MOUNT VERNON — Athlete and author Leslie Heywood, whose upcoming book examines the rise of women in sports, will speak Thursday, March 6, at Cornell College on gender inequality, athletics and the current attack on Title IX.
Heywood’s lecture, “Bodies, Babes, and the WNBA, or, Where’s Tiger Woods, Naked in a Cape, When You Really Need Him?” is at 11 a.m. in Kimmel Theatre. The lecture is free and open to the public. Two book signings will be held in Harlan Dining Room of The Commons, at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., with the latter following Heywood’s reading from her 2000 memoir, “Pretty Good for a Girl: An Athlete’s Story.”
Heywood is a competitive powerlifter, vice president of the Women’s Sports Foundation and associate professor of English at the State University of New York in Binghamton. In addition to “Pretty Good for a Girl,” a book about the pressures she faced as an Arizona high school track and cross country star, Heywood has written “Bodymakers” (1998) and was coeditor of “Third Wave Agenda” (1997). “Built to Win,” her soon-to-be-released book with Shari L. Dworkin, examines the popular images vs. the real experiences of female athletes, through interviews with elementary- and high school-age girls and boys; advertising campaigns by Nike, Reebok and others; movies; and the authors’ sports experiences.
In her Cornell lecture, Heywood will discuss the debate over the representation of female athletes: second wave feminists condemn the sexualized images of athletes, but the athletes see this portrayal gaining them money and exposure for their sport and the bodies they have built. Heywood says the images are irrelevant; the corporate bottom line is the larger culprit. She says Title IX, the 1972 law requiring comparable opportunity for women in athletics, needs to remain unchanged in order to maintain or improve participation rates.