Celebration on ice: double standards following the Canadian women's gold medal victory at the 2010 Winter Olympics

Abstract

In this paper, we critically examine the moral outcry that greeted the Canadian women's ice hockey celebrations after they won gold at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in 2010. Stories of male athletes engaging in similar post game activities abound, but such incidents are rarely criticized or admonished. Celebrating victory with excessive drinking is simply customary in male sporting practices. In fact, such behaviour is usually celebrated as a 'time-honoured tradition' within the sporting community. In this paper, we argue that there is a double standard at play that judges women more harshly than men when it comes to the kind of alcohol-related cultural practices commonplace in our society. In conclusion, we argue that if the cultural practices in question, binge drinking and so forth, are morally problematic, then they are equally so for men and women.