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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lucienne
quote:
ORIGINAL: ShaktiSama
I'm also well aware of what kind of lives they tend to lead after high school and what kind of income they can expect after having participated in this athletic pursuit. Having compared it to the lives that even the mid-level MALE athletes on a football field can enjoy, after having won a four-year university scholarship based on their athletic ability? Sorry, but I see neither equality nor any kind of fairness or value in Football as an institution.
The football field is a huge symbolic microcosm of American society as a whole. It tells us everything we need to know about the kind of treatment that equally gifted male and female human beings--the male and female human beings that our society tends to prize the most highly--can expect to receive.
The football field tells us that our most prized women are destined to be nameless, unacknowledged and exploited sexual objects. In contrast, the society's most valued men will be recognized by name, lionized as heroes for their accomplishments and feats, publicly acknowledged and praised for their abilities, and given the opportunity to prosper in legitimate, long-lasting ways based on their hard work and training.
While I'm sympathetic to your concerns and sensitivities, the world you reference is very different than the world I observe. No one looks at cheerleading as a way out of poverty and into millions. I just think it's terribly *off* to treat playing football and being a cheerleader as opposites or complimentary. Yes, there are problematic issues with the presentation of cheerleaders. And a lot of that is self-reinforcing. Most of the crap I hear people talk about cheerleaders is when they obviously don't grasp the basics of the game they are supposed to be cheering (football cheerleaders starting a cheer during an offensive drive, etc.). Cheerleading at the highschool, college, and "professional" level (the ladies aren't pros, they're just cheering pros) has a bunch of different issues that we could discuss but I can't summon enough concern to go into it because it just isn't that important.
As for football and what it represents, culturally, that is simply a lot bigger than what cheerleading is. In considering the career opportunities of college scholarship athletes, focusing on football is misleading as most of the career high-achievers are in non-revenue earning sports who translate the discipline of their sport into a non-sport career.
As for football players, geez LOUISE, if you want to talk about people suffering from exploitation at the hands of the patriarchy... let's talk about NFL players. I don't consider premature aging, a higher degree of conditions resulting from brain damage, the high number of bankruptcies and impoverished lives suffered because men are lionized for smashing into each other on a field and rarely encouraged to develop any other life sustaining skills or long term plan to be the best that society has to offer.
It's not that I disagree with you that a football game sends cultural signals about what our society rewards. I just think it's uglier and more complicated than what you represent.
Huh, most of the ex gridiron stars I know are either used car salesmen or run forklifts in warehouses - and that includes a a few ex-pros.
They are married to aging cheerleaders.
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