Gerd von der Lippe. I Annette Hofmann & Else Trangbæk (eds.), 2005: International Perspectives on Sporting Women in Past and Present. University of Copenhagen. Female Flying Bodies in Norwegian Sports Media Introduction The first unofficial Norwegian female championship in ski-jumping (junior) took place in 2000, and the first official one (senior and junior) took place in 2004. On February 11, 2004 a front-page article of the Aftenposten, February reported that Torbjørn Yggeseth, a Norwegian leader of the ski jumping committee of the FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski)1, is supposed to have cited ”(…) half of them jump, whereas the other half is doing something similar to sledding” 2. as a reason for unexpectedly denying women a chance to be “test flyers” at the Norwegian Vikersund competitions on March 8-9 of the same year. Ski-flying takes place in Norway on big jumps with a critical point (C-point) of 185meters for men and 90 meters for women. Only in Vikersund athletes can fly as far as 185 metres. “Test flying” is normally done by young men who are not yet qualified for FIS competitions in either ski-jumping or ski-flying. At the same time, Anette Sagen was ranked as the best Norwegian female ski-jumper. She and some of her ski-jumping friends, including Line Jahr from Vikersund, were interviewed in different media during that month, confirming that they wanted to test jump in Vikersund. Until the “Yggeseth-Sagen debate” started, ski-flying and ski-jumping were considered a male preserve by many male sports leaders. FIS’s ski-jumping committee excluded women from ordinary ski-jumping competitions until 1998, and women are still not allowed to compete officially in ski-flying. Nevertheless, on January 10, 2004 one of FIS’s technical experts permitted the Vikersund organizers to include six to seven female ski-jumpers to be test-flyers. Nearly two months later, FIS reversed this decision. March, 4 there was a compromise, Anette Sagen, Line Jahr and two other female skiers were allowed as test-flyers before the male competition. This article is part of the research project: “Tabloidization in the Norwegian Media: 1930´s- 2003”. Three research questions are asked: What kinds of discourse on the female test flyers can be found in print media? What kinds among first year of students of sport at Telemark College in Bø? In what way is the “Yggeseth-Sagen debate” a tabloid tale? My data come from an analysis on the sport sections of three national papers: Aftenposten (conservative subscription), VG (conservative tabloid format) and Dagbladet (liberal tabloid format) from February 5 until February 15. All the texts cited are by the sports journalists of the papers. However, some of them appeared on the front pages rather than in sports sections. Both tabloid papers and broadsheet covered the story of the flying females. 1 He was not re-elected later on in 2004. 2 The quote refers to the athletes as “little girls”. 1 The Norwegian Sports Press in 2004: A Dominating Male Industry Media sport has as its central strategy the creation of more spectators, readers and listeners. Thus, sport is seen as an important point of departure for constructing and reconstructing ideas of femininities and masculinities.3 In the print media, women are often presented as decor.4 Texts and pictures of male soccer players dominate the sport media in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia.5 Although the Norwegian national male team did not participate in the European Soccer Cup of 2004, coverage of that competition consisted of 50% of the total sport coverage in VG, Norway´s biggest tabloid paper. From June 12 to June 27, 41 % reported on men`s sport in general and only 4% about female sports. (5% both sexes). When female athletes really excell they do get some attention. When Norway won the European Women`s Championship in handball in 1998, reports of this competition dominated the press in the second biggest tabloid paper, Dagbladet.6 In 2003 the Norwegian team was ranked sixth in the world cup. However, only 18% of the total coverage in that paper concerned the competition. All sports editors in the biggest national papers and about 95% of sports journalists are male. Tabloidization Processes According to Jostein Gripsrud, the term “tabloidization” is tied to, if not full-blown moral panic, then at least to serious ethical and political concerns.7 Complaints about journalism’s many deplorable features have been voiced ever since the birth of the modern press. Tabloidization processes have influenced the American press since its start, and the influence has steadily increased during the last 30 years.8 Tabloid format, however, does not necessarily mean tabloid contents. In Scandinavian media, there is a tradition of mixing entertainment with more or less relevant informational material; a tradition of “infotainment” much older than the term.9 Norwegian national, popular tabloids contain