Joyce Carol Oate’s frames her analysis On Boxing with a focus on time. Specifically, she points to boxing’s fleeting nature. Everything in boxing can change in a matter of seconds, setting into motion the authority of time. Boxers are physically time-bound, that is, they can be both knocked out of time. Finally, their career is time sensitive. Yet one thing that remains constant is the minimal role women have in boxing. Through the duration of Joyce Carol Oate's piece On Boxing, she represents the minor role of women in the realm of boxing; indeed, they are dually diminished, both as active participants and spectators.
There has been an influx of women joining the boxing arena since 1987; however, in the space that Oate’s works in, women have a marginal role as active participants. Oate’s provides evidence to sustain that “boxing is a purely masculine activity and it inhabits a purely masculine world” (Oates, 70). She describes that the counterpart to a heavyweight champion is expected to be the “fairest woman on earth” (70); certainly, Oate’s utilizes the operative word—fairest—to suggest a twofold connotation to a woman’s physical role in the boxing arena. Therefore, there are two kinds of women in the boxing ring. The more common, active participant performs in “stereotypically zestful feminine way” (72); she is the glamour girl of the 1950s: the card girl sporting a bikini and heels or the high-pitched, National anthem vocalist. Oates claims that this woman is viewed as “purely decorative” (72) and as a result, she is devoid of a natural place in the spectacle otherwise.
A female boxer is deemed “monstrous” (73) and is nonetheless the less common, active participant in the boxing arena. Oate’s mentions that people are often “surprise[d], alarm[ed], [and] amus[ed]” (70) to learn that there are indeed a few female boxers. Oates describes the most famous American