their private parts. I refused to give them the satisfaction of looking up. . . " (cited by Kelley 41).
Because of this incident, Olson took her case to the media in print and on television, and she later filed, a lawsuit charging sexual harassment. Fred Bruning made his position on this matter clear when he wrote,
When a gang of naked dimwits harassed Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson in the locker room of the New England Patriots, Americans learned anew that social progress is slippery as stewed fruit, that football players may be precisely as thuggish as everyone assumes and that the millionaire owners of professional sports franchises are apt to display the moral resolve of hijackers and cattle thieves (Bruning 13).
While Olson says she never wanted to be the story, but only to report, she became the story and attracted support from various feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women, which declared her a victim and announced a boycott against Patriots owner Victor Kiam's Remington shavers:
The press had a field day. Mary Garber, the first woman reporter allowed in a men's locker room, sniffed, "There is no reason why women can't be in the dressing room without any embarrassment to themselves or the athletes. Why can't athletes put towels around their waists or wear bathrobes?" (Kelley 41).
Some stated angrily that locker rooms should be off limits to writers of both sexes anyway:
The point that is being missed is that the locker room is players' turf--anybody from the outside is considered an intruder and treated like one. It is a justifiably hostile environment (Kelley 41).
In truth though, it is more hostile to women than to men.
When women sports reporters discuss their experiences as women sports reporters, they return again and again to the same locale and the same basic issue--the locker room. Jennifer Briggs of the Dallas Observer was with a different newspaper when she s...