour like this almost suggests that some women have chosen to welcome it (as you say, proof of sexual attractiveness as being power) rather than look for recognition elsewhere, though again, this is not just a Brazilian thing. Odd, though perhaps not wholly unexpected, in such a supposedly Catholic society.

I am also curious to see how it all pans out in 2016. Perhaps this time, we'll have a Carnaval that involves scantily clad men to go with the women, and said women will be a slightly more diverse range of shapes and sizes - if that somehow counts as progress to the patriarchs?!

Am glad that others agree with me. Just when you get your hopes up then it just goes back to more of the same .....

I mean, how can anyone watch Jessie J in a nude leotard with heels she has to toddle around on next to 2 fully clothed men and not notice something is wrong...

Ariel, I hope you're right re. Brazil although I'm not so sure. From what I've been told by my Brazilian friends the idea that a woman gets her power from her sexual attractiveness is pretty entrenched.

Brazil is an INCREDIBLY macho society.

the next Olympics will be interesting. Hopefully they will do good for the women of Brazil.

I thought the Brazilian bit was the worst...one step forward, 2 back.

I agree - a complete contrast to the tone of the preceding two weeks. It's as though it was decided "Ok women, you've had your empowering fun, now you remember your real place please. You are ornaments, not sporting achievers."

The closing ceremony was, in feminist terms, indeed a complete volte face of Danny Boyle's opener, which was a shame. Very "male gaze" orientated. Things which I noticed included...

A high number of male dominated acts compared to female ones
A large chunk (though not ALL) of the female acts/backing singers and dancers that we did have being pretty scantily clad (most noticeable in Jessie J standing in a nude leotard next to Taio Cruz and Tinie Tempah in suits, and again, when she sang with Brian May, in a DIFFERENT outfit that made her look prety much naked)
That we only had female angels in their underwear with burgeoning cleavage for Eric idle's number
An entire section devoted to fashion, with numerous female supermodels in dresses, with one token bloke (again, in a suit!) thrown in - a totally different physical "ideal" than the one promoted and welcomed throughout the Games

There's probably more, but i've blanked it :)

Know that Mr Boyle had nothing to do with this one, but I would love to know who decided on all this...

Jessie J dressed like a vajazzle

I agree with him actually.....

Oh really? :( Haven't seen it yet. That's a real pity, it's not something I noticed in the Opening Ceremony.