After Atalanta

Finally got to watch the Brazil v. US match this morning. I knew the general outcome because the second I got back across the border (from Canada) and had my data plan back, I checked Facebook. I also got the hint that it was a dramatic game, though I refused to check for a score or details. Even knowing the outcome, it was a pretty enthralling game. So here are my thoughts (in case you were wondering): 1. When you watch a recorded soccer match and fast forward through some of it in the interest of time and getting on with your work day, the ball looks like a ping-pong ball, which just makes you appreciate the distance it travels and the abilities of the players to control it. 2. Abby Wambach: still super cute and now with some goals under her cleats. (Because those uniforms don't have belts--thankfully. Though I'm not sure it would make them any worse.) 3. And speaking of Wambach...the Girlfriend noted this morning "that those short-haired girls are making things really i...

...which is not very feminine, I know. But I washed up and put on a skort and went to work out and I felt better! Yeah, right. But according to this article , putting on a skort and doing a workout should make me feel super duper feminine. But the whole thing caused the above-mentioned gag reflex. I have been sitting with this article for a while now and I still cannot figure out how to make sense of it. (I've also been kind of busy hanging in the miserable rathole with the other radical feminists , too; so that kind of limits my time). But I decided to try to take it point by offensive and misinformed point. First, in the interest of full disclosure I should say that I do wear skirts when I play tennis--though not exclusively. And I wear skirts in everyday life (though not every day). And yes, I probably do fall on the femme spectrum somewhere. And yes I have those yoga pants that are tight in the ass. But I also have baggy gym shorts and grey t-shirts. And baseball caps--not the ...

OK so I have tried several times this past weekend to buy the Body Issue so I can take a (good, more on that in a sec) look at it myself. But I cannot find it. Has my progressive town refused to carry it? More likely that I just haven't been to a big enough bookstore yet. Hopefully in the next few days during one of my layovers I can find it at an airport newsstand. I have seen it though. My gym subscribes to the magazine and the issue was in the magazine rack Friday. I quickly scooped it up and took it into the stretching area with me. Alas, I don't wear my glasses in the gym and saw while I could see the pictures just fine, I could not read much of the text without getting a little dizzy. The text, I think, is important for understanding context. Or at least for understanding what ESPN thinks the context is. Here's what I think so far: I think that Fat Louie at Women's Sport Blog is brilliantly concise in her assessment of the six covers. Also check out One Sport Voic...

Yesterday was National Girls and Women in Sport Day and I had not planned to address it mostly because all the stories about the day focused on local events. I am glad that such events were so widespread and many involved university/college outreach to their local communities. But I must be feeling a bit testy, a tad radical or just a little like an advocate with horns, tail, and a pitchfork. Because I saw this list on the website of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance and wasn't quite sure I could get on board with all ten suggestions for how to celebrate. Some of them are great--yes, please buy sports equipment for girls. I love seeing tiny baseball gloves in homes of small girls--even though I cringe when they are pink--at least they are there. I wasn't quite so sure about the watch a women's sporting event on television and then call the station to thank them for carrying the event. It just seemed a little...well...desperate--and...

The Chicago Tribune has a feature on the Chicago Sky* and the WNBA generally, the specific angle being how the Sky exemplifies the uniqueness of the WNBA, as compared to the NBA, of course. I was going to let this article go unexamined even after reading Sky player and WNBA veteran Chasity Melvin's comments that "women are just different than men. We're more sensitive, we're more emotional." But not to fear, Melvin says, they are still very competitive. So much for Nike's ATHLETE campaign that attempts (also problematically) to erase difference between male and female athletes. The athletes themselves are touting the difference--in a classic liberalism, Mary Wollstonecraft kind of way. Even though I found Melvin's comments irksome and essentialist I wasn't sure I was up for blogging about it--until I read rookie Armintie Price's take on promoting the WNBA, which, according the writer of the piece offsets all that competitive mentality and is a ...

I have previously blogged about the problems I have with Nancy Lieberman. And when I saw that the Women's Sports Foundation newsletter this month was running a feature on her , I was a little disappointed. It is nothing especially new. She hasn't done something notable of late. The WSF wants to keep lauding women's sports advocates like Lieberman who is a former WSF president. During the feature Lieberman re-states her complaint (that I initially heard at the Title IX conference at Harvard in April) that women are spending their money on Coach and Prada purses and not on season tickets to local women's intercollegiate or professional sports. Apparently this is a line she uses at most of her public speaking gigs. She also seeks to mention her teenage son whenever possible. My diagnosis: Lieberman has an acute case of apologetic behavior. Apologetic behavior is when female athletes essentially compensate for their presence in sports, a traditionally masculine endeavor, th...

Want a young girl you know to learn more about sports from collegiate coaches and athletes? Well you can send her to Marshall University in West Virginia for their annual sports clinic . It all seems good--the girls learn a variety of skills and there are athletes from all the women's teams present to teach and mentor. Too bad it's called a Sweetheart Clinic. Let's just reinforce the idea that girls playing sports is so non-normative that we have to compensate for this behavior by calling it something really girly. Oh--and the participants get a pink sweetheart T-shirt to take home with them at the end of the day!

Can I get a whoop whoop for Sheryl Swoopes?! Swoopes came out as gay today and not because she was pressured but because she said she was tired of hiding her relationship with her partner. (Of course the partner is not named but I expect her identity will be revealed shortly.) I was initially wary of the way the article read. Swoopes could be read as being somewhat vague or even exhibiting "apologetic behavior": she says she has not always been gay, that her homosexuality was not the reason for her divorce, that she doesn't want to "throw it in people's faces." This was my initial reaction only because it is not the out and proud and going to get married Rah Rah lesbianism that perhaps many are accustomed to (and afraid of?). But this of course is a good thing, I realized. Swoopes shows us that there are many ways of being gay. She presents the view that is often not voiced: not everyone thinks being gay is an innate characteristic and that just because it...

As I mentioned below, I caught some of the women's AVP final at Manahattan Beach this weekend where Kerri Walsh and Misty May won something like their 7th title of the year. Congrats are in order of course. But I just wouldn't be my analytical/critical self if I didn't find something about gender/cultural norms that arose to blog about. There seems to be some confusion about what Misty's name is. She did get married and is apparently going by May Treanor. The commentators called her Misty May and the graphics lacked consistency showing her as May Treanor as well as just May. I could go on and on (and on) about women changing their names when they marry and the huge problems with that practice but that's not really what this blog about. So instead I will just focus on the huge problems I have when famous female athletes change their names. Sure there's the cultural reasons all marrying women face but because these athletes have already established themselves in t...