Foul Bowl

While young women achieve accolades in the high school sports arena, women desperate for a little bit of fame take us a few steps back. The Lingerie Bowl, a pay-per-view event that apparently aired while the Superbowl aired its own half-time show, featured shapely women in nothing but bras and panties running around on a field for a football game between teams "Euphoria" and "Temptation." It's so discouraging. While the Superbowl takes a break from serious athletes being paid serious money to win a self-affirming title, women take to a football field to.... well, basically make it appear that a sports arena is not a place where women truly belong.

The Lingerie Bowl, despite making the connection between women and sports seem ridiculous, takes itself rather seriously. The website refers to its quarterbacks as celebrities. Who are these famous celebs, you ask? Scarlett Johansson and Salma Hayek, mayhaps? Drew Barrymore and Jessica Simpson? Not quite. The "celebrity" quarterbacks are Trishelle Cannatella, who has the dubious achievements of starring on reality television favorites such as MTV's "Real World: Las Vegas" (arguably the sleaziest Real World season ever, where Trishelle embarrassed herself by repeatedly begging a male housemate, who alternated between using her for sex and rejecting her advances, to share her bed) and "The Surreal Life 2," and Katie Lohman, whom I've never heard of, a "celebrity" by virtue of her being Miss April in Playboy five years ago.

The other women on the "teams" are touted as supermodels. When I hear the term "supermodel," I think of women for whom the phrase was invented during the height of the supermodel era in the 1980s and early 90s. Women like Christie Brinkley, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Noami Campbell, and Cindy Crawford. Who are the "supermodels" in the Lingerie Bowl? Well, half of their biographies don't even mention any credits whatsoever, and the rest credit appearances in magazines like Playboy and Maxim. (Let's keep in mind the fact that Maxim had Haylie Duff as its covergirl a few months ago, whose only real achievement is having Tween Queen Hilarie Duff as a sister. She's basically the female equivalent of Frank Stallone.)

Yet the most distressing part of the Lingerie Bowl website is that it hails itself as "The Ultimate Catfight," complete with audio clips of cats growling. I guess this is something I'll never understand. Men complain that women are too catty. Then a spectacle like the Lingerie Bowl comes out, which is clearly made for men by men. And what does it promote? Women having "the ultimate catfight."

Of course, who would you expect to host such an event but Jenny McCarthy, who once had fame for her (surgically-altered, of course) cleavage in Playboy and tongue-sticking out antics on MTV's "Singled Out," and Cindy Margolis (with surgically altered everything), who earned her fame by being "the most downloaded woman on the internet." USA Today writer Michael McCarthy writes that the Superbowl included events from "cheesy to sleazy," and I can definitely guess which end the Lingerie Bowl fell on.

The Lingerie Bowl is offensive on so many levels. It alienates women from participating in sports either as athletes or spectators, and makes a mockery of women's real achievements in sports. It also encourages stereotypes about women's "cattiness." The idea that while the men go off and compete in real games for real honors whilst women dress up in frilly lingerie ensembles as participants in the "ultimate catfight" exaggerates the differences between men and women and makes it seem like women are not capable of more, which, as numerous posts in this blog have attested, is simply not true. As Shannon O'Toole, author of Wedded to the Game: The Real Lives of NFL Women says,

These events "demeaned" female football fans, who now make up 43% of the NFL fan base. "Women football fans watch football for the game. They respect the players."

Sources:
McCarthy, Michael. "Pricey Celebrity Events Mix Sex, Big Game," USAToday.com.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/super/2006-02-05-sex-super-bowl_x.htm

The Lingerie Bowl
http://www.lingeriebowl.com

Photo by Penny Bubar