Last night’s Cowboys-Panthers game wrapped Week 3 of the NFL season. More importantly, we are now about a third of the way through the 10-week regular season for fantasy football.
A recent NPR All Things Considered segment estimated that there are approximated 20 million people who play fantasy football. Fantasy football isn’t just for men, though:
According to [Yahoo's David] Geller, more than 14 percent of Yahoo’s fantasy football players are female, and new online tools now make the game more accessible to both sexes.
NPR reporter Katia Dunn profiles two women in an “all-girls” league in Arlington, Va., while they are having their draft (picking their players):
[Jeanette] Casselano and her teammate Susie Schoenberger say it’s a slightly different game with women. Both admitted that looks sometimes played into their picks.”
I’m sure many guys don’t pick some of their players based on looks,” Schoenberger says. While explaining that looks don’t often factor into picks, Schoenberger says she occasionally chooses players on that basis.
We play just as hard and watch the games every weekend and really enjoy it. We know what’s going on and can intelligently talk about it.
- Jeanette Casselano
“I guess if all of your favorite players were gone and that’s all you had to go on, OK, yes, for sure,” she says.
Dunn also makes sure to let us know that men are threatened by the little ladies horning in on their precious boys’ club.
Paul Charchian, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and host of a fantasy football radio show, says the men he talks to haven’t minded women joining them on the virtual field. In fact, for men who are married to these fantasy enthusiasts, it’s a point of pride.
“It’s almost one-upping your friends who have to try to carve out a few hours to sit in front of the TV on Sunday because their wife doesn’t like it,” Charchian says. “And they don’t understand it and it’s an area of contention.”
Charchian also says there’s more to men enjoying their partners’ interest in fantasy football than simple camaraderie. “It is hot. Absolutely,” he says.
Many of these men are so happy, Charchian says, to be sharing the game with their spouses that they don’t even mind losing to them.
I don’t play fantasy football because it’s “hot” or because I want a man’s approval.
I play because I want to win.
I started playing fantasy football last year when my best friend asked me to join her family’s league. I didn’t really know anything about football but I thought, “Why not?” I was at my BFF’s house when we did our draft and she helped me choose my players. Once the season got started, I really got into it. I’m competitive and I don’t like to lose. My main objective was to beat my BFF and everyone in her family. I had always been the girl who didn’t know anything about sports and was picked last for the team, you know? I didn’t want them to think I was a dumb girl, an easy win.
I decided to learn everything I needed to know in order to win, especially after I got shellacked by a really good opponent in Week 1 I was embarrassed that he beat me and I didn’t want it to happen again. I was also embarrassed that he had gotten the really good players and wanted to know how he had done it. How did he know to pick those players?
I started reading the fantasy football blogs every day. I analyzed my players’ stats each week and monitored how they were doing in practice. I played the waiver wire and added and dropped players like crazy, tweaking my roster so I could have the best players available each week. The long and short of it is that I learned the game. At Labor Day, I had no idea what the difference was between a wide receiver, running back or tight end, but I finished third in my league, ahead of everyone in my BFF’s family. (The first and second place winners were family friends like I was. By the way, first place was a woman. Second place was the guy who beat me that first week and a very formidable opponent.)
Last year’s league had five women and five men. This year we have four women and six men. (We have a ten player league.) I probably won’t spend as much time on the league as I did last year but it doesn’t mean I want to win any less.
While I was watching Sunday Night Football last night, NBC played this DirecTV ad featuring Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning nearly every commercial.
Here’s a transcript just in case you missed a word here or there, like I did. (Special thanks to The Undomestic Goddess for helping me transcribe!)
Let me tell you why you need to watch football in HD
From the one handed grabs,
For those naked bootlegs,
and all those punishing hips.
Hold up, hold up.
You’re not watching football in standard def, are you?
Only DirecTV brings you every NFL game in crystal-clear HD.
~(Manning finally looks behind him and sees the cheerleaders)~
Real funny, fellas. Real funny.
Yeah, real funny, isn’t it?
The language by itself is not problematic. A one-handed grab is what it sounds like: catching a football with one hand. In last night’s Colts game against the Arizona Cardinals, Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne actually made a one-handed grab for a touchdown. Guess who threw the ball to Wayne? Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. (Video here.) The bootleg reference seems pretty harmless too. According to About.com, a bootleg is:
An offensive play where the quarterback fakes a hand-off to a running back going one direction while he goes the opposite direction to run or pass.
Finally, Manning alludes to “all those punishing hips,” supposedly talking about the numerous injuries racked up each week.
My problem is not with the language or even the imagery. We expect to see pictures of pretty, tanned cheerleaders with big breasts and little clothing jumping around at professional football games. These women have chosen to be cheerleaders, even though it is hard work and I don’t think they get paid very much. I don’t understand why but they have chosen this. (Yes, I find it incredibly sad that I just said it’s socially acceptable for young women dance in front of thousands wearing next to nothing.)
