Lingerie Football & Feminism
Written by Niki Ghazian, Monday October 05 2009
The most common question I get from men after they realize I play for the LFL is "So do you guys practice in your lingerie?" While I find this amusing, as it makes apparent the laughable yet endearing qualities of the male psyche. I also find myself burdened, on a subjective level, having to break the mental mold the mass public has about the league on an individual basis.
Yes - we play tackle football in our Lingerie. Yes I am a model, and some of my teamates are as well. However, the truth is that we are out there putting our bodies on the line, wearing drastically meager padding in comparison to our male counterparts in the NFL or NCAA. We have had broken bones, just in our last game I played the entirety of the game with a broken finger. Last week in the game between Dallas and Denver a player had her tooth knocked out. Many of the teams in the LFL play indoor, and playing in lingerie only leaves you open to more turf burn. The truth is, we aren't scared. We are out here putting our bodies on the line, playing a sport which in my opionion, takes the strength of a modern day Gladiator, and doing so only because we love the game and want nothing more than to prove that beautiful women can be strong and athletic. There have been many times at practice that little girls have come by our field, and watched in admiration, and at times even started doing push ups next to us. I'm a law student, one of my teamates is a nurse, and many of my other teamates are sucessful business women. This is why I find it hard to believe that there has been so much feminist criticism drawn to the league, as I see what we are doing is a form of turning the table around on society.
It is an ingenious clockwork that founder Mitch Mortaza has come up with, he has allowed us women to manipulate our physical stereotype, using it to our advantage as an attracting tool, but allowing our skills as an athlete to awe and captivate our fans. Whether Mr. Mortaza knows it or not, I believe he is owed a 'thank you' by female athletes and feminists everywhere because he is enabling us to prosper on a level that has never been done before. I have read many critical articles based on the feminist perspective, including renowned feminist Courtney Martin's article, which inarticulately presses that "This is objectification at its most pernicious -- give women an opportunity to participate in a sport that they haven't had the chance to do for pay and publicly previously, but only let them do it if they are stereotypically pretty and willing to do it in their underwear." While this statement on a prima facie showing may be true, it is important to delve into the issue further to asses what the league is really doing. What Ms. Martin fails to realize the congruous overlap between oppresive stereotypes and the mechanism to use it as a vehicle of empowerment. The LFL has created a symbiotic binary relationship where oppresive stereotypes have enabled women to attract and show the world their athletic prowess, and prove that two supposed opposites, beauty and strength can co-exist in one woman.
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3 comments
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Another well-written piece by Ms. Ghazian. Still a few misspellings and punctuation errors, but the message is intelligently designed and constructed. I've been around competitive, athletic women for most of my adult life, and I understand where she's coming from in her perspective. The few LFL games I've watched have made me a fan of the sport and the athletes that play it. I just wish that someday the first "L" will stand for "Ladies" instead of "Lingerie" so that they can get the recognition they deserve instead of being typecast by simpletons.
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zoiks. total babe, plus an intellect...she's Armenian, which means she can cook...marry me sweet Niki!
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Thank you for writing this blog. Under the banner of "feminism", I think many people take women out of one 'box' just to put them in a different but equally restrictive 'box'. Real feminism should be about empowering women to live in a world unconfined by the 'boxes'.