An Olympic-Size Problem: How to Portray the Bodies of Female Athletes

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In 2009, the now-defunct ESPN magazine released their first Body Issue. Its biggest competitor at the time was Sports Illustrated, and Sports Illustrated’s biggest clickbait was the annual Swimsuit issue. How do you compete with supermodels in bikinis? By photographing the world's top athletes in the nude. The first Body Issue came out featuring Serena Williams, naked, covering herself tastefully and shimmering in body oil. Checkmate.

For the next decade, ESPN released the annual issue with athletes from every imaginable sport, from soccer to NFL to skateboarding. The photos were exquisitely produced, intended to feature the bodies proudly and without any Photoshopping, leaving all the marks, bruises and “imperfections.” All the private bits had to be covered in creative ways, through the use of body positioning or lighting. It was an early exercise in bypassing Instagram censorship.

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For ESPN's 10th (and penultimate) annual issue, I photographed American cross-country skier Jessie Diggins. Jessie won the United States’ first-ever gold medal in her sport at the Winter Olympics in 2018 and just now she snagged bronze in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, making her the most decorated American cross-country skier of all time. Still, Jessie Diggins is not a household name. Sports have their own unique popularity scale. Though cross-country skiing is one of the most grueling Olympic sports, it also has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the least watched because of its long distances and lack of immediate thrills. Jessie was the first and only cross-country skier featured in the whole decade of the Body Issue.

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When the New York Times covered Jessie Diggins’s memorable win last week, they drew a lot of ire for this description: "In a sport that has so many women with massive shoulders and thighs, Diggins looks like a sprite in her racing suit, and it’s not clear exactly where she gets her power."

The backlash concentrated on the stark description of the bodies of women athletes. Critics took offense at the phrase “massive shoulders,” a not-too-flattering adjective for the female physique, preferring instead "upper body strength." They also pointed out that commenting on Jessie's body was insensitive because of her past struggles with her own body image. It was fascinating to read the ensuing discussion on the distinction between objectifying and describing. The debate had a familiar ring to it. When I photographed Jessie, this was the main conceptual challenge I was grappling with. How do I photograph a nude photo of a fit, blond young woman without edging towards objectification?

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A concern less monumental though no less difficult was the fact that the shoot had to be done in Jessie's natural environment, on skis in a snowy Vermont wonderland. The only difference was that she was naked. Cross-country is a sport of endurance, strength and patience, and I got to see all of that expressed in how Jessie masterfully braved 30-degree weather. We worked in 15-minute intervals, in between which she warmed up inside a nearby heated hut. There was a lot of hot coffee and chocolate. To make Jessie more comfortable, all the 6 people on set — editors, assistants, make-up and hair crew —were women.

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The shoot was planned in two parts, “documentary” and posed. For the first part, the images were intended to look dynamic, the camera gliding in sync with Jessie, at the same time showcasing and obscuring her body. Concentrating on movement revealed the muscles in action, tense and working, like a hidden mechanism. For several shots, I positioned the camera behind the trees to show Jessie skiing alone in the forest. Training for cross-country skiing is often a solitary exercise and I wanted to give a glimpse of that mindset. In these images Jessie seems lost in thought, oblivious to the camera. By contrast, in the more posed shots, Jessie is confronting the camera squarely with her gaze, securing a power balance between the subject and the viewer.

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Athletes' bodies are subject to constant scrutiny. It's no wonder — their physical attributes are inseparable from what often seem to be their superhuman abilities. The ESPN Body Issue was powerful because it peeled back the curtain for us, mere mortals, to see what happens to a body subjected to various types of rigorous training. It gave a visual to what "upper-body strength" can look like in many different forms. I didn't love the NYTimes description of athletes because it somewhat flippantly reduced the sport to a single physical type. But I didn't understand why it could read insensitive towards Jessie. An athlete's body and proportions don't have to be coddled by vague adjectives. When I photographed Jessie Diggins, I saw in front of me a fearless young woman proud to show off the body that she has worked on so relentlessly. She trusted both me and the magazine to successfully tread the sometimes blurry line between celebrating and objectifying. I suspect that, in the end, we succeeded.

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Jessie Diggins in the ESPN 10th Annual Body Issue.

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