No Slam Dunk

CHERYL COOKY is an associate professor of American Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. MICHAEL A. MESSNER is a professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is the author or editor of many books including Child's Play: Sport in Kids' Worlds (Rutgers University Press).

• Introduction 1CHERYL COOKY AND MICHAEL A. MESSNERPart I Sport, Gender, and Sexuality1 Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and theProduction of Soft Essentialism 15MICHAEL A. MESSNER2 Policing the Boundaries of Sex: A CriticalExamination of Gender Verification and the CasterSemenya Controversy 37CHERYL COOKY AND SHARI L. DWORKIN3 Gender Relations and Sport:Local, National, Transnational 54MICHAEL A. MESSNER4 Women, Sports, and Activism 70CHERYL COOKYPart II Sport as Gendered Practice5 Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters: ChildrenConstructing Gender 93MICHAEL A. MESSNER6 "Girls Just Aren't Interested": The Social Constructionof Interest in Girls' Sport 113CHERYL COOKY7 Ready for Anything the World Gives Her?:A Critical Look at Sports-BasedPositive YouthDevelopment for Girls 139LAUREN RAUSCHER AND CHERYL COOKY8 Separating the Men from the Moms: The Making ofAdult Gender Segregation in Youth Sports 160MICHAEL A. MESSNER AND SUZEL BOZADA-DEAS9 Gender and Sport Participation in Montenegro 180CHERYL COOKY, MARKO BEGOVIC, DON SABO, CAROLE A. OGLESBY,AND MARJ SNYDERPart III The Gender of Sports Media10 "It's Dude Time!": A Quarter Century of ExcludingWomen's Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows 209CHERYL COOKY, MICHAEL A. MESSNER, AND MICHELA MUSTO11 Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Menand Masculinities 235MICHAEL A. MESSNER12 It's Not about the Game: Don Imus, Race, Class,Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary Media 247CHERYL COOKY, FAYE L. WACHS, MICHAEL A. MESSNER, AND SHARI L. DWORKIN13 "What Makes a Woman a Woman?" versus "Our FirstLady of Sport": A Comparative Analysis of theUnited States and the South African Media Coverageof Caster Semenya 269CHERYL COOKY, RANISSA DYCUS, AND SHARI L. DWORKINAbout the Authors 295About the Contributors 297Index 299

"New Scholarly Books: Weekly Book List, June 8," by Nina C. Ayoub— Chronicle of Higher Education"Recommended." — Choice"No Slam Dunk is an invaluable, highly accessible resource and a fantastic addition to the sport and gender literature. Cooky and Messner provide a volume that is both entertaining and engaging."— Jeffrey Montez de Oca, author of Discipline and Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life"No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change by Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner (Rutgers University Press; 314 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Combines empirical and theoretical perspectives in a study of challenges that remain for gender equity in sports."— Chronicle of Higher Education"A highly readable, engaging, and useful collection of crisply written chapters. Each chapter concludes with a series of thoughtful questions that could be used to stimulate reflection and debate within the classroom or lecture theater. As such, given the accessible writing and insightful commentaries, this text could be usefully employed as a course reader on sport and gender."— Sociology of Sport Journal"This is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding gender and sport today....No Slam Dunk synthesizes a robust literature and brings multiple qualitative methods, from content analysis to ethnography, interviews, and subjects' accounts, to bear on timely topics."— Gender & Society"Sport is an essential window for understanding what unites and divides us. It shapes our world. No Slam Dunk is essential: a decoder ring for understanding issues of gender and sexuality with the Rosetta Stone that is the games we play."— Dave Zirin, sports editor, The Nation"'I don't think it's coincidental that the dunk becomes emblematic of men's basketball—and supposedly what makes men's basketball exciting—right at the moment the women's game is ascendent,' says Michael Messner, a professor of sociology and gender studies at USC and co-author of the upcoming book No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change"— Natalie Weiner, Bleacher Report