This text will examine the Lingerie Football League (LFL) through a critical feminist lens. Several factors associated with the LFL will be analyzed to better evaluate the gender hierarchies that exist within sports, sexism in the media, and the sexualization of female athletes. These factors include, the league’s choice in uniforms, the player recruitment process, and the rebranding period. Additionally, this text will examine the intersections of race and gender that exist within the league through the brief analyzation of the relationship between race, and player position. The LFL is an all-female football league that was created in 2004 as a pay-per-view alternative to the Super Bowl’s half-time show. The LFL features women playing full-contact football in lingerie-style uniforms. From it’s inception in 2004 – up until …show more content…
Often, a woman’s perceived level of physical attractiveness equates to her athleticism. According to feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female form which is styled accordingly (1975).” The LFL’s choice in lingerie-style uniforms substantiates Mulvey’s claim, that men consider women to be canvases on which they can project sexual fantasies onto. In addition to the style of uniforms, the physical appearances of the players should also be taken into consideration. According to, ‘Legends’ in ‘Lingerie’: Sexuality and Athleticism in the 2013 Legends Football League USA Season, the LFL reportedly recruits its players based on their perceived level of attractiveness (Khomutova & Channon 2015). Indeed, many of the women in the LFL uphold Western standards of beauty. Often, the athletes have slim waists, large breasts, defined buttocks, long hair, and wear noticeable
In the article titled Face-off on the playing field By, Judith B. Stamper explains girls have their own story of support or discrimination, success also the debate of girls be allowed to compete on boys’ sports team. First, the writer Title IX explains female athletes are been treated second-class for long enough and should pass of inequalities and biases of girls. The writer also clarifies that girls doing sports make them healthier, physically, and emotionally. Other girls that don’t play sports are less likely to use of drugs. In addition, she notes a former Stanford University basketball player Mariah says, strength and independence of things girls learn from sports, the opportunities that are changing women.
College football, as an “amateur” sport, produces nearly $3.5 billion dollars a year, but the young men who play the game, primarily African American, don’t see a penny of revenue. Yes, student athletes get tuition, room and board, and lots of Nike, Adidas or Under Armour gear, but they’re really free labor. The world refers to them as “student athletes,”. There are three different levels of competition under the NCAA. Division I, Division II and Division III are the three levels associated with the NCAA.
Title IX was signed into law in 1972 and it required equality for male and female students in each educational program and activity that received federal funding. This means that universities had to offer sports that women could participate in. The reasons Title IX came into being was a demand from Women’s Rights organizations for equal opportunities. Prior to 1972, sports, competition, and many other university programs were generally considered to be masculine and “ not ladylike.”
The goal of Furness was to show that the NFL’s denial was because of the perception that players are viewed by not because they might and will lose revenue. In the documentary League in Denial “the cultural dynamic is one of the focal points of the film’s dedicated segment on media and the marketing of NFL violence” (pg.54). I don’t agree with the objective paradigm of masculinity because the NFL and athletes shouldn’t be defined by their profession to all be masculine. The method used in this essay was an analyzation method in the breakdown of the NFL concussion crisis and the PBS production League of Denial. From my perspective it should’ve been a rhetorical analysist in finding the flaws in the documentary and its accuracy relating to today’s game.
Towards the beginning of the movie, the scout for this league was willing to pass up a player who is considered unattractive, even though she continuously was killing the ball in batting practice because he was told to find girls talent and looks were equal. Another argument supporting the existence of sexism in this All-American girls’ team was that the players were considered more seriously as princesses rather than as serious baseball players. In the movie, you can hear the announcer of the game comment, “After the first month of league play, the shine still isn’t off these “diamond” gals.” Also, in a commercial made for the league players, the audio was saying how getting a triple is still no reason to let your nose get
Dude, You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School Book Review The novel Dude, You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School by C.J. Pascoe revolves around the social construct of masculinity as shown in adolescents and teachers in the high school River High, where the author conducted roughly a year and a half of field work. Pascoe “ask[s] how heternomative and homophobic discourses, practices, and interactions in an American high school produce masculine identities.” (17) To examine these constructions, Pascoe focuses “on the gender and sexuality practices of students, teachers, and administrators, with an emphasis on school rituals.” (17) Using such approaches, Pascoe seeks to highlight the masculine identity by uncoupling
American football demonstrates a hegemonic masculinity and the media tends to emphasis that idea. In a greater scale, the media associates sports with men due to its aggressive nature. Women who try to change that perception tend to be given negative media depiction or none at all. In fact, there are female football players and associations but its due to the lack of media depiction, it is unknown. These mentioned ideas are seen in the article, "The Nail Polish underneath the Hockey Gloves" by Kelly Poniatowski, "Examining stereotypical written and photographic reporting on the sports page" by Paul M. Pedersen, and "ESPN 's SportsCenter and Coverage of Women 's Athletics: 'It 's a Boy 's Club '" by Terry Adams.
