I have a confession to make. I love games. Board games, card games, video games, puzzles–you name it, I’ve probably at least tried to play it. And August is the time when a game lover’s attention turns toward fantasy football. That’s why I made an impulse buy at the supermarket today: a fantasy football preview magazine. In years past, I’ve noticed the flagrant use of women’s bodies to sell fantasy football products to men, but this year I think I’ve finally realized why this kind of objectification bothers me so much.It’s not surprising that a game called “fantasy” football should advertise itself with sexual innuendo. Naughty wordplay is inevitable when copywriters try to sell a sport whose lexicon is such an easy target: tight end, wide receiver, penetration, spread offense, etc. The word “fantasy” itself almost always connotes sexual fantasy, a fact not lost on the proprietors of Bodog Fantasy Sports in this 2007 ad:
So I was unfazed by the image of a large-breasted women wearing a halter top in whose exposed cleavage the tag line “If Bigger is Better…” appeared (this exact same ad was in three different magazines, but I could not find an image of it to share here). The “punchline” was “Huge is Great!” and was meant to highlight the huge payouts in leagues at this web site.
Neither did the entire section of Maximum Fantasy Sports’ web site devoted to the MFS “girls” shock me, even as I tried not to laugh at the Playboy-esque “profiles” of each young woman. Kelli says her favorite sports is one “where guys carry a big stick when they score.” Heaven tells us that her favorite position is “Quarterback, naturally…the one who is in control.” Yes, women wrote this copy. I’m sure of it.
Perhaps the best example of fantasy football’s stance toward women is illustrated by the ad campaign and web site of Commishkit.com, a company selling materials to aid players in their yearly fantasy football player drafts. Commishkit.com’s full-page ad in fantasy football magazines is fairly typical of the genre:
Their web site, however, goes one step further, providing an “instructional video” for would-be purchasers of their product. Part 1 opens with two young women dressed in cut-off football jerseys and jeans explaining the product. Of course, we have sophomoric innuendo–the woman on the left is wearing a jersey that reads “Touch Football” and her number is 69–but this attire is not much different than a fan might see at an actual football game. Thirty seconds into the video, however, we are interrupted by the intertitle “Wait a minute…Where are the bikinis?” The women reappear, this time clad in bikinis, and spend the remainder of the video dressed for the beach despite being in an apartment.
The problem here is not (or not only) that sex is being used to sell a product. That’s not news. The problem here is that the implicit assumption of every one of these ads is that only men (and apparently only heterosexual men) play fantasy football. In fact, the editorial stance of fantasy football magazines is similar to the stance of “lad mags” like Maxim and FHM: give readers lots of sex, sports, and violence. One article in Fantasy Football Draftbook (produced by the web site Footballdiehards.com, a manly URL if ever there was one) is entitled “Tips for Hunting Big Game: Spotting Rookie Trophies and Bagging Veteran Game.”
The world of fantasy football is simply assumed to be a man’s world. When women are present, they are present only as an adjunct to the spectacle of the sport. They are the butt of jokes: the only way for a woman to enter the manly world of football is as an ersatz cheerleader. Women are also allowed in men’s football fantasies if they assume traditional feminine roles, as in an ad for BFD Fantasy Football in which a woman whose cleavage is spilling out of her tank top serves a shark on a platter (the tag line is, “Sharks…? Eat ’em and Smile”).
This is insulting to women in the way that any practice that turns an entire class of human beings into objects ought to be insulting to those human beings. But it’s also insulting to men because it assumes that men are only interested in scantily-clad, vapid dreamgirls, in framing sports through violence, and in being sold products with sex rather than substance. Not all men can participate in the culture these magazines construct, and very few women are welcome.
But this approach to selling fantasy football is also stupid from a business standpoint. Women are becoming an increasingly larger demographic in fantasy football: they now account for about 10% of total players. And women are definitely football fans. Nielsen’s blog reported that almost 38 million adult women watched the 2008 Super Bowl (compared with 46 million men). Marginalizing such a large group of potential customers doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Thankfully, brilliant entrepreneurs are hard at work right now trying to find ways to entice women to play fantasy football. Consider the progressive approach of this site, which asks women, “Do you have no idea whatsoever about the game of football? Trying to impress a boss or boyfriend with your knowledge and prowess with the game? Need a survival guide to put up with your fantasy football-obsessed husband?” Shall we count the mistakes here? A woman is defined only by her status as wife/girlfriend, a boss must be a man, and women can’t possibly know anything about sports? Are they serious?
But wait, it gets worse. The site also offers a handy glossary for the football-ignorant. The title? “Say WHAT?? Football terms for the high-heeled.” And what fantasy football website would be complete without articles on football fashion and tailgating recipes? This is “Everything Football for Every Woman”? Good grief!
I’m not sure if the fundamental problem here is necessarily that men in a male-dominated endeavor are marginalizing women or if any group as homogenous as fantasy football gamers will tend to ridicule all “others” on its periphery. I was reminded of that phenomenon last week when I spent six days at a board gaming convention/competition surrounded by ten times as many men as women. I’m still gathering my thoughts about the gender theoretical implications of that experience, but I’ll save that for another post.
As a female athlete who was part of the first generation of Title IX beneficiaries (Though real equity didn’t hit until after the year 2000) and an avid sports fan I have thirty years of being insulted by these ads. Why we continue to perpetuate that women don’t like sports is beyond me. I hope someday I will be able to consistently watch a women’s game without the need for a male commentator. On the flip side of that, I hope one day to have a female play by play during an NBA game instead of just the commercial break little tidbit storyteller.
There are too many commercials where men lie and sneak away from their female companions to watch a game. We’ve long since known that women have a very high level of control over the household spending and yet the sports marketing gurus rarely target them. How dumb is that?
As an aside and a bit off topic…I often find that engaging in endless sports dialogue is the only way some men have or are will to use to connect with one another. It is the socially acceptable arena where they can express emotion and even have physical contact with other men in conversation without the gay accusation. The inner dialogue is more like, “I can’t tell you that I feel really sad because my wife and I are fighting and I really just need hug. I can, however, talk about the horrible loss from last nights game a do a shoulder bump as I reenact my favorite play.”
Good Job,thanks for share.. 😀 😀 visit my Blog Ya 😛
This is more direct to your love of games, which I also share. Do you do much work/research in the history of games and society? I have a very interesting book called “Social Evenings” by Amos R. Wells which was published in 1898. It is a collection of games intended for Christian social gatherings. They range from just getting to know one another games to party themes.
You may be able to find a copy out and about. Google appears to have a companion book called Eighty Pleasant Evenings. My copy is in weak condition, but I would be willing to either ship it to you for a brief visit or arrange to copy it. Let me know.