Some Notes on Women in Sports.
Last weekend was an eventful one in La Casa de Gringo as Daughter #1 competed in the state gymnastics meet.
You might believe, as I used to, that gymnastics was the sport of skinny, rich white girls. Au contraire. You will not find many Priuses with Obama/Biden bumper stickers in the parking lot outside of gymnastics meet here in AZ (although you will find some.) And inside you will find a diversity of races, ethnicities, and "body shapes" competing.
What I haven't quite figured out is why parents pay 100's of dollars per month for their daughters to practice and compete in a sport with such an opaque scoring system. There does seem to be some system behind since since the scores tend to be, to use some jargon from the field of measurement, Reliable. Scores for a gymnast tend to be consistent from match to match and from even to event. However, there always seem to be one or two judgments that cause a range of reactions from puzzled shrugs and muttering to speculation and rumor about certain judges having a bias against a gymnast or team.
Often I have advised Daughter #1 to take up a sport like soccer. Not only is it cheaper, but the scoring is more self-evident. Then something like this happens.
Nearly two weeks later, the University of New Mexico soccer player Elizabeth Lambert said she still could not fully explain what led her to yank an opponent from Brigham Young down by her ponytail in what has become a highly publicized incident of violent behavior.I will attempt to establish some progressive, sensitive bona fides on my part by stating that Ms. Lambert is getting a bum rap because she is a woman. I doubt that Thierry Henry is issuing abject apologies or seeing a clinical psychologist due to his act of gamesmanship (ie cheating) in a game with much, much higher stakes.
(Click on the link. I wonder what Mark Steyn would have to say about the picture of the five players from the French team at the top of the article, and this paragraph that ends it:
In France, which ruled Algeria until it became independent in 1962, Algeria’s victory was greeted with celebrations in Marseille and Paris, which have large Algerian populations. People were hanging from cars, honking horns and waving the Algerian flag along the Champs-Élysées.Actually, I don't wonder that much.)
At the restaurant where we had the victory pizza on Saturday (La Famiglia in Chandler, very good) a Pop Warner football team was also having their post-game lunch. Accompanying them were several girls (sisters I suppose) dressed as cheerleaders.
It reminded me of something James Michener wrote criticising how many parents would prefer their daughters to act as accessories to a men's sport as cheerleaders, instead of participating in a sport themselves.
Before you yell at James Michener or me, know two things.
First I am well aware that cheerleading has become more than just a sideshow to mens sports. I have watched an entire episode of "King of the Hill" devoted to this phenomenon.
Second, when I told Daughter #1 that I preferred that she not be a cheerleader she assured me that she didn't want to be since cheerleaders are mean and stuck up--as demonstrated by nearly every show on the Disney channel and ABC family. In tween literature and movies, vampires get more sympathetic treatment than cheerleaders.
Far from being mean or stuck up, these girls were clearly indicated that they wanted to make my daughter's acquaintance, first by staring at her, then approaching her they way Al Gore walked up to George W back in that debate in 2000. While adults will check each other out with furtive glances, children, especially girls, are not shy about showing interest in someone or some thing. Both Gringo daughters will stare like a pointer dog if they see a child or toy that catches their interest.
