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March was a month that saw major global sporting events taking place, such as the Winter Paralympics in Italy, and the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Poland. In the latter, the Great Britain team put in a well-deserved performance and went on to secure four gold medals from athletes including Keely Hodgkinson in the 800m, Georgia Bell in the 1500m, Josh Kerr in the 3000m and Molly Caudery in the pole vault. Whilst not featuring in this year’s medals table, Amy Hunt the 200m silver medallist at last year’s World Championships, has been the subject of discussion in the run up to the games, as journalists looked to reflect on her career amidst the impact of the spontaneous statement she made that went viral:
“You can be an academic badass and a track goddess.”
Slightly out of breath at the time, a jubilant Hunt said these words in the spur of the moment, during a post-race interview with a BBC journalist. According to Hunt, she immediately believed that she would be bleeped out of the live recording following what she had said, but luckily, it was not. This was not a question of foul language, especially where the word badass could be considered as a low-level inappropriate slang word with negative connotations, however in this context, it was used in quite the opposite. Using badass is similar to the term “baddie”, a popular cultural vernacular term, which refers to ‘someone, usually a woman, who is confident, stylish, and attractive.’
So here we can see a gendered connection through the use of the term, and to the fact that Hunt is speaking about women in the sport. Another gendered association, and a reason why the statement may have gone viral, could have been that making such a comment, was akin to seeing female footballers like the England Lioness Chloe Kelly celebrating her winning goal in the 2022 Euro’s and taking off her shirt, whipping it around, and running in her sports bra, as something that is typically seen of players in the men’s game? It just doesn’t happen. When it does, it’s so absurd, that in that absurdity, it sticks in one’s mind. Making strange was a strategy that I have used in my practice as a visual artist, when challenging ideas around the construction of whiteness, building on the words of the American art historian Amelia Jones, when she says in order to make it visible, we need to render it ‘ethnic’ and bring it out of its invisibility (1).
But perhaps that level of strangeness and absurdity, links to something beyond gender as it were, to ideals that many of us can relate to. The first one being around the multiple hats or faces that we all wear in our waking life. As a former university Academic, I was often told that I didn’t look like your typical lecturer, granted that I was quite young when I took on my first role. This was not the norm, where the image of a lecturer is typically perceived as being older, whiter, male, and coming from a particular middle to higher socio-economic class. Admittedly, I was also very conscious that I didn’t want to come across as your typical Academic, because I was fully aware of the responsibility that came with me being in my position, and that for some students, I would be seen as a role model. Echoing Hunt’s words, I was fully aware of being young, Black, female, queer, doing a PhD and looking good whilst doing it! In this case, representation matters in terms of what others looking in could see and achieve, but with this, also came the burden of what social psychologist Dr. Claude Steele, termed as ‘stereotype threat’, as the fear of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group. Because of my multiple identities outside of the norm, I was all too aware of having to prove that I was as good as anyone else in my role.
This article was written by Dr Ope Lori, Founder and CEO of Pre-Image Learning and Action.
(1) Whiteness, A Wayward Construction (2003) Tyler Stallings
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