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BEIJING — When on June 23, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon proclaimed into law Title IX of the Education Amendments, as it was then called, probably no one could have envisioned one day linking it to what is now so common it is almost an unofficial Olympic activity — the penchant of female Olympians to pose nude or semi-nude.
But the legislation that put U.S. women's high school and college sports on an equal financial footing with men's saw a generation of young women grow up being able not only to join teams and win athletic scholarships, but also gain a rising sense of their own power — sexual and otherwise — even if it annoys the hell out of feminists, sports federations and, in a few cases, their fathers.
At the Beijing Games, no fewer than three current Olympians — multiple medal-winning U.S. swimmer Amanda Beard, Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice (who has already won gold in the 400-metre individual medley) and U.S. high jumper Amy Acuff — have posed for what the British affectionately call "lads' magazines," respectively in FHM (For Him Magazine) and Playboy; FHM; and FHM, Maxim and Playboy.
"Playboy, I wouldn't have been comfortable with," says former Canadian water polo player Waneek Horn-Miller, who appeared on the cover of Time Magazine eight years ago, naked as the day she was born but for an eagle feather in her hair and a ball in her hand. "But it's an individual choice. I'm happy I did it. I would do it again."
Two-time Olympic gold figure skater Katarina Witt's 1998 Playboy appearance was just the second issue of the magazine to sell out. (Playboy Magazine/AP)
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The gold medal winning swimmer displayed a naked picture of herself at an anti-fur protest in the Olympic city Wednesday.
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Ms. Horn-Miller, a Mohawk from Kahnawake, Que., who is in Beijing working as a commentator for the CBC while her husband Keith Morgan is a Canadian judoka, says she posed to raise her sport's profile (it made its Olympic debut in the 2000 Games), but mostly to counteract the usual images of women that are predominant in the media, even in publications ostensibly geared to fitness.
"Look," she told The Globe and Mail, "it's one chance every four years to get out an image of a healthy athletic woman instead of an underweight, underage model. Athletes' bodies are much healthier — and they're functional!"
She says after she did the Time cover, "People told me it was something they'd show to their daughters. I mean, I was obsessed like everyone else with fashion magazines when I was a teenager. It's natural to look for the body ideal."
But with a female athlete, she says, readers can see that "Here is a woman, a great athlete, 160 pounds, who can bench-press her own body weight and squat 180 pounds."
Ms. Horn-Miller, now 32, was part of a trend that may have started with Olympic double gold medalist figure skater Katarina Witt, who in 1998 posed for Playboy, only the second issue of the magazine to sell out, the first being the inaugural one which featured a Marilyn Monroe centrefold.
But things peaked in the run-up to the 2000 Games in Sydney, when in the same year the Australian women's soccer team, the famous Matildas, put out a nude calendar, and American soccer player Brandi Chastain posed naked in her soccer cleats in the now defunct men's magazine, Gear.
Despite that, the better-known picture of Ms. Chastain was taken after she scored the winning goal against China in the 1999 FIFA women's World Cup, pulled off her jersey to reveal a black sports bra in what she said later was "a moment of insanity," and fell to her knees.
"It was a trend back in 2000," Ms. Horn-Miller says, when suddenly the ordinary centrefold wasn't just "Juliana from Texas" but "smart women; why wouldn't they also want to be seen as sexual?
"Let's face it," she says, "as humans, we like the physically good-looking, the beautiful.
"But how much better if she's also the fastest woman in the world? It makes the ideal of beauty have so many more dimensions. It's not just, 'I'm skinny and I have fake boobs.' "
The world is a much friendlier place to disrobing athletes than it was once.
Indeed, when just last week outside the Olympic Village here, Ms. Beard unveiled an anti-fur poster of herself for PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the group that recently distinguished itself by coming up with an advertisement that uses the tragic beheading of a young man on a Greyhound bus to decry the inhumane treatment of animals slaughtered for meat — it was greeted with nearly a yawn.
"Amanda Beard: Nude Again" read a headline in the Los Angeles Times after the 26-year-old blonde showed off the poster, a neat reflection of the blasé reaction that now greets stripping athletes.
But if Ms. Chastain was the perfect post-Title IX woman — born in 1968, she's just four years older than the legislation which so enabled, if not entitled, those of her generation — even Ms. Beard has made the connection, if tenuously.
In 2006, a year before she posed for Playboy, she told Women's Health magazine that Title IX "gave me the opportunity to go out into the business world and prepared me for life … I owe it all to being an athlete and having the opportunity to swim in college."
Ms. Beard wasn't whistling Dixie; she has a $1-million endorsement deal with Speedo, her own fashion collection, and commands $15,000-$20,000 (U.S.) for a speech. Clearly, swimming wasn't the only craft she learned at the University of Arizona. She has also, in modern lingo, built a brand as a businesswoman.
Ms. Horn-Miller found her experience as a cover girl unexpectedly empowering.
"Being native," she says, "we're very, very shy. I mean, the first time I went to a topless beach in Spain I almost dropped dead. Then I saw a grandma over there, and thought, yeah, I can do this.
"So, I never saw myself as sexy.
"I knew I was attractive to the opposite sex, but didn't see myself as sexy."
After the Time cover appeared, "I got a letter from a whole platoon in the U.S. Navy, saying how sexy I was. I thought, You gotta be freaking kidding!"
She predicts more athletes will pose. "It's going to happen more and more, and I think — more power to you!"
