Challenging Gender Ideals: Pat and Mike (1952) Women's Sports & Comedy
Pat and Mike (1952) explores a female athlete's struggle with confidence and romance, challenging gender ideals. See how Pat's journey redefines female athletic identity and questions male dominance in sports
1/10/20252 min read


Pat and Mike (1952) focuses on Pat 's losing athletic confidence whenever her fiancé Collier is around her. However, by receiving Mike's help, Pat develops her sports ability and attraction to a romantic relationship. The film shows the limitation of women athletes by evading their achievement, challenging the female athletic identity and blurring the sports theme .
Pat's relationship with Collier shapes gender ideals for both males and females. Pat's coming to Charlie's bar emphasizes her disappointed facial expression and hand gestures about Collier's appearance in the game. Her pessimistic attitudes refer to the traditional male audience as "cautiously against excessive female ambition manifested through participation in sports," pressure on women female athletes, that women must express their femininity and be controlled by the male . Pat and Mike strengthen this idea by allowing Collier's interruption to Pat with his dynamic movement between Pat's left and right side, authoritatively asking Pat, who is sitting on the chair, to give him money. The medium shot and left and right composition suggest that women remained subordinated under the male authority. This left and right arrangement highlighting Collier's active movement refers to the "right versus wrong" ideology. When Collier is on Pat's left side, the framing conveys Pat's desire to be an independent and skillful woman. While on Collier's right side, Pat represents her deviation from the traditional gender norm of being a woman. Thus, this framing composition ties to Butler's description that "discourse returning to binary structures," in which as a star . Hence, because Pat's athletic identities deviate from the traditional white men's masculinity ideology, Collier must turn hers into his "weak supporter" and subordinator in sports and family wife .


Pat's change in relationship with Mike from collaboration to a romance challenges the gender differences by shaping the female gender identities and highlighting a new perspective of masculinity. In the restaurant ordering scene, Mike functions as a father, trainer, and business manager, referring to the "big business" and "bureaucratization" development and the demand for "salesman" and "managers" jobs during World War II. This demand allows the "merging" of women's and men's sports and provides equal athletic opportunities for both genders; however, the males gain more control at the administrative and coaching levels. Specifically, the medium-close-up shots in this scene show both characters' facial expressions in choosing a healthy women athlete's diet. This detail strengthens Mike's relationship with Pat, specifically between a sports manager and star. Furthermore, this scene conveys a new masculine perspective by showing Mike soft-spoken and adherence to choosing a healthy order for Pat as a female athlete. This characterization figuratively refers to the "second feminism wave (the 1970s-90s) that females gain "equality, opportunity" and legally "athletic access," illustrates when Mike tells Pat that what good for you is good for me, we are partners, we are the same . Consequently, Pat and Mike challenge the traditional gender ideal by showing Pat's desire to be an athletic star, increasing women's sports interest and fan spectatorship toward the young females.