by Ethan Johnson
September 19, 2007
Every so often, a gender-specific enterprise comes along that is met with hostility by the opposite sex. Specifically, businesses, media, and other initiatives that are targeted to serve women are decried by men. An historic example of this was when the Chicago Tribune launched a new section called "WomanNews". Naturally, a flurry of complaint letters arrived at the Trib, wondering why women needed their own section of the newspaper. "There's no such thing as 'ManNews'," they'd say. One woman countered, "yes there is, it's called the sports section."
In the linked article above, I found an interesting line that cuts to the heart of this one:
Authors Betty Friedan and Susan Faludi stated that women's sections imply that women's news and issues are subordinate to men's.
This is timely, for me, because I have been getting hooked on the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup. Specifically Team USA. Unlike the 2006 Men's World Cup, I don't have the bandwidth to follow all of the groups and countries, so I opted to target Team USA and go from there. I'll admit, the women's game is somewhat slower, BUT, just like basketball, one would do well to watch this different style of play because it stresses (or naturally reveals) the fundamentals. The male equivalent of popular sports tends to be about speed and showy crowd-pleasing moves. That's nice, but soccer crowds really like scoring. Team USA has delivered in every match thus far.
I was riding the high of the US Women's Team's progress, and wanted to buy a t-shirt to show my support. Not just for Team USA, but for women's soccer overall. In fact, I would have liked to find a FIFA shirt featuring the 2007 WWC logo on it, because it's really cool. It does for the WWC what the logo for the MWC did last year.
Unfortunately, the assumption seems to be that only women would want to wear WWC shirts and jerseys. I can partly understand this, but can't there be some sort of unisex "yay team" shirt? Apparently not. (Actually, there is a unisex FIFA 2007 WWC shirt available, just not in my size. Good to know. Nothing for the US Women's National Team, though.) I suppose any generic "USA" shirt would suffice, but I want to specifically highlight the US Women's Team. (Note: Apparently the US National Team logo is universally applied to both teams. BUT, males cannot buy player-specific shirts of any kind for the women's team. To me, the way the shirts are presented at the official team store suggests that men are specifically supporting the men's team. Whuh?)
Digging a little deeper into the world of unisex sports marketing, I wondered how Danica Patrick approached her merchandising. To keep things apples-to-apples, I'm only looking at t-shirts. She offers a full line of shirts, mostly favoring unisex cuts and designs. Since she is one of the few female IndyCar racers on the circuit, I would imagine that she would want to garner as much support (and merchandising cash) as possible. Dan Wheldon also offers a full line of unisex/female cut shirts.
The WNBA offers a full line of shirts and jerseys per team, and while it makes sense that the player jerseys are specifically designed to be worn by women (same deal with men's jerseys, conversely), they do offer at least one shirt that men can wear to show their support. And yes, the female counterpart does exist on the NBA side.
So why the apparent refusal to bring men into the fold for women's soccer? This isn't a case of discouraging men from playing women's soccer (or cross-dressing, I suppose). Empathetically, if I were a parent of someone who went on to play women's soccer I'd want to proudly show my support, as parents are wont to do. Additionally, to my Dad's chagrin, when people buy logoed t-shirts of any sort they are volunteering (heck, paying) to advertise freely. Why turn away such enthusiasm?
I'm a complete fool for soccer goalies - especially good ones. I want to show support specifically for Hope Solo. I can't, short of making some sort of homemade jersey or t-shirt. I'm a fool for scoring in soccer. Abby Wambach has been a scoring fiend in the WWC. I can't show support for her as a player through my apparel choices either, again, without cross-dressing or other drastic means. I can't travel around the world to pay money to support the team by way of ticket purchases, so buying shirts and so forth is a way to do it indirectly. I'd like to see US women's soccer be more inclusive.
Considering that Nike's ad slogan for the US Women's Team this year is "the best team you've never heard of," it may not entirely be the fault of the media. <EM>