It’s what Peyton Manning says combined with the images onscreen behind him that make this ad truly horrific. As he talks about “one-handed grabs”, we see the cheerleaders with large breasts practically bursting out of their tiny tops. The “naked bootlegs” (emphasis is mine) line is flanked with pictures of cheerleaders doing that Rockette-style dance thing. Their boots are shown but the emphasis is on their long legs as the camera pans up to their tiny white shorts. “All those punishing hips” gives a great shot of a woman’s hips swinging from side to side. How are the hips punishing? Well, I don’t want to be crude so you figure it out.
Professional football is a violent game that (currently only) men consent to play with each other. Professional cheerleaders consent to work for these teams. Those are consensual acts. Sexual violence is not. This ad, produced by DirecTV and sanctioned by NBC and the NFL, is basically endorsing violence against women. DirecTV, NBC and the NFL are saying it is OK to “grab” women’s breasts, undress women with your eyes and fantasize about having sex with her, whether she wants it or not.
Honestly, this is so disgusting I barely even want to think about it. Still, women watch football. Women play fantasy football. Believe it or not, women even subscribe to DirecTV. This type of advertising is not OK.
What You Can Do To Help:
Email DirecTV, NBC and the NFL and let them know this type of advertising is harmful to women. It objectifies women. It sanctions sexual harassment and violence. Tell them you will be boycotting DirecTV and encouraging others to do the same.
Please help me spread the word about this outrageous ad from DirecTV. You know the drill: email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Maybe we an make a difference!
Take a look at this photo from the Huffington Post’s slideshow of this week’s G-20 summit in Pittsburgh:
Pres. and Mrs. Obama greet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (CLICK IMAGE to see it larger)
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is basically ogling First Lady Michelle Obama. Notice that Mrs. Obama has a very assertive posture. Actually it’s a little bit dominant. There are several feet between them. She has tilted her head just a tad to look down at him and extended her hand to shake his, just as she would in any other professional situation.
Now look at President Obama. He is standing back. He knows his wife can handle the guy but look at that hand. It’s ready at his side, just in case Italy’s Oficial Sleazebag decides to try anything. And the expression on President Obama’s face? “Do not pull any of your dirty B.S. with my wife First she’ll kick your behind and then I will.” (Or something like that. There were probably a few more “Rahm” bombs in there but I’ll let you use your imagination.)
What I love about this picture is that the Obamas are showing all of us what it means to be confident, assertive partners in a healthy relationship. Michelle Obama has taken control of this potentially dicey situation and decided she will not be taken advantage of by this guy. She is First Lady of the United States and she will not allow to play his games with her.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s body language is very clearly saying, “Do not disrespect my wife. I do not approve of how you treat women.”
As we have seen an uptick in high-profile domestic violence lately (Rihanna, Tila Tequila), it seems to me that both men and women need a refresher course in respect and relationships.
Men need to learn to respect women a little more (ok, a lot more). Women need to learn how to respect ourselves a little more and realize that we are worthy of healthy, commited relationships. I realize it’s far more complicated than that. Still, Barack and Michelle Obama’s relationship can be an example for all of us of what a loving marriage and partnership should look like.
See also:
President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama share a moment as they wait for guests to arrive at the G-20 reception they hosted.
The Obamas wrap things up by sharing another moment
I just cringed when I watched this. I am embarrassed for Wausau and for Wisconsin. It is true: Wausau has a very strange (to me, anyways), conservative Catholic community. It’s very different than the Church I grew up in.
I never heard the word abortion in church when I was growing up. (I went to the Newman Center at UW-Eau Claire.) Instead, I learned that the point of Catholicism was treat everyone like Jesus would – with love, compassion and without judgment. (See Gospel at Sen. Kennedy’s funeral)
Somehow the Church has to get back to that. I don’t know how but it has to.
Until recently, the three main anchors at the local ABC affiliate WAOW in Wausau, WI, were Erik Mrotek, Melissa Langbehn and Pam Warnke. I say recently because it appears that Mrotek is no longer with one of the station’s anchors. Regardless, the trio shared anchor duties for years. During commercial breaks for Grey’s Anatomy or Private Practice, the station would run promos featuring Mrotek, Langbehn and Warnke for its 10 PM newscast.
The promos would be a conglomeration of the three photos, something like this (only Mrotek was in the mix):
I was always irritated when I saw these promos, as well as the few times I watched WAOW. Mrotek appears to be (very) overweight while Langbehn and Warnke are extremely thin. I am sure Langbehn and Warnke work hard to maintain their weight out of simple vanity and all that (the camera does add ten pounds, you know), but as women working in television, they must feel enormous pressure to be thin. Mrotek obviously doesn’t feel that pressure.
This double standard occurs in the national media as well. On MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski and Andrea Mitchell are stick-skinny. Fox trio of News’ blonde anchors (Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly & Greta van Susteren) are tiny. Does CNN even have any female anchors? Oh yeah, Campbell Brown. Yup, she probably spends an hour a day in the gym, too.
