Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The Art of Erasure: from one World Cup to another (USA Ghana)

A few weeks ago, I dared to complain about Nike's "Thank You" video. It is a lovely idea. It features young players thanking the US National Men's Team for "paving the way" - but it excluded girls. Girls support the team, too, and are inspired by their example.


My point then was simple: Girls are inspired by male athletes. Girls and women are fans of the team.  The ad is quite clearly about inspiration (and nationalism). The ad also mimics a Gatorade spot, produced on the occasion of Mia Hamm's retirement. That video opens with a little girl, and cuts to Landon Donovan. It features men and women, including her teammates and Michael Jordan - all thanking the legendary player for inspiring them with her passion, drive, and competitiveness. 


When it comes to women's sports, we don't ask that boys and men be kept out of the frame. We want their support to be visible. Why, then, when it comes to showcasing the fan base for the men's game, must girls be excluded from the picture? 

The logic used to cast that video underscores a growing problem in sport media - the decreasing visibility of women, in nearly every capacity. A recent study demonstrated that roughly 98% of mainstream sports media space is devoted to men's sports, to male athletes and their doings.  Less than 2% is devoted to women.

This issue reared its ugly head today, in the most unlikely place of all.  I sat down today with my niece to watch the US National Women's Team play their opening match in the U20 World Cup, which kicked off this week in Germany.  Amazingly, they played Ghana.

At the half, incredibly, Ghana led 1-0.  The US looked disorganized against a scrappy team playing a ragged defense which nevertheless seemed to neutralize the US's attacks. Were viewers allowed to enjoy a discussion exploring how the heavily favored US gave up a goal, and failed to equalize, in spite of what seemed like a dozen shots? No - instead we got a lame discussion of the state of the men's game in the US.  For real. It was infuriating. I would have settled for a discussion of the senior squad's draw against Sweden the previous day.  But a tired, worn out and totally half-ass debate about what the US men's game needs?  Really?

I spent the day imagining what it would be like if we heard about the WNBA during NBA matches, how the women's league was doing during EPL broadcasts, and if we were offered a history lesson on the suppression of women's baseball during the All-Star game. It would be amazing.

Representations of female athleticism, of the accomplishments of women's teams, are so few, so rare that girls must look to people like Landon Donovan for inspiration - he's a LOT easier to see on TV than Sydney Leroux (who scored the second half equalizer today).  Girl players look up to him and his teammates, even though they aren't nearly as competitive internationally as the women's squad.  They should admire Donovan, Howard, Gooch, Dempsey et all.  They are great players. And they should admire Leroux, Rodriguez, Wambach, Solo, Kai and their teammates too.

Girls who support the sport should never be squeezed out of the frame - unless the intention is to give them a jump on mastering the art of self-erasure.


For a recap of USA/Ghana, as well as other matches - including a great one between England and Nigeria - see All White Kit. Highlights below, thanks to AWK!

7 comments:

  1. Wambach, perhaps? ;-)

    /nitpick

    Seriously, though, good post. Our women's team is the best in the world and, up until this World Cup, was responsible for the most-watched soccer match in American history (the '99 Cup final, which is incidentally the match that got me into soccer). And yet, the soccertubes have precious little about the recent US-Sweden friendly, the upcoming one tomorrow, or the imminent march to Germany 2011. Bwhat.

    I expect the news vacuum on the U-20s since I don't know what goes on with any of our U-anything teams, men or women, and I follow soccer pretty closely. But barely even mentioning World Cup qualifying prep matches between the #1 and #4 teams in the world, especially when we live in the country represented by said #1 team? That's weird.

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  2. Thanks for the spelling correction - And for reading the blog and offering a comment!

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  3. Great post! As a footy fan and a dad with a daughter, I appreciate your voice :-)

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  4. Just finished a Saturday of Women's soccer TV viewing (U-20 US v Switz & US v Sweden friendly) and I have two quick comments: 1. Soccer is the only place, to my knowledge, where the women wear more understated footwear than the men. 2. Sydney Leroux is the best US player, period. Hope you're having a great trip.

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  5. Thanks José, and GatG: Leroux is incredible!

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  6. Good article.

    According to the early projected figures, FIFA are expecting 42% of the 2010 World Cup viewers to be female. Enough said.

    I've made a reference to this (and the source) in a recent post (it's called "Planet Football") on my blog at www.earlybath.co.uk/blog .

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  7. Dear Ms. Doyle:
    When women start watching more women sports BOTH LIVE AND ON TV, the television stations and the sponsors will start showing more women events.
    So far, women seem interested mainly in men's sports. Witness how every year the Pali Blues, an excellent women's soccer team, struggles to survive financially because there is very little crowd support. I don't want to think of what happens to lesser teams.
    Also, viewership of the WPS broadcasts is appallingly low.
    I know, someone could argue that this is a chicken-and-egg issue. I think the laying of the egg is first and I don't think it's fair to assign this task to the television stations. Now, I don't have the slightest idea on how women could start this tidal change.
    Yours truly,
    Daniel Ortiz

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