Maura Shuttleworth and a soapbox on journalists

"Five feet tall and 105 pounds, Maura Shuttleworth broke the Minnesota state record in her weight class last November when she bench-pressed 180 pounds..." Shuttleworth is high-level competitor quality, on her way to Hungary right now.

Profile in the Women's Minnesota Press by Elizabeth Noll. Photo by Kris Drake.

Noll emphasizes how little and feminine Shuttleworth is, how unlike Noll's diehard preconceived notions about weightlifters she appears. That's good, on one hand, because Shuttleworth is in fact like so many other lifters, and here's yet another example of what a "real" female lifter looks like, so it helps to kill the disparaging image of Amazons that unenlightened men used to scare females out of the gym for ages, while they hogged all the fun of athletics to themselves. But on the other hand, it does a lot more damage than good, and I ascend to my soapbox over my pet peeve of journalism profiles on female Amazons.

Why must so many reporters (especially women writers) continue to keep these misconceptions alive, along with the conservative ideal of femininity, and continue to treat burly female lifters poorly? Enforce this mindset, and you discourage females from lifting. How much better off Noll would have been had she kept with the rhetoric behind her clever headline, "Don't bench me in," and confronted these misconceptions. Finally, why does it never occur to Noll and other writers who take this lazy angle that maybe, just maybe, the lifter might not like being told that she doesn't look strong and special, that there's no indication of her years of dogged dedication, sacrifice and persistence? Sigh. And like so many other writers who harp on the notion that the Amazon they're profiling looks nothing like an Amazon, Noll does so with complete righteousness and a sense of service.

This angle says more about the writer than the subject. We see Noll's ignorances and prejudices on female lifters. More shamefully, we see her work ethic: there is no evidence she conducted any research on weightlifters or ever set foot in Shuttleworth's gym. If she were even a little familiar, she would not be so taken aback by Shuttleworth's appearance.

As a journalist, I want to see my subject in her element, not outside of it. This makes me better informed and I produce a piece that serves everyone better. From this article, the reader would likely draw the conclusion that Shuttleworth looks out of place in her own gym, in her weightlifting world; as a lifter, I just know that's not the case.

Ah, ah ah. It's a trite angle, it's tired, it's easy, it does a disservice to all, and it just doesn't work. This TV news feature on two female weightlifters is another perfect example.

By extension, journalists also perpetrate a grating fixation on female athletes' dress, jewelry, make-up, and hairstyle. If I had a nickel for every ponytail I've been forced to be aware of...

Conversely, as an enlightened person, it's not that I'd walk into Shuttleworth's gym expecting a "small" or "feminine" female (for whatever those terms are worth, and not much, BTW), it's that I wouldn't be expecting anything at all. I would be equally unsurprised and comfortable with either a 115-pound lifter coming out to meet me, or a 220-pound one. And either way, I certainly wouldn't imply to my audience or to her that she doesn't look like a lifter at all.

I'd like to assure Shuttleworth that she looks like exactly what she is, and that while she's remarkable and unique, she is not a freak in ANY way.