uh, not necessary, Tribune

You can probably tell from recent posts I'm operating on a short fuse, and I was already feeling lousy today before the Chicago Tribune's attempt at humor/trash-talk of the Philadelphia Flyers turned up. I'll just post the shot showing it and what it's kind of ripping off (not that it was original then either, I imagine):

(screenshot of picture on Twitter, to give proper credit)

I don't mind seeing Pronger looking silly, or trying to taunt him, that's for sure. It's that I thought this was unfunny sexist bullshit in the Post example, and I don't need to see Chicago papers resorting to it. (Also, looking like you're ripping off the Post is somewhere far below scraping the bottom of the barrel).

I'd say "surprisingly" if it was but it's not, it's depressingly predictable--I saw lots of female sports fans passing this around with amusement on Twitter today (lots of male ones too, of course). (And a few men and women critiquing it, but none from Chicago. Oh good, not only do I dislike this, I get to have a "no one here understands me!" moment, too.) Why so few women seem to mind the women/women athletes = inferior implication of so much trash talk in sports (and why so many men, many/most of whom presumably like the company of women, participate in it) is an eternal mystery to me, and the subject of multiple unwritten posts. I'll get to it eventually. Just wanted to post this while it's "news."

In other OH MY GOD IS IT A SLOW NEWS DAY IN HOCKEY "news," this screengrab from NHL.com in the past hour:

and THERE'S an annoying way to sell hockey, Men's Journal

I've found a "be careful what you wish for" example of wanting more media coverage of hockey and hockey players, and it's "Here’s the Key to Your Suite, Mr. Ovechkin" from the Dec/Jan issue of Men's Journal. (I wasn't going to link but then I realized it could get trackbacks if I do, so...). you know, "rant" gets overused on the Internet (such as, by me in my previous post) so instead I'll say, I'm in high dudgeon about this. (so far, "Wait, Ovechkin was in those photos?" is the only other piece I've seen critiquing this photo shoot.)

this isn't about what I think of Ovechkin as a player, or about the little "interview" (most of which was boring or cringeworthy, except for the bit about sending cards to Crosby), or that this is selling stuff people don't need. I don't mind seeing hockey players in a fashion spread, not at all. no, it's the tediously obvious use of the Unnamed Woman. who is she? why is she there? we're not supposed to know or care. oh look, there's Ovie on a bed...and surprising her in the shower...and there she is in lingerie...

oh where OH WHERE could this narrative be leading? I am rapt with attention! could it possibly be:

uh. that's not to judge the model, by the way; it's to point out how BORING this is. (interestingly, I took a look at the print edition of Men's Journal, and the picture with the lingerie and the woman on the bed aren't there; in fact, it ends with the two playing air hockey, fully dressed. of course the implication's still there.) and gratuitious, did I say gratuitous already? yet another piece where the man's dressed and the woman isn't. they could either have him also be barely dressed (wouldn't be my choice here, but others may disagree), or keep them both in clothes.

such as the photos where they're playing air hockey. what's wrong with just leaving it there? those are fun and sexy and play around with the image of the serious hockey player. I like them in the way that the only reason I'd want to go to a high school prom (I mean, if I could go back in time and actually go to mine, and in a bigger city than where I grew up) would be to get all dressed up and spent the late night hanging out with people riding the subway and going bowling and going to an all-night diner...

and my least favorite part? the intro: "When you furnish the world’s best hockey player with a ritzy New York hotel room and the season’s best, um, accessories, you know he’s going to put them to good use. Especially when that player is Alex Ovechkin."

um, "um, accessories"? does that mean Unnamed Woman? I'm touchy that I'll be accused of "complaining about everything" if I'm grumpy about articles/ads like this (but if anyone thinks I'm just "looking for stuff to get mad about", fuck you, I have plenty to be mad about without having to look) (I found the Ovechkin piece out of curiosity over a link on NHL.com). so...it's not that there's a sexy blond in the photos*, it's that she's explicitly referred to as an "accessory," i.e. an object, so I'd call that objectification. and yeah, I assume photo shoots like this are common at magazines like that--doesn't mean I can't critique them.
 