The male anchors don’t seem to have to worry about their weight, though. For every guy that takes care of himself (Hello, Carlos Watson!), there’s another that needs to spend some serious time in the gym. (Yes, Keith Olbermann, this would be you.)
Then there is Glen Beck and Ed Schultz. Forget the fact that Beck is probably an evil genius masquerading as a paranoid schizophrenic who spouts crazy conspiracy theories. Forget the fact that Schultz can be extremely obnoxious, using his TV show as forum for his personal temper tantrums. Every time I see either of these two men, I wonder if they would have shows in prime time, if they were women. I highly doubt it. Beck is overweight. Schultz is probably clinically obese. (I have no personal knowledge of that. I’m just assuming from looking at him.)
If their names were “Glenda” Beck or “Edwina” Schultz, would they still be in prime time?
Lioness is a fascinating new documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers and it gives us an inside look at the first women to engage in ground combat in U.S. history.
I recently watched this intriguing video on health care reform (via CrissWrites.com) which raises the question: Is health care a privilege or a right in this country?
If health care is a right, like the right to free speech or the right to bring a loaded firearm to a presidential town hall, then doesn’t the government have an obligation to help every American get access to quality, affordable health care?
If it is a right, is the government obligated to guarantee quality health care for every citizen?
I think so.
There is no reason why an American should die because she cannot afford quality health care, whether that’s a Pap smear, seizure medication, chemotherapy or prenatal care.
On Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama eloquently made the case that health care is a woman’s issue. She’s right, of course. The health care sob stories always seem to be about women: someone with MS who can no longer work and is about to lose her house because she can’t pay the mortgage; a woman with breast cancer who is facing bankruptcy despite working full-time and having insurance; a woman who works two jobs and simply cannot afford insurance.
Sometimes I wonder whether we would still be debating the need for universal health care at all if these stories were about fifty-year-old (white) men not being able to afford their cholesterol medicine.
I can live without a public option. I can’t live without health care reform. I understand the argument for a strong public option. A government-run insurance plan wouldn’t have the high overhead that private plans do. The American public’s need for quality health insurance that can’t be denied if you have a pre-existing condition or cancelled if you get sick is not being met in our current system and far too many are going without health insurance and indeed, health care.
A public plan, crafted in Congress and based on the needs of consumers, not the bottom line of for-profit insurance companies, has the potential to transform our health care system in ways we probably cannot imagine right now.
But the reality is that change is hard and I don’t want a repeat of the Clinton health care debacle. I am willing to settle for some health care reform, even without a public option, rather than no reform at all. I want as many people to have health insurance as possible. It’s especially important for women.
Seventeen million womenhave no health insurance at all. Millions more are underinsured. They are not just statistics. In the past three weeks alone, I have learned that two friends of mine are currently without health insurance. One is a young woman in her twenties who changed jobs over the summer. She is currently without health insurance as her old policy ran out and the new policy doesn’t kick in for another month.
My other friend is a married mother of two who owns a small business that employs half a dozen people. Her husband works full-time but doesn’t get insurance through his job and she can’t afford to provide insurance for herself or her employees.
There are also nearly ten million women on Medicaid. As some of you know, I am one of those women. I talk about it a lot because Medicaid is a government-run insurance program (aka Socialized Medicine) and I think it’s important to put a human face on what this Evil Descent Into Fascism really looks like.
Beyond all the rhetoric, what’s really important is this: Without health insurance, you can’t get health care. Going without health care? That’s playing Russian roulette. Just ask Heather Sherba, who was injured in the recent Pittsburgh gym shooting. A recent college graduate, Ms. Sherba thought she was healthy enough to go without health insurance until she found a job.
Um… yeah.
This might be naïve, but I don’t honestly care how we achieve health care reform as long as everyone gets quality, affordable health insurance. If a co-op works, fine. If the Wyden-Bennett plan works, fine. If the public option works, I’ll be thrilled
Progressives, please find a way to do this. It’s a life and death thing for people like me and so many others.
Today is Labor Day, a holiday which honors the contributions of workers and laborers in this country. In my experience at least, today is the day we recognize the work of union members who have built much of our nation’s infrasture – construction workers, plumbers, brick layers, factory workers, etc. These are all incredibly important jobs and we should take time to say thank you. We should also take time to say thank you to the unions, whose hard work has secured countless worker protections that most of us take for granted.
However, women’s work has been overlooked and taken for granted since the beginning of time. Today is as good as any to try to begin to change that.
Let’s start with unions. Why is it that manymale-dominated fields (see list above) are unionized but most of the female-dominated industries, like retail, food service, hotel/motel and child care, are not? Sure, there are nurses’ and teachers’ unions but those are the exceptions, not the rule.
Also, women make just 78 cents for every dollar a man makes. It’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help end that discrepancy. Visit the AAUW website for more information.
On this day of rest, respect and recogntion, let’s remember women are workers, too.
I'm Danine Spencer, a freelance writer based in northern Wisconsin. Please click on the links above to learn more about me and my work. Email me at danine@danine.net Thanks!
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