We've been here for less than a month, and my roommate and I have already had a number of major fights. We trade insults and jibes, mocking each other relentlessly to anyone who will listen. It's gotten so bad that the third girl in our triple has had to break it up a few times. But our fights are not about who is hogging the bathroom or which one of us gets to hook up with the cute boy from biology class. No, we fight about much more serious matters. Laura has the misfortune of being from Boston, and I am a die-hard Yankees fan.
It is not surprising that a Bostonian and a New Yorker should clash over whether Jeter or Nomar is the better shortstop, or that there should be dueling posters of Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park above our desks. What is surprising is that a Boston girl and a New York girl should be the ones trading barbs about Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez. Despite the progress women have made as athletes, the stereotypes of men as diehard sports fans, and women as the ones watching "Sex and the City" instead of the big game, persist. The cable channel Spike TV, billing itself as "America's Network for Men," offers a variety of sports programs with titles like "Slamball" and "American Gladiators." By contrast, Lifetime, which is "dedicated to offering the highest quality entertainment and information programming and advocating a wide range of issues affecting women and their families," groups sporting programs with specials on their website. And somehow, a program entitled "A Girl's Guide to Gridiron," which is supposed to help you "shove your football-fanatic man to the side and get into the game," does not do much to dispel the idea of women as ignorant when it comes to sports.
So this all begs the question of why, in an era when Venus and Serena Williams can appear at the same Video Music Awards ceremony as LeBron James, and Mia Hamm does Gatorade commercials with Michael Jordan, women are not expected to be loyal professional sports fan. Maybe it is because girls do not play major league sports. Young boys can grow up playing Pee Wee Football or Little League Baseball, and watch hours and hours of the Little League World Series on ESPN. Girls have the option of playing sports like softball, lacrosse or field hockey, none of which has the same professional following. True, sports such as soccer and basketball are open to both sexes and have professional leagues for both, but the WNBA is far less popular than the NBA, and the WUSA, the professional women's soccer league, just announced that it was shutting down.
But the failure of the WUSA should not deter women from either playing or following sports, or deter advertisers and marketers from targeting them. I had never attended a football game before Spirit Day this year and had always dismissed the sport as brutal and boring. I was dragged to the game by a friend and the promise of free food at the Tailgate party. I found, however, that after a quick explanation of the rules, I was able to follow the action on the field. Soon I realized that I was enjoying it. Even though we left at halftime, I think it was during those minutes sweating in the bleachers that I finally started feeling like part of the Big Green. I had never gone to football games in high school because I associated them with a jock culture I had no desire to be part of. But here I was, cheering and booing with the rest of the crowd.
And ultimately, I think it is the association of pro sports with machismo that keeps women from donning jerseys in the same numbers that men do. The solution is simple; market not to the Spike TV or Lifetime crowd, but to people in general. Here at Dartmouth we seem to do that, as evidenced by the discussion of placing more emphasis on athletics at Homecoming at the most recent Student Assembly meeting. Perhaps if our sports teams were more successful, this would be easier, but the fact that we can unite, or at least try to, as a school over athletics is still something to be proud of.
So for now, I'm content being one of the New York Yankees' fans in Nomar's court, especially since we're easily the superior team. Hopefully in time the stereotypes of sports fans as men will fade. Until they do, I'll sneak in my baseball games between episodes of "Trading Spaces." And hopefully, as the playoffs progress, my roommate and I will be able to unite over at least one common cause. Our third roommate is from Atlanta, and everyone hates the Braves.
