Lingerie Football League: Genuine sport or male fantasy only?
Sport is definitely a male domain, and yet a lot of women love to watch sports but it is almost a religion for men. Over the years, certain special events and sports have been created to cater to men specifically. The latest one to be created is a little bit odd and has got a lot of people to talk about it. The Lingerie Football League is a real dividing point amongst sports fans. Some say that having a bunch of women playing American football in their undergarments is an absurd idea and it is simply exploitation of the female gender. But if they watch a game, their opinions might change. This is not running around the field kind of football, neither is it a weak touch version of the real thing. This is actual, full contact, brutal American football; the only difference is the fact that the players are petite women wearing lingerie.
The Lingerie Football League started in 2004 as the Super Bowl half time show of that year and it featured two teams of women playing full contact football in s**y underwear. It was an instant hit with the fans, as it would be, and this concept expanded to become a full fledged League of its own featuring 8 teams to begin with, which later on expanded to 10 teams for the 2009 season. The idea was dreamt up unsurprisingly by a man; the commissioner of the League is Mitch Mortaza. Even though attendance is thin at games because people do not know what to make of this peculiar version of the game, it is getting more popular as it goes on.
According to the commissioner, there are certain characteristics that a female player who plays in the League or the LFL as it is called, has to have. First of all she has to be beautiful, she has to be athletic, physically fit and she has to be very confident. The confidence is a must because as anyone who has tried it knows, it is not easy to stand in front of loads of people in a lingerie. It seems to be these points that make the League a little bit of a joke in America football circles. They feel that beautiful women running around half naked trying to play football is not a sport but it is a way for sexually frustrated men to find some entertainment. The women who play in the LFL seem to disagree with this analysis of their sport.
Firstly these women actually see what they do as a sport. If anyone watches a game in the LFL they will notice that the women are playing full contact proper football. Besides the lingerie, the players have helmets and shoulder pads on. They wear protective gear for a good reason; they actually tackle one another and they regularly go flying and crashing onto the floor. The players admit that the fans, mostly men, initially come to see a game because it features scantily clad women. But once they are there they stay because the gameplay is so compelling and proper that the men get entertained more by the football and less by the skin on show. That is a hugely debatable point but we will let it stand for the moment. Besides being full contact, the players also receive injuries while playing. Many have torn their ACLs, broken fingers and a lot of them usually go back to their dressing rooms covered in bruises. The League is about women playing actual football; that is one point where it significantly differs from spoof versions of the game. Maybe in time people will start to really enjoy the football being played and it will be a boost for women’s sports in general. That may be pushing it a tad, but these things are never predictable so we will have to wait and see.
This interesting sport has its backers and its haters; people will continue to be on one side of the fence or the other. It is a very interesting extension of American football and it has a lot of good points as well as negatives. Maybe in the next few years, the League will grow and become extremely popular or maybe it will wither away and die. In the latter case, the women who play in the League will just have to go back to modelling or posing in men’s magazines or doing whatever good looking women in lingerie do all day.
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