After Atalanta

For the record, I don't hold female athletes up to any kind of gender-specific standard regarding role model suitability, general public presence, altruism, or good decision-making ability. In general, I don't understand why professional athletes are default role models. Because they are in the public eye? That seems to negate all the other reasons that might make them unsuitable: unhealthy focus on winning which leads to illegal behaviors; rigid schedules that mandate time away from family (for the family values folks); lack of real-life, everyday skills; a somewhat necessary solipsism required for success (especially in individual sports). So my post yesterday was not at all about how disappointed I was in Hope Solo as a role model for all the children I don't have. I was mostly just sad for her. Sad for her positioning in this sociocultural moment in which a highly talented elite-level athlete is defending someone who seems to be a bad guy and then marrying him. Maybe ...

I'm pretty sure there was something I was supposed to blog about in the wake of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) annual meeting in New Orleans last night. But I can't remember what it is. So instead thanks to one of my NOLA roomies, Dr. Pants, I will blog about Hope Solo instead. Dr. Pants is a big fan of Hope Solo; she even read her auto(ish)biography Solo: A Memoir of Hope. I personally am not a Solo fan and though I considered reading the memoir for scholarly purposes, I couldn't get past the title. I might be interested in some version of a sequel, however, given the latest news about Solo that I received from Dr. Pants. Hope Solo is married! She also hosted a party of a small group of friends a few days ago which resulted in the arrest of her then-fiance Jerramy Stevens. There was some alcohol, there was fighting (apparently over where the happy couple was to live), there was pushing and shoving and maybe some hitting. There was blood...

Summer lovin', happened too fast. Christine Brennan has declared the Summer of Women (in sports) over. And, today, she and I are on the same page. Eternal pessimist that I am, I suspected--as it was happening--that the surge of interest in women's sports that was ignited primarily by the Olympics but also by the concurrent news and (mostly) praise of Title IX during its 40th anniversary year, would dissipate. It's a roller coaster ride. Luckily we only have to go down screeching down that big hill of disappointment once every 4 years (and down a smaller hill of disappointment after the winter Olympics end). Brennan was brought back to her reality after hearing UConn women's basketball coach, Geno Auriemma, discuss his stance on lowering the rim in women's basketball to make it a more popular sport that people (i.e. men) want to watch. People who don't like women's sports are not going to watch them. And inferiorizing the sport only provides the haters mo...

WPS announced that it is folding. Not a surprise. Something most of us have been bracing for. Tough week. Lost Donna Summers (did my little tribute to her in spin class this morning) and the WPS. This column lays out the sitch including the role that the former owner of MagicJack had in the league's demise. And it offers some hope to fans of women's soccer. Don't forget--there are still two semi-professional teams. The Boston Breakers still exist, for example. And it includes premier players.

I know I'm a slacker blogger whenever Dr. Pants sends me a link to a blogworthy story/article/column. Sorry. This one is especially good because it's about female fandom, soccer, and sex objects--and people who say dumb things.  This time is was an employee of Major League Soccer (MLS) who disparaged avid female soccer fans basically by calling them unsexy. A few issues about this statement: First, as the author of this opinion piece on Bust Magazine's blog notes, women do not exist for the sole purpose of being sexy for men. Second, can soccer in the US really afford to be disparaging fans? Haven't we heard over and over how unpopular soccer is in this country? Third, a question: so what's this all about? I haven't seen or heard of similar critiques of female fans in other sports. And there are some pretty avid fans out there of, for example, various NFL teams. Is it because these avid soccer fans are wearing team or country colors and not pink, deep V-...

I know we in the US are in the midst of basketball madness, but I thought I would share this pic from a friend. It's from Preston, England, 1920, and features the captains of two women's football (US soccer) teams greeting each other with a kiss. Not sure how historically accurate it is (those seem like pretty short shorts--even for the roaring 20s!) or whether this was truly a tradition. Friend send it to the GF because she plays soccer in a league that was some sports(wo)manship issues and to me because, well I like women's sport history. Captains' kissing tradition (?)

There have been many, many article about the potential effects of the Women's World Cup on the WPS. I haven't even bothered to blog about them or to even read all of them. They basically boil down to: 1) the WPS will benefit from the very exciting WWC, 2) cautious optimism about the benefits, 3) Americans still don't like soccer and they certainly aren't interested in watching women play it. There may be other categories or subcategories that I am unaware of. But it seems like attendance at games post-WWC is up. Way up in some venues. Yay! And it also appears that the WPS is not just pleasantly riding this wave of popularity. They are working that wave. I just hung up with someone from the Boston Breakers asking me if I am coming to Harvard stadium for the last two home games. I explained that I cannot because I am busy those days. And I was a little curious as to how they got my cell phone number...But good for them for making personal phone calls. I am sure some poor ...

