Our point, you prove it, dude

I get a fair amount of “unsupervised vagina at a football game”-variety shit every single year. When I saw ESPN apologized for its commentator’s expert advice during the BCS title game about how little boys should be quarterbacks so they can nail beauty queens when they grow up, I was suitably heartened. I was watching that game, and reeaaally didn’t appreciate that particular method of noting that the Alabama quarterback’s girlfriend is Miss Alabama.

And then…I looked at the comments below the article (why? why? but that’s another story). And I found the usual gems of whinging butthurt, right down to the guy who suggested the only people who would have trouble with the situation are ugly female PC Police officers. Why do they think that actually is a thing?

Then I found this from a commenter rather aptly going by “Dick.”:
“Quarterbacks and Pilots deserve and have the beautiful women. And she is beautiful!”

As Maya noted, this shit is exactly the trouble. The entire concept that suitably masculine accomplishment entitles you to one free hot girlfriend of your choice is not. OK. Because think about this one, “Dick”: what happens when a beautiful woman doesn’t especially care to be the reward for a quarterback? what happens when a woman is faced with telling a man that big that he can’t have what everyone insists he “deserves”?

On a personal note, I was irritated at being told (yet again) that I have a very specific place in football culture, and that it’s on the arm of whichever male participant deems me attractive enough to be there. I was even more irritated that when someone acknowledged that maybe that wasn’t correct, a bunch of dudes rushed to tell me and every other woman out there that they don’t agree. I’m a football fan, dammit! I get a say in this culture too!

As it happens, “Dick,” women get to make their own damn call on who has and has not earned their affection. It’s not accurate and not ok for anyone, especially someone with a national platform, to say otherwise. But thanks ever so for showing more clearly than I ever could exactly why ESPN needed to apologize.