serious coverage of a number of more or less important issues, and ought therefore to be categorized as “middle-brow” papers. Tabloidization processes are understood as follows: “Tabloidization in the sports media is the processes by which the press increasingly focuses on entertainment aspects by presenting sports in a sensational, dramatic, and/or scandalous light. Triumphs and losses are emphasized. Aesthetics focus directly on critical points in the story. Other important features are simplification, polarisation, intensity (collision and conflict), concretisation and personification. Finally, the genre of soft news - made up of gossip, scoops, exclusives, biography, hero/heroine worship and “infotainment” is given priority over the genre of hard news; 3 Craig 1992; Eide 2000, Casmore 2002, Lippe 2002, 2004. 4 Duncan, Messner 1998; Gjørven, Grønn, Vaagland 2000. 5 Monday Morning 2002. 6 Lippe 2003. 7 Gripsrud 2000. 8 Sparks 2000. 9 Gripsrud 2000. 2 objective facts, scores and events including match analysis. Above all, the tabloid media is interpreted as the symbol of the intimization of the public room.”10 Analysis: Focus on a Critical and Qualitative Perspective The focus is on qualitative analysis. I have been inspired by elements of Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. He uses the term “discourse” in different ways. The point of departure of the concept of discourse in this article is as follows: 1. Identify the main parts of the world (including areas of social life) which are represented – the main “themes”. 2. Identify the particular perspective or angle or point of view from which they are represented.11 My main focus is the question about female test jumpers, and my particular perspectives or points of view are the five following discourses: The discourse on equal rights, on defying FIS, on protecting the girls from injury, on ridiculing the sporting females and on a worn out opinion. I shall also discuss hybridized or mixed discourses in which texts articulate different discourses. In addition, I shall look into some of the metaphorical representations of the question in the different discourses. Fairclough also created a three dimensional framework (text, discourse practice and socio-cultural practice) for analysis, in which he reflects on the relationship among texts (here: pictures, headings, articles and imagined letters from students). Fairclough is also concerned with processes of text production and consumption and with socio-cultural practices, in which ideologies and power relations are dealt with. In this article I identify asymmetrical power relations concerning who decides who is allowed to jump. What is in the text that may be explicit or implicit. “Analysis of implicit content can provide valuable insights into what is taken for granted as given, as common sense”.12 With this in mind, I shall also search for latent meaning production in the relevant texts. Thus, micro-texts of a sentence are interpreted not only as giving “local” significance to the situation in which they occur, but also as possibly linked to latent macro-texts of dominating values in a culture. Consumption is an aspect dealt with in the relationship between texts and discursive practice. The media coverage of ski-flying was presented to a small audience (first year physical education students at Telemark University College in Bø, Norway). This audienece produced texts on March 3 ,2004. After a lecture on the coverage of the female test jumpers (60 minutes), I asked my students to write two imagined letters (not sent); one to Torbjørn Yggeseth and one to Anette Sagen. The students were asked how they draw on the different discourses signified by texts concerning female skijumpers. Thus the media`s and students` discourses can be examined as a domain of cultural hegemony. Some discourses are central, while others seem to be more marginal. 10 This is a mix from Hernes 1982, Sparks 2000; Gripsrud 2000; Lippe 2003. 11 Fairclough 2003, p. 129. 12 Fairclough 1995a, b. 3 Doing Gender Mass culture often assumes there is a fixed, true femininity beneath the ebb and flow of daily life. We hear about “real women”, “natural women” and the “deep feminine” as contrasted to “real men”, “natural men” and the “deep masculine”. Such construtions are hard to kill, and they are continually reconstructed in films, popular books, magazines, television programmes and the daily and weekly press.13 These constructions can be categorized as essentialist because they select single features that allegedly define the core of femininity and masculinity. The concept of femininity is, however, inherently relational. Femininities exist only in relation to masculinities. Women and men are doing gender in culturally specific ways.14 Doing gender for female athletes within the logics of heteronormality in Norway in 2004 is achieved through playing handball, soccer, and cross country skiing; not through ski jumping and ski flying.