An expert, scholar and advocate of girls & women in sport, youth sport, and coach & sport parent education. Currently I teach sport psychology and sociology in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota where I am also the Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. This blog reflects my critical perspective and voice on all things sport.
A graduate student sent me breaking news this morning (thanks EH!) about a picture and article of the first and only female NBA scout. She is pictured here in a PETA ad.
I’m not 100% certain, but I’m guessing PETA has not featured any naked male NBA scouts.
I have many questions….Why would Ms. Laflin choose to let herself be portrayed like this? What is her motivation to pose or be featured in this particular way? Why be naked? Can she get her message across with more clothes on? Why do we really need a sexualized image of a female to encourage people to become a vegetarian? Do we need to objectify women to recruit vegetarians? This is definitely an example of how sex can “sell” just about ANYTHING!!!….or at least we perceive it does. The double meanings behind the text and image are rich.
Other questions to consider. Does being featured like this as the ONLY female scout for the NBA pave the way for future female scouts to be perceived as knowledgeable and legitimate? Did Laflin think about how this picture might undermine her credibility as an NBA scout? Will this encourage little girls to want to go into professional sport scouting as a career? So many questions….
I have been a competitive athlete my entire life. I have seen my fair share of bad sportsmanship in all the sports I’ve played and coached. I am hoping that you, the readers, can help explain why adult women playing in recreational leagues demonstrate some of the worst sportsmanship I have encountered (I’m sure it happens in men’s leagues as well, but I can’t speak to that).
Over the weekend I played in the Stick It To Cancer hockey tournament up at the National Sports Center Center in Blaine, MN. I have played in this tournament for a number of years as it is for a good cause and you get to play some fun, relaxed hockey. This weekend however, two of the three teams we played has such bad sportsmanship that it took all the fun out of it. It was so bad I wanted to just skate the bench and not play the rest of the game for fear of being injured. Examples of what I saw and heard:
1. multiple cross checking penalties (which in my opinion are the worst, because you can really get injured)
2. hits after the whistle
3. trash talking such as “Get up you wimp” after a player had been clipped from behind and landed awkwardly on her shoulder
4. hits in open ice away from the puck
Why do people behave this way in a recreational tournament that is FOR CHARITY? We weren’t playing in league play. We weren’t trying out for the Olympics. We were playing for anything but a place in a charity tournament. In fact the WORST behavior I witnessed was in the game my team played for who would be 7th and 8th place out of 8 teams (yes, the toilet bowl game….we lost BTW). We played hard, but no one really cared if we won or lost. IT WAS FOR FUN. Well that is what I thought anyway.
Possible reasons why this type of behavior persists:
people take themselves too seriously
the person is just obnoxious on a everyday basis, on and off the ice
the person enjoys trying to injure others on purpose
the person wants to win at the expense of acting like a gracious and sportsmanlike human being
the person’s identity is tied up with the sport, and therefore winning and losing is perceived to be a reflection of themselves
Immaturity
Do you have other explanations for this type of behavior? Has this been your experience? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
What everyone should be striving for is more of the attitude of Team Orange, an idea created by a woman I got to play with this weekend Lora Wilkinson. As she writes on the team website, “Team Orange is a state of mind. It’s as simple as that. It’s about being a good team player, having a good attitude, supporting others whether they are “on your team” or not. Assuming the best out of folks, being encouraging, positive and constructive. Being benevolent. It is a good intention. It is kindness. Human kindness. Being human, being kind. It’s a life motto.”
Some of the women we played AGAINST this weekend, could learn a lot from the philosophy behind Team Orange. Anyone can be on Team Orange….just adopt the state of mind.
In the video he says, “Heck we have fans who have never cared about football before coming to these football games…it is the ultimate night out.” He basically says on camera that it isn’t really about sport, not even about the football. What is an “ultimate night out” for many (not all) men? Strip clubs, alcohol, sex, and hanging out with other guys watching sports? While I am not even close to being giddy about the LFL coming to MSP, I have to hand it to them…they do seem to have hit upon a successful mix of marketing entertainment (i.e. sex, not sport) to their target market.
Evidently “Valkyrie” was submitted most frequently, received a “record 31,451 votes” and was subsequently chosen as the new name. The LFL already has a logo for the NEW Minnesota Valkyrie (notice in their tryout bulletin they stress “NEW”).
Why does this have me upset?
Minnesota ALREADY HAS a Valkyrie team of female athletes!! The Minnesota Valkyries Rugby Clubhas a long standing tradition of excellence as one of the elite organizations within USA Rugby, and has been around for as long as I can remember. The REAL Minnesota Valkyries have a mission statement and core values that include integrity, unity, respect, development and strength! The mission statement reads “The Minnesota Valkyries Rugby Club is an organization of former and present rugby players dedicated to the development of rugby, our team, and our community. We strive to maintain our position as one of the elite organizations within USA Rugby by creating a positive and enduring impact in all that we do. We bring honor to the sport of rugby by upholding our traditions, competing with pride, and understanding that every time we step onto the pitch we play for the legacy and future of The Minnesota Valkyries Rugby Club.
The First and Authentic Minnesota Valkyries
The LFL MISSION STATEMENT“The Lingerie Football League has become the Ultimate Fan-Driven Live Sports Phenomenon – Blending Action, Impact and Beauty.” No core values exist that I could find. Enough Said.
Can the LFL just hijack a team name? I don’t think so, if not legally, certainly by principle.
