As the United States prepared to send its best athletes to Sydney for the 2000 Olympic Games, Voter.com's Margot Magowan discovers that the women of Team USA maybe needed lipstick, good lighting and lingerie if they want the gold.

By Margot Magowan
Exclusively for Voter.com

She's wearing a tight two-piece. Legs parted, head thrown back, eyes closed, she smiles. The woman in the photo is not a Playmate of the Month, but Olympic high jumper Amy Acuff, in Esquire magazine's cover story/ pictorial entitled "America's Ten Sexiest Athletes." But on closer examination, Amy is not lying down; she is jumping.

A perusal of recent issues of men's magazines reveals the latest sex symbol is the female athlete.

The cover of GQ shows tennis player Anna Kournikova in a clingy, white tube top and matching hot pants.

Sports Illustrated features Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson topless with her hands covering her breasts.

And Gear has a photo of the Australian women's soccer team, all players completely naked with their arms and legs placed strategically.

It's no coincidence that this ubiquitous fascination with women athletes as soft-core porn stars comes right as women are making enormous strides in achieving parity with men in the Olympics. One step forward, two long jumps back.

At the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia more women will compete in more sports with more media coverage than ever before. With 4,400 participants, women reach a new record as 42 percent of all competitors. And for the first time, NBC will show all of the women's soccer and softball games on network television or on cable.

Most exciting, women will be competing in what were once exclusively male domains. New categories include weightlifting, pole vaulting, water polo, tae kwon do, the triathlon and the pentathlon.

But the slew of wet T-shirt pictorials reveals a powerful cultural bias. The American public is still uncomfortable seeing women as successful athletes and celebrating them for embodying the qualities that athletes possess. Magazines like Maxim are undermining hard-won progress by reducing all female competition to just another beauty contest.

Athletes are valued for what their bodies can do, not how they look.

Athletes are competitive, ambitious and they know how to win, but those attributes just aren't ladylike. In a society where we still cling to firm ideas of what is feminine and masculine, photographing sports superstars in lace panties and sheer camisoles keeps them safely inside the parameters of womanhood.

While girls learn early on they will be judged for their looks, boys learn that being attractive and being athletic are precisely the same thing. Ever since high school, the jocks were the big men on campus, a guy's skill made him hot and the best player sealed his status by getting the prettiest girl.

The grown up world isn't much better. Male athletes are worshipped for their achievements. Joe DiMaggio won Marilyn Monroe, and that wasn't because he looked good in his uniform.

For women, athletic skill doesn't equal desirability. In a capitalist world, the girl with the most money wins. Blond and buxom Anna Kournikova makes $11 to $15 million in endorsements, though she has never won a professional tournament on the women's tennis tour. Her earnings equal those of Martina Hingis, who has earned her money by winning 26 career titles, and are much more than 43-time winner Monica Seles' $7.5 million or defending U.S. Open Champ Serena Williams' $6 million.

Even a pretty player isn't valued like a male player. Tiger Woods gets $47 million; Michael Jordan, $40 million; and 70-year-old Arnold Palmer makes $19 million.

The excuse is that men make big money because their sports make more money from television contracts, but it's all a vicious circle: When women aren't valued for their skills, aren't trained properly and aren't celebrated the way male athletes are, they're at a severe disadvantage.

While many call this just bad luck, the law calls it illegal. More than 20 years ago, Title IX, which demanded gender equity in sports funding, began to be enforced. A generation of women growing up under it is a major reason why female athletes have been able to make the advances they have.

Even with this law, females make up only one third of interscholastic and intercollegiate athletes. Women sports programs receive less than 24 percent of college operating budgets and 18 percent less recruiting money.

Summer 2000's gold medal favorite, Stacy Dragila, was once told women don't have the upper body strength to pole vault. Today, pole vaulting is the most popular new women's event, with Dragila holding the world record at 15 feet and 2 1/4 inches.

For reaching that record last summer, Dragila got only half the $60,000 prize money that men get for the same competition. But, she was able to generate more income and media coverage for her sport by posing with other track and field women for a sexy calendar.

Athletics should be the one place where there truly is a meritocracy, where women are rewarded for how high they can jump, how fast they can run, or how much they can lift. But once again, the rules are different for women. This summer, along with their shotputs and discuses, female Olympic competitors will need lipstick, good lighting and lingerie if they want to get the gold.

Margot Magowan produces the Bernie Ward KGO Radio Talk Show, and is a writer and commentator whose work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, Salon.com, Voter.com and Glamour magazine. She has been on national television programs including CNN's Crossfire, Hardball with Chris Mathews and Fox News. She co-founded the Woodhull Institute, a think tank for women and Women Count, an organization that implements media campaigns to inspire women to vote.

Also see: Margot's "Team Pussy" venture, adventure and campaign links - giving pussy the kind of recognition and acceptance it deserves. If ever there was a word in need of rehab, it is this feline expletive...