It's not even 10 and I keep find out new things.
First, hadn't heard of the recent controversy in college football where USC player Rey Maualuga who had just helped his team win the Rose Bowl did a little victory sex simulation in back of sports reporter Erin Andrews on his way out of the stadium. Of course, it got caught on You Tube.
Some people cheered. Some people booed (Donna Lopiano, former head of the Women's Sports Foundation), some people booed the booers with the typical backlash rhetoric. The player apologized. Ta-da! End of story.
In other words, I don't expect to hear anything more about this. But out of curiosity I wanted to learn more about Andrews. According to this blog she laughed the whole thing off. But really, what choice did she have? She's been sexualized since she first appeared on the scene. Playboy named her the sexiest sportscaster. She doesn't seem to speak out against the sexualization, but that's no excuse for Maualuga's conduct.
In the process of this research I found out something else: there's a website out there called Chickipedia. I kid you not! Chickipedia is described as "the world's largest web-based, women-based, wiki-based database of hot chicks on the planet." Note they have less than 1,000 entries right now. Maybe it will just die out.
Andrews's entry includes her measurements, her assets ("big rack" and knowledge of football), oh yeah, and her career achievements--at the bottom, which includes the dubious honor Playboy bestowed upon her in 2007.
How much Andrews participates in her own sexualization remains debatable, but it's clear that how men in sports treat her is very different from how they treat male reporters as evidenced by this interview with Tennessee head basketball coach Bruce Pearl, who patted down or shook (it's hard to tell) Andrews during a halftime interview.
Can't imagine him doing that to a man, nor do I imagine Maualuga would have been inspired to simulate fornication by the backside of say John Madden.
1 comment:
Andrews needs to get very angry very publicly. Each time a woman remains silent, more men think they can commit acts of sexual aggression against women--symbolic or otherwise.
I find it distasteful that athletes make sexual gestures (even without an object) after they have won. Maria Sharapova used to make a male sexual gesture after she won, and I wanted to yell out "Do you have any idea what you're doing?!"
Post a Comment