Boys and Their Balls - Part 10

Women in the Locker Room

My friend Pat (check out his blog Big Whack Attack) posed this question after my last post about vintage athletes:

"When did the nudity end in sports teams' locker rooms? When they began allowing female reporters in?"

That question deserves a detailed response.

First, nudity never ended in sports teams' locker rooms.  Players still get naked, and reporters and photographers are still there.  In this this 2012 interview of Atlanta Falcons player Matt Bryant, quarterback Luke McCown is seen stripping in the background, and at the end of the clip he walks off to the right, naked.  There are many other other cases where players have been seen naked in locker room photos or videos.  I may have to start a new series on locker room sightings.

The difference from the "good old days" seems to be that starting in the 1970s, photographers have tried to avoid including naked players in their photos or videos, so a video like the one above is a happy accident.  In the 1960s and earlier, photographers routinely took pictures of naked athletes in locker rooms.  They avoided taking pictures of frontal nudity (although they took some anyway), because family magazines wouldn't publish frontal nudity, but rear nudity wasn't a big deal for the photographers, the athletes, or the magazines.

Was the change in attitude due to allowing female reporters in locker rooms?  I don't think so, though both happened in the 1970s.  American magazines, and society in general, seemed to get more prudish about naked men, even rear views.  But let's look at how women got into locker rooms.

In the good old days (or bad old days) it seems all the sports reporters were male.  But by the 1970s, there were a few female sports reporters, and they had a problem.  Male reporters went into the locker room after a game.  They got quotes and reactions from players fresh off the field.  They got to see players celebrating a victory and pouring champagne (or beer) over each other.  Female reporters had to wait outside.  By the time they got to talk to the players, the celebration was over, the players had already answered questions and might be getting tired of reporters, and coaches or management might have told players what not to talk about.  So, the female reporters were definitely at a disadvantage.

By the way, if you think I'm taking the women's side, I'm not.  I'm presenting their argument, which had valid points.

The first inkling of change happened on January 22, 1975, when two female reporters became the first women allowed into any professional sports locker room.  It happened at an NHL all-star game in Montreal.  The coaches may have allowed the women in partly because, at an all-star game, there is no single coach in charge, so no one had to take responsibility.

The photo above shows one of the women, Marcelle St. Cyr, interviewing Montreal Canadiens player Guy Lafleur after the game.  It's hard to tell, but it looks like Lafleur might be naked but holding something in front of him.

The photo above shows the other of the two women, Robin Herman, a reporter for the New York Times.  I don't know whether this photo dates from the 1975 NHL game or later.  Although nobody's naked, the guy next to her has stripped down to his jockstrap.

The 1975 NHL game did not change much.  A few other teams, mainly in the NBA, started allowing female reporters in, but mostly, women were still barred from locker rooms.

At the end of 1977, for the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, both teams granted access to their locker rooms to Melissa Ludtke, reporter for Sports Illustrated.  Then baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn overruled both teams and banned all female reporters.  Ludtke, supported by Sports Illustrated, sued Bowie Kuhn and various other officials, including the mayor of New York, on the grounds that her 14th amendment equal protection rights had been violated.

As I said earlier, the women had a valid argument.  Those opposing the women also had a valid argument: the players had a right to privacy in places such as locker rooms where nudity occurred and the opposite sex was traditionally not allowed.  Whose rights were more important?  In such cases, it's up to the courts to decide.

On Sept. 26, 1978, the court ruled in favor of Ludtke, and women reporters were allowed into men's locker rooms.  The 1978 photo above shows Kristi Witker interviewing Yankees player Ron Guidry shortly after the ruling.  He seems to be taking off his pants.

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Another 1978 photo shows reporter Erika Weitzner interviewing Yankees infielder Willie Randolph, who is stark naked and making no attempt to cover up.  Some players reacted to having women in the locker rooms by flaunting their nakedness: "You want to see naked men?  Then look at this."

But for the most part, players seem to have gotten used to the idea.  There are still naked men around, because, well, it's a locker room.  The video above is an undated interview in the Pittsburgh Steelers locker room.

But, try as we might, the idea of of having women in the men's locker room is still a bit disquieting, as evidenced by this clip from the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire, in which Gale Hillman, interviewing a naked Cuba Gooding, Jr., is distinctly awkward after she drops her microphone.  Don't look there!