In “Girl Unprotected”, Sports writer and journalist Laura Robinson argues that if you examine the Judicial system, then you will find a strong bias against victims of hockey abuses with an emphasis against women. Throughout her essay, Robinson uses the case against Mike Danton and the NHL to emphasize the issues of gender inequality and the lack of recognition to the abuses in hockey. In her essay, Laura Robinson begins her argument by claiming that “women’s bodies were only allowed to be adjectives to describe men” (Robinson 326). By doing so, she suggests that women’s bodies are all that the men in hockey care about while their mind’s and talents are ignored and lack in value. To reinforce her thesis, Robinson also includes a quote from a
Moreover, women were restricted to limited choices of sports, and were offered to activities that were seen as more ‘graceful’. Inevitably, questioning if women can be “aggressive…
“I wonder how many times a Tom Brady is asked about how handsome he is, or J.J. Watt... it’s something that us female athletes have to deal with all the time,”(Hatch.) quoted by the famous Delle Donne of the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) Chicago Sky. Delle Donne is one of the many female athletes, who endure sexism in sports today. Today in society, people still struggle with the idea of females being involved in sports.
Though women have come a long way, I do feel like social conditioning discourages young girls from learning to pitch or participate in any activity that would be deemed masculine. However, I do not feel it is always men that have the condescending tone. Twenty years ago around the time Fallows’ wrote this essay when my sister and I were very young everything we owned was pink, covered in lace and ballerina related, I accepted this in all it’s entirety my sister on the other hand wanted to play football. Our parents were relatively accepting of this; with my step-father rather ecstatic to have a kid wanting to play football, his mother, however, was exasperated. While our parents dropped use off for the weekend, she stated quite firmly overshadowing my parents’ laughter and joy “girls do not play football.”
From magazines to advertisements, women are constantly being exposed to beauty ideals - many of which are unattainable. This results in women falling victim to the manipulations and lures of the marketing industry. Since its establishment in 1886, Cosmopolitan has been a popular source for women to turn to for advice on relationships, sexual activity and popular culture. During its inception, the magazine was published as a women's fashion magazine initially depicting articles on families, home decorating, and the progress of science and technology. However, while Cosmopolitan is still viewed as a magazine targeted towards women, the methods in which the magazine attracts women have dramatically evolved.
The sun illuminates countless all-American names, with the occasional Coke or Papa John’s sponsor signs. The play clock ticks down to zero, and the stadium is finally filled to maximum capacity. Kickoff commences, players scramble across the field, and suddenly the only problems in the world hinge on if the Nike plastered football is past the downs marker. There are the elite suites high above the stadium cloaked in shade, but the majority are cramped and blisteringly hot. We are all united as one, cheering our team to victory, and thriving on the culture that is modern day sports.
In “Commanding the Room in Short Skirts: Cheering as the Embodiment of Ideal Girlhood”, Adams and Bettis argue that a feminist poststructuralist reading of cheerleading states cheerleading as a discursive practice that has changed significantly in the past 150 years to accommodate the shifting and often contradictory meanings of normative femininity. Overall they argue that cheerleading is surrounded by gender. A gendered activity reconstructing feminism and what people typically think about women in sports. With cheerleading transitioning into a female dominant activity, it comes with some negative stereotypes. Cheerleading is also described as an erotic icon.
If society stops to understand the struggles these women have been facing for decades will have a clearer picture of what steps to take in order to make a change in the sports industry. Men need to put their masculinity aside and advocate giving women a voice. The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues women in the sport world have faced through history, wage gaps, current issues today, and to discuss findings and recommendations for future research. Title IX is a law that came into effect in 1972, this comprehensive federal law prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.