News Page

Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls' Lives

Jean Zimmerman and Gil Reavill
Doubleday, $23.95
Reviewed by Megan Jones
SportsJones Magazine
June 8, 1999

According to Jean Zimmerman and Gil Reavill, girls in our culture need to be saved. Why? Because, they say, we are raising a "nation of Ophelias" – to invoke clinical psychologist Mary Pipher’s metaphor – a nation that can only be described as "girl-poisoning":

The life choices of too many of our daughters are compromised by drug and alcohol abuse, early pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, eating disorders, self-mutilation, depression, and suicide.

Not to mention sexual harassment and abuse, sex discrimination in schools and at home, and the omnipresent glass ceiling.

The solution they suggest? Athletics. The authors say that the once male-dominated arena of sports provides a tool for girls to break down the culture-imposed wall of passivity and insecurity, and leads them to grow up feeling confident and assertive. Athletic involvement, the authors believe, allows girls to see themselves as physically and mentally strong, teaches them to set realistic goals, and fosters a sense of self-worth, on and off the playing field.

The athletic opportunities now available to girls have, clearly, not always been there. As Zimmerman and Reavill take readers through a brief history of women in sports and the results of the 1972 statute Title IX, they establish connections between the difficulties women faced in the past in simply getting to play and the present issues faced by women who now have the chance to play their own game.

Some of these issues include the difficulty women have breaking into the more male-dominated sports such as wrestling and football; the smaller number of athletic programs available to girls because of the lack of funds and coaches; and the unhealthy absence of athletic programs for children of all ages who are not "varsity material." In addition, the authors discuss girls’ eating disorders, their abuse and sexual harassment by coaches, their injuries, and the rampant homophobia with which female athletes must contend.

With cheerleader-like enthusiasm, the book promotes sports as salvation for girls. While athletics may improve girls’ lives, the heavy slant toward participation seems the product of one-track minds. Zimmerman writes out of a decidedly feminist background, while her husband Gil Reavill helps out with his journalistic background. They are the parents of a young daughter to whom the book is dedicated.

In order to fulfill their vision of sports as a metaphorical lifesaver for girls, they believe all girls must be presented with the opportunity to participate, and all parents, families, and coaches must be willing to encourage girls in athletics. While the authors have good intentions, they fail to grasp the inaccessibility of sports for some girls, whether the reasons are geographical, economic, or psychic.

Yet we should not discount the positive influence sports has on girls’ lives: as the authors argue, we have the ability to empower our nation’s daughters through participation. "Raising Our Athletic Daughters" provides practical advice for parents and coaches on getting girls involved, and contributes a hefty list of helpful resources as well.

This book and others like it are long overdue. To their credit, Zimmerman and Reavill have put on the mainstream bookshelf an accessible, thorough, and well-documented work, a work they hope will now reach the Ophelias who need it most, and their parents.