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If you watched television last spring, it was difficult to escape the lips of "Mrs. Jones." The ubiquitous Nike commercials only featured a close-up of Mrs. Jones’ nose, chin and mouth. She played the role of a radio DJ sitting at the mic, rappin’ out one "communiqu”" after another about the toughest issues in sports, including the lack of equal pay for women athletes compared to men. Most people know Mrs. Jones is, in fact, Marion Jones, the nation’s top-rated Olympic athlete who predicted she would win an unprecedented five gold medals in Sydney - one each in the 100- and 200-meter sprints, two relay races and the long jump. She ultimately won three of the five events, and earned bronze medals in the other two. But viewers wouldn’t have immediately known that from the Nike ad, which not only concealed Jones’ now famous face, but also didn’t include her name, or mention she is the world’s fastest woman. To some, the fact that Nike created a big budget campaign before Jones even competed in her first Olympics is of great significance. It showed that society is at last ready to revere and reward female jocks as much as their male counterparts. "It’s the final validation for women sports," says Ron Rapoport a veteran sports reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and author of Jones’ new biography, See How She Runs (Algonquin Books, 2000). "It used to be parents didn’t encourage their daughters to participate in sports," Rapoport says. "Girls did girl things, boys did boy things. All that has changed during Marion’s [career]. Both the public and corporate America is waiting for someone like her. We’re ready for this. We’re hungry for this." To others, however, the ads didn’t do enough for women athletes; although Nike is to be commended for its efforts, they say, the company only deserves a bronze medal, not the gold. You never see male superstars treated as half-nameless, half-faceless character actors. The commercials were "a small stride that could have done more," according to Barbara Lippert, who writes commentary on advertising trends for Adweek, a weekly trade magazine. "I wanted the ads to reveal more of who she was. This is the first generation of women who are comfortable in every possible way, as celebrities, as sex objects, as athletes." Lippert says the ad — featuring Jones as "a cryptic chick" with an agenda, a "mystery mouth" with an attitude — reminds her of the ’80s and much of the ’90s, when sporting goods ads relegated women to objects of beauty and inspiration "as if they were from another planet." During that era, Nike allowed male athletes like Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley to hype not only the company’s products, but their superstar status as well. Women had to settle for the likes of a Sigourney Weaver voice-over: "You were born and oh how you wailed." "But she might as well have been saying, ‘You were born and you had two ovaries,’" Lippert wrote. The style of the Nike ads was inspired by a 1979 film, The Warriors, which featured a nostril-to-chin female DJ trying to end gang violence over the airwaves. Nike corporate spokesman Scott Reames says company executives debated whether to reveal the identity of Mrs. Jones in their ads, but opted against it. Their goal, he says, was to create a very stylish grassroots campaign filled with "attitude, feeling and brand awareness." They relied on the handful of truly knowledgeable fans of track and field to pass on Mrs. Jones identity to their friends, families and colleagues. "Marion Jones was certainly not as well-known [as other athletes sponsored by Nike]," Reames says. "It was beneficial for Marion to come up with a campaign that is memorable. We were trying to get her more in the public conscious, to let people get to know her better." Doesn’t hiding her identity contradict that goal? Doesn’t the fact that Mrs. Jones the character speaks in a rap-like style — when in real life Jones is very articulate and poised — take away from her real personality? "In the odd world of publicity," Reames says, "it actually raises their profile if you don’t beat people over the head" and risk the ill-will of viewers tired of seeing the same old face saying the same old thing. Jones and Nike agreed on the content of the ads. In one communiqu”, she tells her fellow athletes they must serve as role models, whether they want to or not. In another, she talks about the lack of knowledge most Americans have for track and field stars, while in Europe the athletes are afforded celebrity status. Another commercial is dead on about the disparity in pay that still exists between female and male athletes. "Why are sisters makin’ less when they’re bustin’ their butts to the max?" she asks. "Are they playin’ any less hard than the fellas? Is their blood any less red? Women receive less. They deserve more. The more the better." Jones is by no means a pauper, although she doesn’t earn nearly as much as a Michael Jordan, a Mark McGwire or a Troy Aikman. She has earned several million dollars since she graduated in 1997 from the University of North Carolina and, along with her husband, fellow Olympic athlete C.J. Hunter, is building an 8,800-square-foot dream house on 10 acres just outside Chapel Hill. Jones’ income comes from sponsors like Nike and GM; appearance fees of $50,000 or so simply for agreeing to race at major events and more than twice that for winning; and bonuses for consistently winning several races during a season at different international venues. If Nike chose a low-key approach to unveiling Jones, the rest of the corporate world exploited her persona. NBC, which broadcast the Olympic games, designed a seven-story billboard of Jones in Times Square. Jones appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated For Women, Women’s Sports Fitness and, believe it or not, the scholarly Scientific American for a special quarterly edition on "Building the Elite Athlete." Most of the stories were puff pieces that previewed the Olympics. The article in Time revealed that women, no matter how fast or how strong, are still characterized in female terms: The author, who described Jones as “one of the world’s loveliest women and demonstrably the fastest,” detailed the preparations for a photo shoot, noting that Jones was being fussed over by a makeup artist and that Jones uses a scrunchy, not a rubber band, to hold back her hair. The story even raised the question of whether Jones, who is seven years younger than her husband, views C.J. as more of a father figure than a soul mate (Jones’ father abandoned her when she was an infant and her stepfather died when she was 11). In contrast, male locker rooms across the nation are filled with boasting about last night’s sexual conquests (remember Wilt Chamberlain’s claim of bedding 20,000 women), but you never see the media asking whether there is anything unusual about the guys’ predilection for younger women In an article on the Sydney Olympics, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly commended NBC commentators for focusing on the Netherland’s Inge de Bruijn’s swimming skills instead of her long, painted fingernails. “But elsewhere,” wrote Tucker, ‘reflexive sexism prevailed: Women’s water polo entrant Maureen O’Toole isn’t noteworthy just because she remains a superb athlete at the age of 39, but because, golly, she’s ‘the only mother on the [U.S.] team”! Cut to close-up of O’Toole’s adorable 8-year-old daughter Kelly saying how much she misses Mommy when she leaves for a competition. (Number of children I’ve seen pining for their athlete daddies thus far? Zero.)”
While the issue of equality continues to be debated, it is undoubtedly true that Jones’ exposure epitomizes a new level of respect. Nike ads routinely feature female superstars like Monica Seles, Mia Hamm and athletes from the WNBA. Women’s sports attract hundreds of thousands at the collegiate level and millions more when their sporting matches are aired by a television industry hungry for quality competition. And although Brandi Chastain is still noted for yanking off her shirt after the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team won the World Cup last year, most people marveled at the athletic skill of the team and celebrated when the women won. Rapoport, the sports writer and Jones’ biographer, remembers that it wasn’t so long ago when this attitude toward female athletes was unheard of. He covered Florence Joyner Griffith when she took the 1988 Olympics by storm. "Attitudes toward women have changed," Rapoport says. "We didn’t know what to make of Flo-Jo. Madison Avenue certainly wasn’t interested. There was nothing, absolutely nothing. She was never on TV selling soap. If she came along today, she’d be huge, just huge." You can just imagine how wealthy Wilma Rudolph would have been if she became the first American woman to win three gold medals at this year’s Olympics instead of four decades ago. Instead, she took a job as a schoolteacher when the flames of the 1960 games died out. Or, as Jones told Rapoport, "I came along at the right time."
Stephen Wissink is editor of Spectator Magazine, an alternative weekly in Raleigh, N.C. Comment on this article or Related Sites Read the entire identity issue |
