Megan Rosker asks: “Could it be that in the 21st century women still thrive on being recognized for flashing their breasts around on the nine yard line?”
When I stumbled on to the Lingerie Football League website the other night, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Women dressed in football pads and lingerie- was this a joke? Writing for The Good Men Project, I often find myself having many theoretical discussion about how things ought to go, how we would all like them to be, how society was in the past and how it might shift in the future, but here in front of me was something very un-theoretical. The LFL is what is happening right now in our culture. It took a moment for my brain to drift down from the place of lofty visions of social equality and realize that despite all our talk, we still have a lot of unraveling to do when it comes to what we understand about our sexuality.
Could it be that in the 21st century women are still thriving on being recognized for flashing their breasts around on the nine yard line? Could it be that while watching this sporting spectacle men still so easily tap into their lust to be the alpha male, that they still fantasize about being the “leader of the pack”? It all sounds barbaric when talked about so bluntly, but perhaps these base instincts are not so far from the surface of our lives.
Whether we like these habits or not, they have been part of our lives for a very long time. Roman women were dressing in scantily clad armor and fighting for largely male audiences in 60 CE. Many of the women that fought were wealthy women. They wanted the approval and the notoriety of fighting and being lusted after, not the money. Sound familiar? As Hugo Schywzer pointed out in the discussion of Tom Matlack’s post about the LFL, these women are being paid peanuts. But they aren’t doing it for the money. Just as the Roman women did it centuries ago, they perform this act for the notoriety, for the feeling of power they experience when they walk into a stadium clouded with lust.
The members of the audience, whether male or female, dominate the athletes with their approval. Unlike a professional female soccer ball player or a member of the WNBA, I hardly think these women would be running about in their lingerie without an audience. The athletes and the audience in this case are completely codependent.
An entity like the LFL exploits these well worn sexual habits between men and women. In order to move past them, we would need to start speaking more honestly about our sexual needs. Instead of mixing sex into sports, why not have a clear conversation about the needs that are being met for men and women during an LFL game? Could we begin to talk about how we feel when want to express our most basic sexual lust?
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The LFL allows both men and women to experience the rush of the Roman warrior, the lust of the pack leader and the satisfaction of the conquest, all on a Sunday afternoon.
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I think secretly we all know this is what is at play in a lingerie football game, but it is hard for both men and women to look such animalistic behaviors in the face when we have been breed to be civilized, courteous and polite sexually. The LFL gives men and women a chance to step out of the role of cubicle guy and cubicle girl or manager guy and manger girl. The LFL allows both men and women to experience the rush of the Roman warrior, the lust of the pack leader and the satisfaction of the conquest, all on a Sunday afternoon.
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photo: MTV
About Megan Rosker
It is noteworthy that these women actually wear MORE clothing that professional wrestlers.
Well said Megan. I guess my real question here is how and why is this sport so popular? You gave a glimpse into some answers to that. But I agree with you that we need to get a lot more honest about sex. I actually think a strip club, for all that may be wrong with it, is a more honest exchange between man and woman where arguably the women is getting the better of the transaction financially. The idea that the LFL is sport and that we as a culture embrace this image of what it means to female, sexual, athletic, male just borders on barbaric to me. But I think that was kind of your point.
Is it remotely possible that the LFL is a greater Boost to female confidence then say..
Roller Derby Mavins,
Table Dancing,
WWE Divas,
Playboy PlayMates
Ring Card Girls,
Run Way Models,
and the like..
I believe It’s time that we admit that women have their own affinity towards social stratification regardless of Male involvement.
Could somebody/anybody truly tell me WHY IS THIS A MEN’S ISSUE!?
Please…
Didn’t an editor write about this very topic when she talked about her obsession with beauty. I believe she stated that she got a charge out of the male attention she received when she focused on her looks. I think that has some explanatory power here as well.
You know I tried to point out to Tom Matlack how women would gladly compete with each other on who could look more emaciated in an organization run by predominantly by women & gay men like the fashion industry.