...who has some reservations about how this WWC is going to dramatically change the women's sports landscape in the US. WaPo columnist Petula Dvorak talks to some of my favorite people, Mike Messner and Nancy Hogshead-Makar, about how and why the surge in fan interest in women's soccer post '99 and for women's professional sports generall kind of petered out. The difference, for soccer, is that the WUSA started 2 years after that world cup ended. Too much lag time. The WPS is already in place this time. Hopefully, this will make a difference. But I too have been skeptical about all the rah-rahing. Some of us have been following women's soccer all along, in the so-called down time--you know when the US won the Olympic gold medal. I worry about fair weather fans. But I worry about no fans at all, too. Boston Breakers 2009

I've been accumulating thoughts about the WWC as I watch--just haven't gotten a chance to get it down. So I saw--last week--Equatorial Guinea's first game of the tournament. Kudos to the commentators on ESPN for actually mentioning the allegations that several players for the team are men. I have heard other media outlets (NPR's Only a Game, for example) also talk about it. So that's good. Alas one of the ESPN guys, after noting in the pre-game commentary that two of the three accused players were not playing this tournament, urged us all to put that all aside to think about the soccer. There were other interesting moments in that pre-game; and they seem to involve Brandi Chastain. First, on the shallower and more catty side of things, what's up with the hair? Someone needs to start a blog that deconstructs all of the Chastain's hair-dos this tournament. During this pre-game: several French braids ending in a long ponytail. She looked like a high school soft...

The NYT's Jere Longman has a very good article today about homophobia in women's soccer in Africa. He focuses on Nigeria, which was one of the teams that accused Equatorial Guinea of using male players. When I first read the headline, "In African Women's Soccer, Homophobia Remains an Obstacle," I thought to myself "we shouldn't be hierarchizing homophobia in women's soccer." And we shouldn't conclude that everything is exponentially worse in Africa. After all, homophobia remains a problem internationally. As I recall, I posted something last week about members of the U-22 German women's team posing for Playboy in an attempt to counter the butch image of female footballers. That is also homophobia, folks. But things are pretty bad in Africa--maybe not all of Africa--but definitely in Nigeria. When I read about Nigerian coach Eucharia Uche's actions and statements, I thought "wow, she's worse than Rene Portland." Uche, li...

Or "Things that make me go Ugh." Members of the German women's U-20 team are appearing in Playboy to promote the Women's World Cup. Also they want to show people that female footballers are not all "butch." Five of the women ages 19-22 posed for the publication which approached them directly--not through the national team or their respective professional teams. This is the last line of the HuffPo piece: Whether or not there's any backlash over these photos remains to be seen, but one thing's for sure: they definitely helped spread the word on the Women's World Cup. 1) I doubt there will be "backlash." And 2) not sure this helps spread the word that the World Cup is happening. I mean are the people picking up Playboy and seeing these women and saying, "Oh, women play soccer? And they have this big tournament? Maybe I'll watch."

...and so much dissertation left to write. But when things happen in threes, well it's a sign I have to write about them. So the three recent gender controversies are ones that I have heard about in the past two weeks. Some have been ongoing. Some are one-time events. The one I am writing about today is about the Women's World Cup and is somewhat ongoing. [The other two are more personal for me. I am going to present them with some of the details altered to protect the innocent. But they are both based on real-life events.] So today is about the Equatorial Guinea women's national soccer team . People are accusing the captain--and others--of being a man. This is not a new accusation that has arisen in light of Equatorial Guinea's qualification to the WWC. Last year, the Nigerian soccer federation filed a complaint (after their national women's team lost to Equatorial Guinea) with the Confederation of African Football. They accused the winners of having two men on the...

I'm an overworked blogger (how that happened on my first official week of summer break is curious) so I am largely re-telling what the Women's Sports Foundation said to some if its constituents this morning: the Washington Post assumes too much. WaPo published a a feature on the status of youth soccer in the US and the debate over whether future national team and professional stars in the MLS should be playing high school soccer and be playing in academies. It's an interesting debate. In case you care, I am for high school sports. The whole full-time, one-sport training thing is a little much as evidenced by the plethora of disappointed former teen tennis players and their parents or even by the successful ones like Andre Agassi. But that's not the point. The point is that in an article about youth soccer, one would think we would read about all of youth soccer. But no. This is about boys' youth soccer--exclusively. And it does not acknowledge the huge youth soccer ...

Little story I ran across--or that ran across me (my email anyway). Seems that several countries have a problem with Equatorial Guinea's national women's football (soccer) team and have let Africa's football governing body know. The Nigerian Football Federation made it official in a complaint citing two specific players on the Equatorial Guinea team who they believe are men. I wonder how little this story is...

