Transcript Effect of Distal Arterial Occlusion on Proximal MuscleVO2 and Mean

“Faster, Stronger, Manlier?:
An Examination of Women and Doping in Sport”
Charlene Weaving & Sarah Teetzel
Kinesiology Graduate Department
general push themselves to their absolute (and now
extended) physical limits in sport. In addition to the health
risks that athletes who dope subject themselves to when they
exceed the safe dosages of illicit drugs, they also risk 2-year
suspensions from competition if they test positive for doping.
While there are certainly many athletes who reject doping
and instead rely on their hard work, dedication, and technique
to excel at sport, there are also athletes who turn to
performance enhancing substances and practices if they are
convinced doing so will bring them one step closer to
obtaining world records and Olympic gold medals.
Introduction
Both male and female athletes face pressure to use
drugs in sport to elicit greater performances and results.
Nonetheless, while the percentage of male athletes using
drugs to enhance their athletic performances declined during
the 1990s, the incidence of women using performance
enhancing substances doubled. Many attribute the substantial
rise in the number of women using drugs in sport to women’s
increased participation rates in sports requiring strength and
the increased athletic opportunities available to girls and
women.
The purpose of this brief ethical examination is twofold.
Firstly, we will provide an overview of women athlete’s
connection with performance enhancing substances. Typically,
doping is viewed as a male pursuit and the notion of women
doping is largely discounted by the sporting community as well
as in scientific research. Secondly, we will examine the
dichotomy that exist when women dope. For example, it
appears that women athletes must uphold a stereotypical
heterosexual feminine appearance in order to be socially
accepted as a female athlete. A conflict occurs when women’s
bodies become more muscular from using performance
enhancing methods because their bodies transform and
become antithetical to social ideals, constructs and
expectations.
Performance Enhancing Drugs:
A Closer Look
From the diet of dried figs used by ancient Olympic
competitors to the stimulants used by Ancient Egyptians and
Roman gladiators, doping in sport took place long before the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) identified it as a
worrisome issue in the 1960s. Since then, the use of drugs and
other practices banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency has
become an enormous ethical issue in sport. Several hundred
drugs enhance strength, endurance, power, and muscle control
and are consequently banned in sport. The majority of these
substances fall under the categories of stimulants, narcotics,
anabolic agents, diuretics, and peptide hormones. Determining
the prevalence of drug use in sport is extremely difficult due to
the lengths guilty athletes will take to mask their use of banned
substances.
IOC accredited drug testing laboratories typically
.
find 1-2% of all samples they test to show positive doping
results. However, the actually percentage of athletes who use
performance enhancing drugs is thought to be much higher.
This is because athletes that dope (and their pharmacological
suppliers) are often one step ahead of the detection agencies
and use drugs that are currently undetectable.
Male and female athletes face many risks if they choose
to use chemical means to help shave seconds off their personal
best times, run faster, jump higher, fight harder, and in
:
Several prominent women athletes have produced
positive doping tests in recent years. These include Irish
swimmer Michelle Smith at the 1996 summer Olympics,
Russian cross-country skiers Olga Danilova and Larissa
Lazutina at the 2002 winter Olympics, and US track stars
Kelli White, Chryste Gaines, Michelle Collins, and Regina
Jacobs following the divulgence of files by the BALCO
nutritional supplement company in 2004. These women’s use
of performance enhancing drugs has negated all of their
athletic accomplishments and prevented them from obtaining
endorsement and sponsorship deals.
Before a woman athlete tests positive for doping, there
are often rumours within the sport that she is doping due to
visible changes in her appearance and extraordinarily fast
improvements in the world rankings. Prior to Michelle Smith’s
and over 40 Chinese swimmers’ bans from elite swimming
competitions, they demonstrated dramatic increases in their
performance and appeared “manly.” As a result of using
performance enhancing drugs, female athletes’ bodies often
undergoes several striking changes. See figures 1 and 2.
Doped athletes tend to possess narrow hips, small breasts,
and muscular backs, legs, arms and shoulders. Athletes who
take drugs containing testosterone also exhibit severe acne,
deep voices, and substantial amounts of facial and pubic hair.
Quintessentially, they begin to look and sound like men.
Figure 1: Irish swimmer Michelle Smith
Figure 2: Members of the Chinese
national swimming team
These physiological changes lead to the perception that
women in sport who possess male physical characteristics are
unnatural, ugly, and abnormal. See figure 3. In contrast, the
perception of the male body following performance enhancing drug
use is that of strength and power, not ugliness and unnaturalness.