I guess everything women do for Money, Power and Attention is the result of male oppression.
Budmin your comment “I guess everything women do for money, power and attention is the result of male oppression” appears to be sarcastic, however it is actually true in many ways… you will want to look into these things further and do some research before making a comment that is supposed to be sarcasm, while actually rings very very true.
Wow. You guys are REALLY overthinking this. You want a blunt answer why the LFL is so popular? Here you go.
Novelty and tits.
Who usually plays football? Men. Men clad in tons of protective padding. But now you have women playing football, and not only that, but they’re playing in their underwear. Essentially it’s like watching a video of a squirrel waterskiing, only the squirrel has DDs.
I know that’s not politically correct or popular, but it’s true. There may be some decent athletes in the LFL but no one is there to witness that. Even the best LFL player is light years behind actual female football players in established leagues, and certainly 1/1000000th as entertaining as football played at the highest level.
But so what? This is not a perfect world and you can’t eliminate lonely, horny guys just because they’re lonely and horny. Because I’m guessing that’s who goes to these games. And so be it. If there’s a market for it and money to be made, more power to the LFL. The players are playing voluntarily, they’re being paid and the fans paid to get in. No harm, no foul.
I’m more than a little surprised the GMP has focused at least two articles on a 7-year-old sport that almost no one pays attention to.
This is the harm from a woman’s point of view… many times women make a lot more money (I’m not sure if the LFL is providing much money for these women, but it would be frustrating if they do make much money from it) when they show their bodies rather than those of us who go to school and get a degree, including a graduate degree, and make far less money because we’re wearing our clothes. You’re absolutely right, it is all about the women’s bodies, but why can’t women be given attention in a respectful way, instead of there always being an expectation that women should be sexual to get what they want or to get ahead in life. It’s incredibly degrading, and we haven’t moved far along over the decades when it comes to this need to show cleavage, etc. to get what we want; bviously because of exactly what Ms. Rosker has stated, that there is a biological instinct. I totally get that, but when you’re a woman you live knowing that as long as there are women who are willing to do things like this LFL crap, the rest of us either have to also remove their clothing to move ahead financially, or not make much money (because not all of us can be doctors either unfortunately) and still be looked at constantly as a sex object no matter where we go or what we do anyways. We still have to put up with cat calls anyways. Budmin wrote above “I guess everything women do for Money, Power and Attention is the result of male oppression” in a sarcastic tone, and I commented that his statement is actually true despite the sarcasm. And as long as women have to keep competing with each other through sex in order to get ahead it will continue that way because it’s a man’s world and they continue to gawk in ways that are essentially oppressive in the end. You guys should research this, it’s interesting and it’s frustrating. I’m sure you will fire back with some form of disagreement, but you truly can’t understand if you’re not female how some of it feels. I know not all females agree with my point of view, and certainly I encourage women to be proud and confident of their bodies and minds, but there are ways to do it, and ways not to do it. But as I said before you get your opinions out based on your emotions, some research on the background of some of this stuff can be handy.
Wow. You are not describing me.
I’ve watched a little LFL on TV. I admit I enjoy seeing athletic women with little clothing on playing football. I’m more of a legs and butt man than a breast man myself, but certainly breasts are conspicuously on display. The novelty has worn off pretty quickly, though, because it’s actually sort of monotonous. If you are obsessively turned on by that particular body type and that particular scenario, it has a lot to offer, but the players really do look very much alike.
I think I’m pretty aware of what I like and why I like it, and I don’t think I’ve enjoyed watching because I want to dominate women. I’m not thinking, “I’m king of the world! This is my harem!” I can definitely tell you I am not an alpha male. I’m probably lower than beta — gamma? omega? I’m not looking to worship at the altar of masculine dominance over those inferior, threatening females. I’m not the kind of guy who marks his territory and beats his chest, and I am positive those players could kick my nerdy ass. Maybe my viewership makes me a pervert, but I’m not an alpha pervert. I’m more of a Woody Allen couch potato pervert.