*like, I don't mind when the game threads at the Maple Leafs blog Pension Plan Puppets post photos of Niklas Hagman's attractive wife, Piritta Hannula, because, well, she has a name (admittedly, I had to Google it). and the fans (straight male ones anyway) need to be cheered up during all those times the Bruins steamroll the Leafs... (damn, that line worked better when the Leafs hadn't just had a spectacular win, tonight...over the Capitals. ha!)

the book above is from 1975. I own it and will be putting that image on Tumblr and Flickr for anyone who'd like to reblog/favorite it. as I feared from the cover, there don't seem to be any stories about hockey players in it. but...a golfer? who the hell thinks golfers are sexier than hockey players?!

on fighting (and another f-word)

well, I'd like to finish posting on the Pittsburgh trip before the next Hawks game I attend, but oops. a couple things came up. I finally added Jezebel to my blog reader recently, although they post so frequently I have oodles of celebrity stuff to skip through. Tuesday I'd barely stopped laughing from their latest takedown of Cosmopolitan (with possibly the stupidest "effects of the recession" story yet-- guess what men are now doing a lot because of the recession! no, really! because of the recession?!) and controlled my giddiness over the Hello Kitty jet used in Taiwan (adorable! and creepy!), when what shows up but a story about a high school hockey fight. of a girl on a boy's team fighting off boys.



I saw this last week on the blog The Scrappy Octopus, and now Jezebel and Deadspin are getting around to it. the piece was by Latoya Peterson; a writer whose work I enjoy. she admits that "I am not familiar enough with ice hockey to know if there is a movement of any sort to stop fighting on the ice." fortunately, many commenters (who I presume to be female at Jezebel unless they state otherwise) are hockey fans and current or former players, and provided some context. for instance, fighting really isn't allowed in high school or college hockey, so it's strange the refs didn't try to break this up. and fighting serves a purpose in pro hockey and most fans, uh, are okay with that.

a comment at Jezebel I liked: "She held her own. It looked like a gender-neutral fight that happened when things got heated around the goal, which happens -- skaters get protective of their goalie. I'd have more of a problem if people said, 'oh, she shouldn't do that, as a female player, she should elevate her skills and rise above the male tendency to be violent.' It's hockey. Sometimes ya gotta throw down, eh?"
and a critique of their fighting technique itself:  "No dropped gloves, no love."

a confluence of hockey and feminism--awesome! and then later the same day...OH NO, WATCH OUT, ANY DAY NOW I'M GOING TO RUIN THE INTERNET FOR YOU WITH MY HYSTERICAL OVERREACTIONS TO EVERYTHING

so, Cycle Like the Sedins has a new feature with female hockey bloggers explaining how they got into hockey and blogging. the latest edition of Odd Woman Rush featured one of the first hockey blogs I found, Talk Hockey to Me. blogger Teka said, "My hockey blog was really a spinoff of my “normal” blog, and now my normal blog is the one that gets ignored for weeks and weeks on end." heh, I can relate. she also says "At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m the only self-identified feminist hockey blog out there." well, not to sound all competitive (you know the ladies love competition! and only ONE OF US can be successful! it's gonna be me, bitch! and so forth), but no, now there's two.

