Today is National Girls and Women in Sports Day. There are thousands of events going around the country today and in the coming days and weeks as part of the celebration.
Organizations like the American Association of University Women and the Women's Sports Foundation, college teams, and local community groups sponsor various activities and speakers or offer admission to games. Before I get critical, I want to say that a lot of these are great events exposing girls to higher levels of competition as well as the different types of sports available. Often events include interaction with older female athletes creating a role model/mentoring relationship.
But some of the rhetoric around this day is a little troubling. For example, in Syracuse, NY this weekend the Orange are turning pink. Yep, the women's basketball team to celebrate NGWSD along with engaging in a breast cancer awareness campaign will be wearing pink t-shirts during warm-up and pink shoelaces throughout the game. We all know how I feel about women's sports' involvement in these breast cancer campaigns but I find it exasperating that SU finds no problem in Thinking Pink for NGWSD.
And lest you think that pink is some neutral color these days because men don pink polo shirts occasionally note that Syracuse University itself, once upon a time, had pink and blue as its school colors. They moved to orange when they realized pink was too feminine. I don't see them rushing back to the traditions of the days of yore because pink is so acceptable now. And I don't see any of the SU men's teams wearing pink this weekend to support either event.
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