GQ’s '25 Coolest Athletes of All Time' has a Slight Omission

An Entire Gender Dave Zirin | August 16, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/162804/gq%E2%80%99s-25-coolest-athletes-all-time-has-slight-omission-entire-gender

I know it’s GQ. I know it’s a magazine written for barbershops, cigar bars, and massage parlors. I know it assumes that men are men and women are scenery. But the magazine’s list of “25 coolest athletes of all time” [1]truly sets a new standard for phallocentric panic. Gentleman’s Quarterly has given us 25 athletes they see as the coolest of cool, and not one woman makes the cut.

This isn’t about feminism, or tokenism, or quotas. It’s about ignorance and a national magazine not having an even basic knowledge if sports history. “Cool” should mean grace under pressure with a soupcon of style. By that definition, here are the first six women who come to mind when summon my inner-CM Punk [2]and ponder true transgressive coolness.

How could there be any list without Billie Jean King? In addition to her 12 Grand Slam [3] singles and 16 doubles titles, Billie Jean beat Bobby Riggs in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes match in front of a packed house at the Houston Astrodome and one of the largest national television audiences ever. As she said years later, "I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match. It would ruin the women's tour and affect all women's self esteem." She had the weight of the women’s movement on her shoulders and still dispatched Riggs in three straight sets. Her signature early 70s mullet and Gloria Steinem glasses [4]were part of the deal.

Or what about Cheryl Miller? Miller dragged women’s basketball into the spotlight by virtue of her own brilliance at USC in the 1980s. She was college player of the year three times and a two time champion. Miller also did it with a style and attitude that forced people to reconsider their own ideas of what women could do on the court. I remember playing ball in NYC growing up and if a woman shook you on the court, you were “Cheryl Millered.” She made women's hoops appointment television.

If Cheryl Miller brought true swagger to the women’s game, Diana Taurasi took that swagger and used it as a club. The Phoenix Mercury WNBA MVP was a two time player of the year at UConn but also played with a smack-talking sneer backed by the sweetest jump-shot in the game. Before the 2004 final game her coach, Geno Auriemma [5], predicted victory with the simple theory: "We have Diana, and you don't.” That’s more than cool. It’s Jordan-esque.

But cool should also mean possessing the power of reinvention and no one has ever represented that in sport quite like tennis great Martina Navratilova. Martina started her career as a very talented but poorly conditioned Czech teenager. In the span of a decade she defected to the US, came out of the closet, had her lover Judy Nelson sitting courtside in the family section, died her hair blond, and transformed her body into a new standard for women athletes: all corded muscle wrapped with pulsing veins. And all with Reagan in the White House.

Martina’s musculature was reflected in her play: a fast powerful, serve and volley game that she rode six straight Grand Slam victories. She also found her political voice in this time, and has been a consistent and public presence against homophobia and intolerance. Martina once said, “The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another. The Republicans in the U.S. manipulate public opinion and sweep controversial issues under the table. It's depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of how much money will come out of it and not on the questions of how much health, morals or environment suffer as a result." Connie Chung challenged Martina’s statement on CNN, saying to her, [6] “Go back to Czechoslovakia....if you don't like it here. This a country that gave you so much, gave you the freedom to do what you want." Navratilova responded, "And I'm giving it back. This is why I speak out. When I see something that I don't like, I'm going to speak out because you can do that here. And again, I feel there are too many things happening that are taking our rights away."[

Martina is so cool, she is known by just one name. So is the tennis player who plays most like her: Serena. Serena and her sister Venus Williams have both dominated tennis for the last 15 years. But only Serena has done it with a style that matches or even exceeds her substance. That’s quite a statement considering that Serena has won more Grand Llam titles than any active player, male or female. But we’re talking about cool and only Serena has ever warmed up at Wimbledon in a white trench court. Only Serena showed up to play at the US Open in a denim skirt and knee high boots. (Officials intervened to prevent play in the boots.) Only Serena is a certified nail technician. Only Serena wore “the cat suit.”

This is just a taste of some of the cool GQ left off their list. I could go on about Florence Griffith-Joyner with the speed and the fingernails, or Oksana Baiul, winning the 1994 figure skating gold under the weight of the Kerrigan/Harding drama. But if there is one other name I’d leave you with, it’s Wyomia Tyus. [7] Tyus became the first person to retain the Olympic [8] title in the 100 meter dash, winning in 1964 and 1968. But her cools came in 1968, after winning another gold by running anchor in the 4x100 dash relay. That was the year John Carlos and Tommie Smith electrified the Olympics with their black-gloved salute. Their movement, with its emphasis on “reclaiming manhood”, didn’t involve women athletes. Wyomia Tyus recalled many years later. “It appalled me that the men simply took us for granted. They assumed we had no minds of our own and that we’d do whatever we were told.” But Carlos and Smith had been expelled from Olympic Village and were being torn to shreds across the media and Tyus saw that there was a bigger principle at play. In front of the press, and standing with her team, Tyus said, “I’d like to say that we dedicate our relay win to John Carlos and Tommie Smith.” That took guts. That took cools. That took the kind of grace under pressure the listmakers at GQ chose to ignore.

I hope people read the GQ piece. But read it as a statement of the kind of narrow, myopic gender segregation best located in a museum. In other words, GQ might be slickly produced. It might have Mark Sanchez on the cover. It might have ads that smell like the latest cologne. But one thing it’s absolutely not, is cool.