People typically consider a male athlete caught doping a cheater,
whereas in the same circumstance, a female athlete is considered
a freak in addition to a cheater. Feminist philosopher Iris Young
astutely observes that many people believe that if a woman
succeeds at sport, she either demonstrates male characteristics
and is not really a woman, or succeeds in an event that is not a
real sport (1988: 336). Thus, the media often represents women
who use drugs in sport as manly freaks or not real athletes.
The Physical Body Dichotomy
As the previous section delineates, women’s use of
performance enhancing drugs and practices causes a
struggle. As women’s sport becomes more popular and
competitive, the pressure for female athletes to succeed
and constantly improve their athletic performances
increases to the point where women athletes might turn to
performance enhancing drugs to meet the demands they
face. However, women who attempt to increase their
strength and muscle mass via drugs and practices banned
by the World Anti-Doping Agency ultimately end up not
only altering their physiology, but also drastically changing
their physical appearances and images.
The dichotomy exists in that women athletes basically
become men. This creates tension because our North
American contemporary social structure struggles with the
notion of women possessing too much muscle. Muscular
women do not fit with the stereotypical heterosexual
feminine ideal. Thus, women with large amounts of muscle
are not viewed in a positive light. Big, bulky, powerful
muscles are neither viewed as attractive nor feminine
despite the fact that they produce incredible strength and
power, which is clearly advantageous for women
participating in many sports.
Figure 3: Media representation of
elite women weightlifters
Figure 4: A bodybuilder in a
submissive pose
Bodybuilding provides an interesting example of this
dichotomy because women bodybuilders must possess a
significant degree of muscularity yet maintain an image of
femininity. Philosopher Ken Saltman argues bodybuilding
reinforces popular perceptions of “real men” and “real
women” (1998: 48). Women bodybuilders require
incredible amounts of muscle mass to be successful, yet
to compete at the highest level they must also project a
feminine look. The pornography magazine Playboy has
published a special issue entitled “Playboy’s Hard
Bodies,” where “buff beauties” were photographed in
submissive poses as sexy soft women who sport stiletto
heels and bikinis (a stereotypical feminine ideal look) (5051). See figure 4. It seems that female bodybuilders can
be muscular and achieve a certain level of “rippleness” yet
they must adopt appropriate gender norms. One could
argue that the only way female bodybuilders can gain
acceptance is to mimic stereotypical pornography icons
(makeup, large hair, bikinis, high heels and ultimately be
captured as submissive and “sexy”).
If women athletes to do not conform to this ideal, the
media ostracizes them and labels them as unfeminine
and manly. In order to help illustrate this claim refer to
the figure 3. The upshot of examining this dichotomy is
to help demonstrate the notion that there is much more
to the issue of women doping than health factors and
perversion of sport arguments. Women athletes, unlike
their male counterparts, seem to face more social
stigmatizations when it comes to doping practices.
Future Research
The newest threat to upholding and maintaining the
spirit of sport comes from the possibility of gene doping.
Gene transfer researchers are beginning to transfer
therapeutic genes into animals and humans with
success, and many of these procedures show signs of
enhancing athleticism in addition to the therapeutic
benefits for which they were created. Gene therapies
might produce performance enhancing effects in athletes
by expressing genes that add muscle mass, strengthen
existing muscle, produce energy more efficiently, and
deliver more oxygen to the muscles, amongst other
adaptations. Undergoing a therapeutic gene transfer
with the intention of enhancing athletic performance
constitutes gene doping in sport. Athletes looking for
innovative and virtually undetectable means of doping
could conceivably utilize gene doping to improve their
athletic performances.
Gene transfer researchers speculate that by the
2008 summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, athletes
will be competing with altered and enhanced genes.
Several women athletes may opt to undergo this type of
procedure to increase their likelihood of winning Olympic
gold medals and to demonstrate the superiority of their
nations. Thus, with the addition of gene doping to a
doper’s repertoire of possible performance enhancing
practices, doping in sport has the potential to spiral out of
control. The consequences this might produce for
women’s elite sport and girls and women’s participation in
sport are unforeseeable and distressing.
References
Saltman, Ken. (1998) “Men with Breasts.” Journal of
Philosophy of sport. XXV, pp. 48-60.
World Anti-Doping Agency. (2003) World Anti-Doping
Code. Montreal: World Anti-Doping Agency.
Young, Iris Marion. (1988) “The Exclusion of Women
from Sport: Conceptual and Existential
Dimensions.” In Philosophic Inquiry in Sport.
Edited by William J. Morgan and Klaus V. Meier.
Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics Publishers,
pp.335-341.