I promised Dr. Pants I would write something about the calamity/catastrophe (depending on which source you read) in Cancun otherwise known as the US Women's National Team's loss to Mexico last weekend. The team placed third in the CONCACAF tournament ( Canada won earning a berth in the World Cup next summer) which means they must play on in order to get to Germany themselves. I watched the third-place game on ESPN3, after the fact, mostly because I was interested in the commentary. Pretty much the first words from commentators: "It is literally do or die" for the American women. No; because literally do or die means someone dies. I know Abby Wambach has a bunch of stitches in her head from the game against Mexico, but no one is dying. And of course, it didn't matter because the US soundly beat Costa Rica 3-0. It will play Italy in Italy and then in Chicago (who chooses Chicago in late fall?). Most goals goes to Germany. The US has strong competition whenever it p...

...she's talking about hot dogs. My friend, Dr. Pants, was kind enough to share this link with me. (I tried to embed the video but it kept shutting down my browser.) So Abby Wambach gets some air time on Sports Center to talk about World Cup qualifying. But she ends up talking about the hot dog incident. The hot dog incident occurred when Wambach missed the goal and sent the ball into the stands while taking warm-up shots before a game against China. She hit a fan who was returning to his seat, hot dog and other items in hand. Said hot dog was knocked out of his hand when the ball hit him in the side/back. You can check out the videos of Wambach looking sheepish. But she was later told that the hot dogs were $10, which apparently adds something to this story. Not quite sure what though. Not sure why this is a story actually. It did make Sports Center's Top Ten.* Interviewer thought it should have been higher than the 8 or 9 sport it earned. (Someone needs to explain to the Spor...

I have not watched one second of the men's World Cup. And yet it seems to be the only thing I can blog about these days. (I do have a post coming about working out in skirts--so stay tuned for something non-soccer. Not that there's anything wrong with soccer. I'm just not much into men's soccer.) But some people are still talking about women who play soccer. First, Diane Elayne Dees, the creator of Women Who Serve, a blog about tennis, wrote this poem in remembrance of South African star Eudy Simelane , who was gang-raped and murdered because she was a butch-appearing lesbian. Diane's poem, In Memoriam, is at The New Verse News and was posted on June 12. [Dr. Pat Griffin has also written about Simelane and the issue of corrective rape in South Africa.] Salon has also taken the men's World Cup happenings to talk about the women's World Cup. Ryan Brown reminds us , in the wake of the most-watched (in the US) soccer game in 15 years last weekend between the US...

So according to Adidas, the men's World Cup balls are being manufactured in southern China. There is a minimum wage guarantee of 103 pounds with many workers earning more than that--sometimes double. And as I reported (and as you can see in the video from the other day) the ball is not stitched. It is "thermally bonded." But...and you knew there was a but...these conditions are the ones for the actual balls being used right now in South Africa. They are tournament balls. There are, of course, replicas being made for resale. Those are being made in Pakistan , where 70 percent of the world's hand-stitched soccer balls are put together--by workers who make no more than 2 pounds a day. It takes over two hours to stitch one soccer ball. This is what an Adidas spokesperson had to say: “These people have a hard life because they live in rural Pakistan, but they themselves don’t think that they are living in poverty. We pay far more than agricultural work for example. It is a...

As in other than scores or some kind of analysis of yesterday's England-USA match-up, which I have to admit, I did not watch. I harbor some resentment about the lack of excitement the Women's World Cup garners so I don't get too excited about the Men's World Cup. Anyway, there has always been some controversy over the manufacturing of soccer balls because of pretty blatant exploitation of citizens--including children--of third world nations who stitch the soccer balls. There are campaigns that continue to bring attention to these issues and urge consumers to pressure FIFA and other soccer organizations to use balls produced under with fair labor and under conditions that do not constitute human rights violations. With the start of the 2010 Men's World Cup such campaigns have been heightened. But the ( somewhat infamous ) World Cup ball is not being stitched. The manufacturing process is somewhat different. This You Tube video show the manufacturing process. It is an...

So we (fans of women's soccer) cheered when the Philadelphia and Atlanta teams joined the WPS this season. We were dismayed when the LA Sol folded wondering how the top team (arguably) in the league featuring Marta and other key players could not be sustainable in a city like LA. But we kept our faith in the WPS and blamed the economy and a myriad of other cultural factors all the while sporting wary smiles. But now those smiles are turned upside down! Because WPS announced today that St. Louis Athletica is folding --immediately. As in right now. As in no games this weekend for Athletica players. The rest of the season's schedule is being adjusted and Athletica players are free agents as of June 1. So Hope Solo, Shannon Boxx, and Lori Chalupny, all key players from the US National Team, are now on the job market. What happened? A funding crisis is what is being given as the reason. One would think given the current economic situation the whole country finds itself in, largely ...