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While the once-taboo subject of women participating in contact sports is now just about obsolete, there is still one touchy subject that remains with regards to women’s sport.
That is, men commenting on women’s sport.
When addressing the subject, a bloke runs the very real risk of coming across as a far, less charming and aesthetically pleasing Don Draper, all the while leaving himself open to an eternity of being challenged to arm-wrestling bouts by female athletes.
Of course, it’s also easy to go too far the other way, heaping over the top praise on female athletes every time they do something skilful (um… they’re athletes, remember?) until you’re that creepy bloke in the Aussie Opals Unitard, hiding in the bushes outside Lauren Jackson’s hotel room.
Women’s sport, from what I‘ve deciphered on the interwebs and channel surfing, is remarkably similar to men’s sport.
There’s generally less tattoos on display and the dressing sheds probably smell a bit nicer, but putting political/social/cultural mechanisms aside, the nuts and bolts of it are essentially all the same. Women start playing sport for exactly the same reasons as men; fun, fitness and bawdy, end-of-season trips.
What women’s sport doesn’t have is a lot of high profile leagues, which has the flow-on effect that anyone who has seen the players car-park outside a W-League match would be well aware of.
One women’s sporting league that did make headlines last week was the Lingerie Football League, a modified form of American football played in North America. In underwear.
Take a minute to Google it… and then quickly delete your browser history.
The LLFL even contains Aussie talent in former Raiders cheerleader Chloe Butler, and unlike the NFL, CFL or AFL, have decided to bend to fan boy blogging and bring the game down under in 2013 as part of its world domination plans (are you watching RLIF?)
Being a fan of anything played on the gridiron, I have followed the development of the sport with keen interest (delete browser history!) and like many was sceptical at first.
It’s difficult to bury the image of some fat Hollywood agent with a greasy ponytail, looking at media monitors following Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction at Super Bowl XXXVII and thinking “hmm, how can we stretch this out for 45min?”
Not true though, as both Janet’s misfortune and Lingerie Bowl 1 occurred simultaneously (leading to a massive spike in Tivo sales I believe).
The sport itself takes a bit of getting used to if you’re not a 14-year old schoolboy, as it is American football modified to the extreme.
With the players having backgrounds in a range of sports, the play is far from smooth (insert inappropriate joke here), and you have to wonder where all the ugly fat women are.
Granted LFL is only seven-a-side, so there’s less call for line-(wo)men, but when the male equivalent features blokes, the size of hippopotamus, surely a bit of beef would come in handy?
These qualms aside, the sport is very entertaining, fast and presented with a juiced-up WWE style vibe to pass the channel-flicking test.
It’s also honestly enjoyable, in an IPL sort of way, to see top quality female athletes in one spot, there’s even the offspring of ex-NFL players in the ranks.
Unlike the IPL though, it appears many of them are really there for the challenge as opposed to the, err, exposure.
While the players of the LFL originally shared in the game’s gate-takings, it is now a fully amateur league, so the girls are really just doing it for kicks.
The overriding sentiment seems to be that the athletes involved, love football, and they would rather play it in their smalls at a big stadium, as opposed to wearing the big kit at a small high school somewhere.
Sure, the attire of the girl’s might not be something you agree with, if just for the fact that the marketing Whizzes down at the NRL may get ideas.
But, just like how many feel uncomfortable with the sight of two women in a boxing ring, it’s ultimately the athlete’s decision to participate.
These girls just wanna play, and if these girls wanna play, you’ve got to let them.
So you may as well sit back and enjoy it.
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