If you are reading this and are outraged, then please do something, anything….blog, call, tweet support (@valksrugby), tweet outrage (@MyLFL), “Like” the rugby team on Facebook, and pass the word.
If this is allowed, it is another way that real female athletes can be marginalized, co-opted and erased. What I find interesting is that I am guessing that the individuals who sumibtted and voted for the Valkyrie name are mostly 18-35 year old me who have NO CLUE that Minnesota has a tradition of high performance women’s rugby, let alone know what the team names are (yes, there is more than one women’s rugby team in MN)
Support the Valkyries Rubgy Club and help them make the LFL change their name.
p.s.-please don’t comment and tell me the names are different because the rugby team has an “s” on the end, and the LFL team name does not.
p.s.s.-I’d like to invite the Valkyries (the REAL athletes) to attend the LFL tryouts and help educate those in charge
Focusing on the mother-worker duality is limiting and provides an incomplete picture of women‘s social roles, therefore we used a role triad framework of the worker-mother-coach which draws attention to the existence of a “third shift” for some women.
The abstract for this piece is below:
ABSTRACT: Despite the ubiquitous presence of mothers in sport contexts, mothers‘ voices are often absent in the sport literature, particularly at the youth sport level. A phenomenological approach was used to explore the experiences of working mother volunteer youth sport coaches. A role-triad model based on the work-family enrichment and role enhancement literature provided the theoretical framework. The purpose was to understand how and why working mother-coaches mange this role triad and to identify mother-worker skills which may transfer to youth coaching and vice versa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight working mother-coaches and analyzed for themes. Findings suggest that notions of being a good mother and reasons for coaching are very similar, including spending time together, developing life skills and role modeling. Participants negotiated multiple roles using cognitive tools, such as reframing and separation of roles. The reciprocal benefits of motherhood, working and coaching for themselves and others were highlighted.
Click here to listen to some comments I made on the Minneapolis Lingerie Football League expansion team. I’ll write more later to refute the LFL founder Mitchell Mortaza’s statements on marketing women’s sports.
Here is what I would of liked to have said on camera in response to Mortaza.
1. He claims “there is a reason why women’s sport has struggled…is you need some kind of marketing hook. How about marketing females as serious athletes, show their athleticism, give them equal quality and quantity of media coverage, and stop selling them as sex objects so that people will take them seriously as ATHLETES, rather than an object of consumption for the male fan? Mortaza, have you ever considered that because the LFL exists that it undermines the athletic achievements of real female athletes?
2. To my knowledge there are not “various women’s soccer leagues that have folded”, there is only one–the Women’s United Soccer Association. The Women’s Professional Soccer league is currently seven teams strong
3. Mortaza claims the WNBA can’t be marketed because “no one can dunk a basketball in the WNBA”….SEE PICTURE.
4. Mortaza claims, “you can’t market a 330 lb. woman as well as you can a model”. What Mortaza is marketing is not sport, it is sex and sex appeal. What he doesn’t realize is that when men like him “market” models and package them as athletes, it only reinforces that only certain types of women and certain types of bodies are desirable and marketable, which perpetuates unrealistic norms of beauty and gender. I would also argue with him, that he is making a big assumption. How do we know you can’t market a 330 lb professional female football player….has anyone tried???… I mean seriously tried to market and promote a real women’s football league like the IWFL or the WFA? What if the same amount of coverage, money, sponsorship, and structural support the NFL enjoys, were given to the WFA?
I would love to hear how you would respond to Mortaza’s statements.
What troubles me is that while the LFL is expanding, REAL women’s professional teams and athletes are struggling. The LFL is adding up to five additional teams–which would bring the league to 15 teams. The WNBA has 10 teams. The WPS has 7 teams. Let me be clear, the LFL is not sport. The LFL is about sex, and selling sex. The target consumer of the LFL is not female sport fans, or serious fans of women’s sport. The LFL target market is the coveted 18-35 year old male fan. The LFL is selling sex, not sport.As I’ve written before, sex sells sex.Sex does not sell women’s sport.
There is one small silver lining this for me. The good news about having an LFL franchise in Mpls is that I can finally do some research around the league–who attends, why do they attend, who tries out and plays in the LFL, what is the motive for playing and attending, what is the fan perception of the league, and so much more! Maybe I’ll submit my suggestion for the MSP team name….that way I can win lifetime season tickets so I can conduct my research with lower cost.
I know I write quite a bit about how female athletes are sexualized in the media, and sport media in particular. Usually my posts are met with the standard “athletic bodies are sexy, get over it you stuffy academic”…but the most recent video of Serena Williams in an ad for the TopSpin 2k video game, is just too blatant to ignore. I’m just not sure how one could argue this is not sexualization and soft core porn, but I’m open to hearing other points of view.
Even if Serena herself at the end of the video says it is “just fantasy”, it doesn’t erase the fact this has very little to do with the fact she is one of the best female tennis players in the world.
In a similar vein, I’d be remiss not to also mention the new promotional ads for the Vancouver Whitecaps, a new Major League Soccer team. One writer actually got it right in saying that yes sex sells, but it is also offensive to many.
I love March Madness, but I do not love this. It isn’t cute or clever, it is just plain irritating and insulting. It makes it seem as if females can’t be serious individuals OR sport fans, or possess knowledge of basketball. If you’d like to fill out real bracket, do so here for the men and here for the women.
One Sport Voice 