I'm not bothering with an explanation--look, here's feminism 101 if you need it. nor do I expect to say much, besides the occasional bit of snark (like my recent bit about a loser on Facebook), about stereotypes about female fans as puckbunnies, or the pink jersey issue, or Ice Girls. that's all been well-covered, often by Teka herself, including in her thesis (which as a huge nerd I was thrilled to find--yes, I read an academic account of female hockey fandom right as I became a fan!) but...my "issue"?

well, I like the rough-and-tumble (okay, vulgar) world of sports blogs. (I love blogs and sites about urbanism and architecture and transportation but um, they're a little less funny, maybe?) but I have trouble with the metaphors of/"jokes" about rape and sexual humiliation, and the sexist and anti-gay slurs, common in sports blog writing and commenting (mostly, but not only, from men). there are blogs I might read but not blogroll but because of it, and there are blogs I blogroll despite this sometimes or often being an issue (frankly, some of the Blackhawks blogs--including ones whose writers I've met--are frequent offenders). I don't see many sports bloggers, male or female, addressing this, and it's never discussed on feminist blogs, even though I see sports fans and sports stories there sometimes. I'm bothered less by what sports leagues are or aren't doing to attract women as fans, than by what other fans are doing that makes many fans or would-be fans feel attacked and excluded.

I'm mostly here to have fun, whether it's about what it's like becoming a fan, or mocking the sports media. I won't, you know, whine or get hysterical about that sexism now; I'm just bottling up lots and lots of frustration and rage now--I'm sure that's a perfectly healthy thing to do!--to use for future posts. oh, MAN UP, you can take some constructive criticism, when I get around to it.

fun with Facebook: "women don't know nothing" edition

so the Facebook pages for the NHL can be fun places to follow. especially the NHL page itself, but that's a trainwreck for another day. here's a little something I found on the official Blackhawks page. now, this was mid-October, when 90% of fans were all panicky about Cristobal Huet's iffy goaltending (he is now no longer getting booed at games). the opinion expressed isn't what's important, it's who's saying it and the response:

wait, did you see that? Rick here has some kind of stunning vision that allows him to see the same opinion being expressed by men and by women, and yet only see the women, and declare they don't know about hockey! there's not much to say about that (a perusal of the blogs on my blogroll will turn up a great number of women who know about hockey) except to take some small measure of glee in that, since the vast majority of Facebook users use their real name, one can't hide their sexist douchebaggery behind anonymity like on so much of the Internet.

having said that, here's a shocking revelation (if you've never read any other post on this blog):

I DON'T KNOW VERY MUCH ABOUT HOCKEY.

but! this has nothing to do with whatever body parts I possess which I won't mention so as to again feebly try to avoid weird traffic to this blog. it's because I'm an ignorant Midwesterner, that is, a Midwesterner who grew up in a state that wasn't Minnesota or Michigan. I didn't grow up seeing hockey in real life or on TV. I didn't pay attention to it when I moved to Chicago (also, you might know about how Blackhawks games weren't broadcast on TV locally for years...) and for a long time didn't have friends who tried to get me into it. this is why I'm a late bloomer with hockey.

I'm obviously still learning, and this is why, though I go to a lot of games and post comments on a lot of hockey-related places online, I'm not offering up real opinions and analysis about the game itself, but observations on hockey and sports culture. I'm timid enough in some ways to feel like I have to immerse myself in sports talk for a year or two before I can say much (not that ignorance stops, well, many of the Facebook commenters from commenting).

but if I don't know much about hockey, it's not because of my gender, and I won't take well to gender-based insults. (I'm still too obscure to have received any.) remember, it's: ignorant Midwesterner (or for Canadians who want to be jerks, ignorant American). I will also reluctantly accept "fat-assed ignorant Midwesterner," given that nights in eating macaroni and cheese or frozen pizza and watching games online might not produce the most sculpted physique.

fortunately, though there can be a lot of things that bother me on the hockey blogs and sites I frequent, the antediluvian* nonsense of commenters saying "women don't know about sports" is quite rare, at least on sites not named Puck Daddy**...

*yes, I said "antediluvian" on a sports blog. and it's not even the "word of the day" or anything. I just need to feel smart and reassure myself a little chippy isn't only an excuse to use "Lucic" and "crotch" in the same sentence. like I did last week...

**I usually like the blog itself, but the comments can be so offensive, ignorant, and horrifying at times that they'll turn me off of the Internet, sometimes for even an hour or two!