Contact Dave at dave@edgeofsports.com

[1] http://www.gq.com/sports/lists/201102/25-coolest-athletes-poll
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqUl6n92DJg
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_(tennis)
[4] http://www.hollywoodmemorabilia.com/files/cache/billie-jean-king-former-tennis-pro-autographed-8x10_7250297c1302e22222836272538d823d.jpg
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geno_Auriemma
[6] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0207/17/cct.00.html
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyomia_Tyus
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games

The Coolest Athletes of All Time

Sure, they excluded Joe Cool himself, Joe Montana, and there's some other notable snubs: Rickey Henderson in baseball, Bird, Magic and Kareem in basketball, and John McEnroe and Andre Aggasi in tennis. Still, Gentleman's Quarterly does a great job listing the 25 coolest athletes of all time:

Muhammad Ali
Mario Andretti
Arthur Ashe
George Best
Bjorn Borg
Tom Brady
Jim Brown
Julius Erving
Walt Frazier
Bob Gibson
Allen Iverson
Bo Jackson
Michael Jordan
Jean-Claude Killy
Evel Knievel
Tim Lincecum
Pete Maravich
Joe Namath
Arnold Palmer
Pelé
Gary Player
Derek Sanderson
Kelly Slater
Ken Stabler
Ted Turner

Anne Hathaway Envies Angelina's "Kissing" Skills

Important News Story Break:

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebritynews/news/anne-hathaway-envies-angelina-jolies-kissing-skills-201042

Anne Hathaway Envies Angelina's "Kissing" Skills
Thursday – February 04, 2010

Anne Hathaway would love to kiss like Angelina Jolie.

When the Valentine's Day star, 27, shares the different types of on-screen kisses with the U.K. edition of GQ magazine, she laments that "full-on movie kissing" isn't one of her strong suits.

"It's a totally different experience," she says of the forceful kiss. "But really you have to be Angelina Jolie to pull that off and still look good. I don't know if you've noticed, but I ain't no Angie."

Find out what other star is often compared to Angelina Jolie

She does dispel some tips on what she calls "pretty movie kissing," and uses the back of her left hand as the lucky recipient.

"You have to leave your mouth open a little bit," she tells the magazine's March issue (out Friday). "Open up. More, more, ever so lightly… Otherwise you're going to be getting smoothy. Now, slow it down ... just a little bit."

With that skill, it's a wonder the actress -- who has been dating actor Adam Shulman since 2008 -- hasn't gotten carried away on set.

"If you're both unattached and you get along, of course kissing in a movie is fun," she says. "But you can never get truly deep down and into it. Well, I can't. Jennifer Garner -- now that girl can movie kiss!"

Megan Fox is back on the market? SCORE!

Photo is of Megan Fox with an ugly cancerous growth

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2009/02/megan-fox-singl.html

Megan Fox is back on the market? SCORE!
February 24, 2009

File this under BEST NEWS EVER for girls and guys — and guys and girls — everywhere.

Hollywood's hottest engaged couple, Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, are totally done.

"The relationship had run its course," one of those chatty insiders tells Us. "They both realized the time had come to go their separate ways. It's completely amicable, and they are remaining friends."

The openly bisexual Fox, 22 (Mikaela in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"), and Green, 35 ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles") are "both focusing on their careers," the source adds.

Is that Hollywood publicist code for, "Yes, yes, she is going to be the next Lara Croft, and she can certainly do better than Brian Austin Green."

Oh dear. But about those tattoos they got of each other's names — paging Dr. Tattoff!

Maybe Megan could call Angelina Jolie for the name of the doc she had laser off her ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton's name.

These two do have a lot in common: multiple tattoos, fabulous bods, long dark hair, past lesbian sexual experiences ....

But it's kinda sad, because even in November, Fox talked about wedding plans.

"It's not going to be a big wedding," she told Us at a GQ bash. "I'm not one of those girls. If it happens, it will be very low-key and quick and unplanned."

Wait a minute. "IF" it happens? Was she was trying to tell us something.

GQ MEN OF THE YEAR 2007

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_6227

MEN OF THE YEAR 2007
From Bill Clinton to Kanye West, meet all of our Men of the Year

GQ MEN OF THE YEAR 2007: The Honorees

Bill Clinton – Public Citizen
Daniel Craig – Leading Man
Kanye West – Graduate
Casey Affleck – Breakout of the Year
Judd Apatow, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, and Paul Rudd – Comedy Mafia
Javier Bardem – Villain
Brad Bird, director of ‘Ratatouille’ – Innovator
Cate Blanchett, in ‘I’m Not There’ – Performance of the Year
Mike Bloomberg, Mayor of the City of New York – Maverick
Boise State vs. Oklahoma at the Fiesta Bowl – Game of the Year
Josh Brolin – Tough Guy
Cast of ‘Mad Men’ – Instant Classic
David Chang of New York’s Momofuku – Chef
David Chase, creator of ‘The Sopranos’ – Final Act
Simon Cowell – Mastermind
John Cusack – Comeback
Daft Punk – Trailblazers
Daria – Supermodel of the Year
Sgt. Joshua Delgado and the new breed of Army medics in Iraq – Unsung Heroes
Roger Federer – Court King
Tom Hanks – Icon
Emile Hirsch – Wild Man
Ryan Howard, first baseman, Philadelphia Phillies – Slugger
Lil Wayne – Workaholic
Josh Marshall, founder, Talking Points Memo – Muckraker
James McAvoy – British Import
Derek O’Dell, student, Virginia Tech – Lifesaver
Hayden Panettiere – Obsession of the Year
Ron Paul, presidential candidate – Dark Horse of the Year
Alex Rodriguez – Hit Man
Seth Rogen – Father of the Year
Mark Ruffalo – Secret Weapon
Julian Schnabel – Visionary
Jason Schwartzman – Cool Kid
John Smeaton, baggage handler, Glasgow International Airport – Employee of the Year
Channing Tatum – Man of Next Year
Robin Thicke and Rihanna – Smooth Operators
John Varvatos – Designer of the Year
Shaun White – Reinvention