Baseball, football, hockey, surfing, etc. The list goes on. You get the picture here. These are four of my top favorite sports, but they tend to always be associated with men. Sure there’s softball, or powderpuff football, or field hockey, but it’s simply not fair. With the word feminism being thrown all over the place these days, I’m not trying to start a fight here, but rather bring something to attention that’s been bothering me for almost my entire life: being a girl who loves sports.
You might be wondering: what is she talking about? There’s no real societal standard anymore about that stuff. I wish that were to be true. Growing up, I was one of the biggest tomboys ever. I wanted to play all the sports that my male friends did, I wanted to dress like them and i idolized my older brother, so much so that I took up ice hockey in the third grade, being the second female on the team out of about thirty other people.
Yes, there are a lot of other alternatives for girls, but the key word here is alternative. Why should I as a girl have to find an alternative to a sport that is actually almost entirely different? I’m not saying I didn’t love my time playing softball in high school and middle school, because I think those were some of my best memories, but it didn’t just come down to being a girl playing softball, it was a much bigger story. Why is it that the boys get to have all the newer equipment while my team is here wearing blueberry colored pants from the nineties. While I may be getting off point here, there is a point to my madness.
In the society we live in today, everyone is judged and scrutinized, but girls more so. It’s always what we wear, where we got our stuff from, how thin you are, how you live your life, etc, etc, etc. When it comes to playing sports though, sometimes girls can be deemed “gay” for being into something. The stereotypical assumption is that all girls who play softball are gay. I can 110% tell you that is not true. Out of about fifteen girls on my high school softball team, nobody was gay. But apparently like softball and playing some that is on a similar level with a man is considered “gay”.
Am I gay for wanting to wear sweatpants and a t-shirt to class? No. Am I gay for wanting to wear a hat? No. What about go to a football game? No. How about knowing everything there is to baseball and being a diehard Mets fan? The answer once more, is absolutely no. The stigma that myself and many other girls and women have to deal with on a daily basis for loving sports is absolutely disgusting. I can say here that feminism comes into play, but I don’t necessarily think it does. It’s more about a perception of who and what women are. With that changing every single day, it has been starting to become more acceptable that women are liking sports. The sad part is that it’s almost 2016 and it’s only starting to become a norm.
While I can sit here and write many more pages about this issue since it is near and dear to my heart, I’m starting to see a change though here. In summer of 2015, the US Women’s National Soccer Team won their first World Cup title since 1994 in Canada. Stores were selling jerseys like it was a hot commodity and it was. MEN were rooting for these women to win. They were watching in bars, their living rooms, their bedrooms and anywhere else there might be a TV to see these women make history. And when they did, they were their saviors. These women, who are incredibly inspiring each not their own, became gods almost to an entire nation.
Seeing something like this is absolutely heartwarming, but at the same time it’s just the beginning. To continue being an athlete and sports fanatic that is not only a woman, but also straight, is starting to become more natural in the world we live in. While celebrities and women in every other profession have continued to be underpaid compared to their male counterparts, it’s time that the world finally wakes up fully instead of being like a person without their morning coffee. It needs to be aware what it’s actually like to be a female who loves sports. We aren’t those girls who need to be belittled by men when they are explaining a question about a hockey game. Instead, we need to stand independently and outsmart them, not in a demeaning manner, but rather in a gratifying way. Show them that we’re not just women, that we have more to us than our looks or personality. It’s finally time for us to stand up and start taking a more active role in sports, all over the world.
It’s time for there to be more female head coaches on football teams or general managers in baseball. I’ve had two very strong female role models for softball and volleyball coaches in high school. They took no prisoner and treated us like people. They made us play on a level that’s not even expected of us, and for that I am forever in debt to their teachings.
As a movie and TV buff, I can’t leave this post without alluding to some of my favorite characters who proved men wrong. Elle Woods proving she can be a lawyer. Viola Hasting’s pretending to be her brother in She’s the Man to prove that she can play just as well as a boy. What about Jess Bharma from Bend it Like Beckham?
The point is, just because we like sports, it doesn’t mean that that should change how we are perceived to the world. When that happens, it’s just letting everyone else win. And let me tell you, there’s nothing I hate more than losing.