**1. Introduction**

When contacted about writing a chapter for the *Perception of Beauty*, I first thought that as a Sport Ethicist I probably had little to offer. But on further consideration, I realized that as a former athlete, there is much that needs to be said about how athletes perceive themselves as women and measure themselves by societal beauty standards in light of athletic participation. I was an athlete, albeit years ago, involved in sports in which "beauty" was sacrosanct. If an athlete was unattractive or did not appear beautiful, the athlete suffered and suffered much and often. I ice skated. I was a big girl—not just larger than most. A big girl as defined by being over 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighing over 150 pounds. All of my peers were pixies—but I soldiered on because I loved the sport. Almost daily some comment was made about my size—the usual retorts were something like, "Man you are big for an ice skater?" "Aren't you in the wrong sport, you should be playing ice hockey." "You're really pretty, but wow are you big, don't you feel embarrassed being on the ice?" "Your thighs are huge—aren't you self-conscious? Maybe you should lose some weight." "How can you skate and do all the

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

jumps and turns being so big?" "An excellent skater but your body aesthetics detract from the performance."

The remarks came from various sources: other skaters, children skaters, parents of children skaters, coaches, instructors, and judges. Why did I stay in the sport? I was and continue to be an aggressive personality who is not easily swayed by words. The best reason though in staying with the sport was because I was a strong skater and the power of being a "strong skater" gives one not only physical strength but psychological strength. That to me was the real beauty of the sport. The perception of acceptable body size and physical beauty in my sport, however, overshadows everything that occurs within the sport and apparently lasts a lifetime.

Just last month, I was speaking at a regional sports conference, when a young woman researcher approached me. When I say young, I mean in her early thirties. Understand I am in my early seventies, so we are four decades apart but perhaps not so far apart after all. She had heard that one of the speakers had a former athletic career in skating. She said she knew who I was as soon as she saw me. Her direct quote, "Skaters all have the same look—the hair, the makeup, the nails, the carriage, you know, THE LOOK."

I know exactly what she meant—we do have THE LOOK. Unfortunately, THE LOOK probably is not the healthiest way to be. We, with THE LOOK, have paid dearly for THE LOOK weekly weigh-ins, constant criticism of makeup, costume, body type, and then the aesthetics of the sporting experience as it is dissected and analyzed by judges. That experience has been with me for a lifetime—it is a memory filled with the tension between two realities: the love of the sport, the beauty of the sport, juxta positioned with the beast of the sport—the constant worry, criticism, and evaluation concerning "THE LOOK." When refined, this problem is greater than what occurs in my sport of figure skating—it is a problem that exists across the realm of women in sport and athletics.

For over 30 years, many academic and feminist writers have written of the perceived importance of female athlete beauty and the hegemonic practices to manipulate women to be beautiful [1–7]. That research is not an enjoyable read because of the oppressive subjugation of female athletes. Other research has argued that perhaps the former lines of research were mistaken or more importantly missed the true mark. Rather, it is argued, athletes are unlike other female populations and are not as affected by the need to be beautiful or see themselves as a "girlie girl." Adams et al. [8] found that high school athletes saw sports as "…the main vehicle by which they … attained confidence, independence, assertiveness, and joy in the physicality of the body"

I believe that both arguments have validity. I see and hear the first line often. As a college professor who attends female athletic contests, I often hear male derogatory catcalls directed toward women participants. "Hey 18, What a dog, do you eat bones to keep you from being pretty?" "Nice ass, 21″. "Number 8, bend over again—I have something to give you?" Interestingly, no security personnel ever reprimand the behavior. And fans are cruel—unbelievably cruel and words do have to mean [9]. I do not recall any of these remarks as positive about how these athletes look. Hegemony does still exist and is alive and well.

Because I teach sports ethics, gender equity is a subject that my classes continually discuss and study. I have spent a lifetime arguing, supporting, and writing about the rights of women to participate in sport [10, 11]. I have also studied the negative effect of competition in the sport on moral development and moral reasoning of both men and women [12–15]. Many times I have wondered if the day to day struggles concerning beauty, weight control, and participation of women involved in athletics are worth it. It seems to me that the strange tension between the beauty of the sport and the beast would affect athletes daily. With that being said, I wondered what other women athletes would say on this subject. Thus, I have asked three athletes of different age groups and different sports to share their stories.

Four former athletes from many different levels of competition, age groups, and sports experiences wanted their voices heard concerning the struggle of the female athlete and the beauty and the beast. However, as we moved forward on the project, I offered each of them authorship of this chapter. They agreed to authorship; they wanted their stories told, and they wanted to share their experience with the beauty and the beast. Hopefully, our captured perceptions give a vivid picture of "beauty" as an athlete sees herself as well as her depiction of the struggle with the beast within her sport. I knew that each of these women had a story to share, but did not realize the magnitude of the "beast's" effect on them as people and women. Because of the nature of my and their reflections, they are co-authors for this chapter—they wanted their stories told.
