Hey everybody! Or mostly, hey ladies! So you know how basketball is like so incredibly confusing, what with there being a ball and baskets and large sweaty men (ooh, hot!), and it being way unclear what the object of the game is? And you know how most men are totally into basketball, especially right now because there are some kind of finals going on or something? And even though finals completely sucked in college, and made you study a lot, or at least pretend to study and stuff, apparently they're kind of important in sports or whatever, and everyone is super excited?
Well, ladies, if the complex world of sport is boggling your mind with activity right now (Finals! World Cup! US Open! Can you even match the event with the sport? Probably not! Jesus you're dumb!), never fear—a sexist guide is here to set it all straight! She's Got Game: The Woman's Guide to Loving Sports (or Just How to Fake It!) is a new book that purports to educate women on the basic rules of and appropriate actions during a sports game. You've gotta love a book based on the premise that:
Sporting events raise so many questions. What is March Madness all about? What on earth is a pop fly? If they just had the fourth down, then why is it the first down now and not the fifth? What's a down anyway? What do I wear? Will I wipe out if I wear heels? Should I wear makeup? And how do you say that player's name?
The mysteries of sporting events are solved with gems like, "When a member of your team is shooting free throws it is customary not to cheer so he can concentrate," which anyone with mild powers of observation should have noticed by now, and "The NBA Finals is a best of seven series. The team that wins four games first wins"—because, you know, it would be possible for a team to win four games second when only seven matches are played.
Despite the book's claim that "This is not a guide for impressing your boyfriend," She's Got Game seems intended entirely to equip sports-averse ladies to do something besides stifle yawns or fetch beers when the game is on. We're not against the idea that women can love sports—to the contrary, we actually got up at 7am last week to watch Mexico tie South Africa, and we really support women's sports (even if, like most media, we don't always do a stellar job of covering them). But we are really against the idea that women should have to fake an interest in sports, particularly to gain the attention or approval of a man.
It's perfectly true that a lot of ladies may not have a thorough understanding of many sports. This Bostonist still isn't quite up on football strategy, not having played the game herself as a child. But at least she understands that there are four downs and what an end zone is. And so will most women who spend a little bit of time searching for information online or—god forbid—asking questions. Additionally, we don't buy that She's Got Game is a good guide to loving sports. The best way to get to love a sport is, in our experience, to actually play it; we would recommend this approach over a pink-splashed book any day. (It tones your muscles better, too.)
Books like these don't really help women. Rather, they perpetuate several unfortunate cultural myths, some more problematic than the others. The first—that women don't know about sports—is annoying and, at times, inaccurate. Plenty of women know plenty about sports (or that other stereotypically male domain, beer), and plenty of men don't. The second—that we shouldn't ask questions about what we don't understand—is pretty problematic; there's no reason the less sports inclined can't ask about three pointers or corner kicks, and there's no reason the sports mad shouldn't take the time to explain a little bit about something they love. And the last myth—that women must feign an interest in everything men like—is not just annoying, but borderline dangerous, in that it implies that women are essentially subordinate to men, and should do as much as possible—like buy books with pink on the cover—to catch up.
Just as women having jobs doesn't signal a post-masculine economy, women—or men—not knowing about sports doesn't signal some kind of shameful, damaging ignorance. Not everyone needs to understand a Hail Mary or a point spread (prehaps guys themselves don't get sports, preferring insteadto talk about hun cal fro yo when they get together), but everyone does need to understand gender equality. Sadly, She's Got Game is mostly a slam dunk for stereotypes, not enlightenment.
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