This one goes out to all of the gorgeous females of UCSD athletics. You know what I’m talking about.

I was watching our women’s volleyball team dismantle California State University Dominguez Hills last week when I noticed something that I hadn’t before. Our female athletes are very attractive.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the phenomenon was not limited to volleyball, but included all of the women’s sports at UCSD. Now, it wasn’t that these girls were unattractive before, but I just didn’t think about it until last week.

My complete overlooking of the hotness factor of our female athletes led me to think about the way that female athletes are viewed in society. It wasn’t until very recently that a female playing sports could be considered a sexual icon. That role was traditionally left up to the glamour industry of models and actresses. It has only been in the past few years that a female athlete could be viewed as both an athlete and a woman instead of simply a tomboy who plays sports.

This had to do with the fact that it was just not acceptable for women to play sports prior to 1980. It was not considered ladylike. Along with society’s condemnation of a woman’s role in sports came a stereotype about the women who played sports.

This stereotype was that they were manly, rough, crude and unfit for any “”respectable”” man. Some people went as far as to deem female athletes lesbians. That stereotype lives on today in the assumption that the majority of women on the pro golf tour are lesbians.

Another reason that female athletes were not viewed as sexual icons in our society is that men were simply afraid of them. I don’t mean that they were cowering in the corner and sucking their thumbs, but they were intimidated by the existence of women who were actually athletes.

Men hate to admit that a girl can beat them at anything, let alone sports. Now picture a female athlete who is not only better than a guy at sports, but one who doesn’t whine about a broken nail and can play through pain just like her male counterparts. That equals one big chunk of an ordinary man’s pride.

How did men deal with this onslaught of female athletes who proved themselves time and time again in their respective sports? They lashed out with accusations of not being feminine, of being unfit for marriage, and even of being lesbians. It’s a typical male response to something that we don’t understand. I’m not proud of it, but it happens.

One would think that after the women’s movement swept through the nation and fought for equal rights that a woman who played sports could finally be viewed as a lady and an athlete, but that wasn’t the case.

Granted, it was becoming more and more acceptable for women to compete in athletics. Professional women’s sports leagues began to spring up well into the 1990s, but female athletes were still not completely viewed as women. They were athletes first.

One of the classic examples of this separation of “”desirable”” women and female athletes came from one of the leading voices in sports during the 20th century, “”Sports Illustrated””.

In its annual swimsuit addition, the magazine featured scores of gorgeous models running around on beaches in skimpy outfits. However, it was not until 1997 that someone at “”Sports Illustrated”” had a great idea: Include female athletes in the issue.

Actually, it was a single female athlete. While she wasn’t on the cover of the issue, Steffi Graf slipped into a bathing suit and made history as the first female athlete to model for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

With her skin gracing the pages of the nation’s most hallowed sporting guide, it was suddenly all right to think of female athletes as sexual icons. The national public began to take notice of the beautiful female professional athletes that had seemingly sprung out of nowhere in this country.

Women like pro beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece started getting endorsements for beauty products, and even a 12-page spread in the January 2001 issue of “”Playboy””. After the U.S. national women’s soccer team won the World Cup in 1999 in dramatic, topless fashion, Brandi Chastain’s sports bra was the center of every male’s fantasy. International female athletes such as tennis’ Anna Kournikova and Martina Hingis even have gotten a solid following from young men.

It is finally acceptable for women to play sports and to be seen as women at the same time. Personally, I think it’s about time.

These ladies go out there and work hard day in and day out on the athletic field to try to earn respect. When their day is over and they’ve iced down their latest nagging injury, they deserve to be able to slip into a dress and be wined and dined like any other woman.

For all of you female Triton athletes out there who don’t have anyone to take you out on the weekends, you can always stop by the Guardian sports office and talk to either Isaac or myself. By the looks of it though, you shouldn’t have any problems finding dates on your own.

Keep up the good work out on the field, ladies. The guys will treat you right when you get home, I promise.

Because I said so.