In the face of this perceived contrast, what Jan Felshin has called an apologetic develops (Felshin, 1981). The woman athlete must emphasize her womanhood, her femininity (and by implication, her heterosexuality), and minimize the importance of her sport in her life. To do this, she often wears ultra-feminine clothing and hair-styles (off or on the playing field), and avows the importance of her appearance and her desire to marry and raise a family (Felshin, 1981). Another form of apologetic is to choose a sport that is considered socially acceptable for women , that is, "female" sports which avoid contact, and instead display grace, and focus on aesthetic (rather than athletic) exhibition, such as gymnastics, swimming, and figure skating. Traditional "male" sports tend to be those which require strength and power, such as football, boxing, and hockey.2 The apologetic functions to affirm femininity in the face of the absence of femininity evidenced by participation in athletics.
Figure skating, however, has the apologetic built right in; costume, make-up, and gesture "feminize" and soften the athletic ability required for jumps and spins (Feder, 1994), as does the structure of a sport that never requires competitors to face one another. The apologetic is also incoporated into the structure of figure skating in the form of two sets of scores:one for athleticism and one for artistry. "The technical mark (for required elements or techinical merit) is supposed to reflect the difficulty of the program and the clean execution of the elements. The artistic mark (for presentation or composition and style) is supposed to reflect the choreography, music interpretation, flow, and balance of the program, and other factors such as making good use of the ice surface and skating with speed and sureness." (Loosemore, 1994).
Often, those other factors include assessments of the skater's physical beauty, as the mark of her femininity (Feder, 1994; Knisley, 1994; Rounds, 1994).
