By Courtney • 15 years ago

Quick Hit: Lingerie Football League

So women finally get a national pro women’s football league, and in order to participate, they have to wear their skiivies. It’s called the Lingerie Football League and tryouts, unfortunately, are coming to a town near you.
As far as I can tell, this is a new project of the assholes who have been bringing us the Lingerie Bowl, a half-time spectacle during the Super Bowl, for the last few years. I wouldn’t know because I’m always obsessively watching the Puppy Bowl.
A Denver Post reporter who tries out (and comes off as completely lacking in a feminist consciousness) writes:

Heading into Friday’s Denver Dream tryouts, my main question was, “What exactly are the producers looking for: models or athletes?”
It seemed like a logical question for the fledgling enterprise that boldly calls itself the Lingerie Football League and promises to present scantily clad girls in 10 cities battling it out on the gridiron. Would the emphasis be on the football or on the lingerie?
I’d attempted to get an answer from the LFL prior to tryouts but was given a response that would make any PR agency proud: “We’ve been fortunate to find girls who are athletic yet very beautiful.”

Gross all around. This is objectification at it’s most pernicious–give women an opportunity to participate in a sport that they haven’t had the chance to do for pay and publicly previously, but only let them do it if they’re stereotypically pretty and willing to do it in their underwear.
Thanks to Cinnamon for the heads up.

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