Part 12 (2/2)

Granted, professional women's sports have been around for a while now. But until recently, they've been backup dates-or, in the case of figure-skating, treated like the athletic equivalent of chick flicks.

And until now, most of the female athletes who have captured the national spotlight have been, frankly, variations on ballerinas. They've been gymnasts: tiny, anorexic-looking girls balancing like exotic birds on a high thin beam. Or figure skaters, twirling prettily in sparkly costumes. Or graceful tennis players in little skirts.

Moreover, these athletes have been loners, not team players. As those sudsy TV bios show us, a lot of girls start training for the Olympics before they're even ready for training bras. By the time they've reached junior high school, they've moved away from their friends and families to live in a gym. They train 24/7 with Roumanian coaches and play Beat the Clock against their own p.u.b.erty. And then, when they do win the gold, they win alone. It's just them out there on the ice, the court, the mat. Inadvertently, their stories reinforce a message that young women receive too often already: If you're going to be a strong, powerful woman, you're going to be alone.

No wonder the Spice Girls were such a hit with the girls! We gals crave our own dream teams! Sure, we want to be fabulous in our own right, but we'd like some camaraderie in our glory! We want leagues of our own!

Well, hallelujah. Finally, we're starting to get them-both as athletes and as, ahem, athletic supporters. There's a whole new sisterhood to be forged-and mercifully without the folksingers.

Of course, women's professional sports have not come close to occupying the place that men's sports do in our culture. But it's a start. And if we keep root-root-rooting for our Home Teams, our little sisters and daughters (not to mention our little brothers and sons) will grow up in a world where it's not only taken for granted that girls play ball fiercely, but that they can make a career out of it. Perhaps girls' teams can finally start pullin' in some of the big bucks that the boys get-more fab athletic scholars.h.i.+ps, lucrative endors.e.m.e.nts, and big-a.s.s salaries! And more and more ”soccer moms” will be women who kick it at the Olympics while their kids cheer them from the stands.

And not only will the high road be open to us, but the low one as well.

We too can experience the thrill of standing outside in five-degree weather with half our torso painted blue, the other half painted silver, and a sixteen ounce beer in each hand, as we shout ”Detroit sucks!” at the top of our lungs. We, too, may have the thrill of mooning the Teletron before being hustled out of the stadium by a couple of humorless security guards. We, too, can enjoy the challenge of creating elaborate and inpenetrable spread sheets for office betting pools. We, too, can get so upset after our team loses that we punch a wall and break our hand-thereby inspiring a peculiar mixture of respect, pity, and fear among our colleagues when we come to work with a sling. We, too, can go nuts over all that groovy c.r.a.ppola sports fans can buy-the T-s.h.i.+rts, the hats, the foam fingers, the battery-powered light-up sweats.h.i.+rts.

For ”s.e.xual equality” shouldn't just mean having to outperform men to prove that we're just as competent. It should also mean that we get to revel in all of our society's tribalism and silliness and stupidity and joy!

So I say, let's take ourselves out to that ball game and get out the greasepaint!

Or, just as good, let's invite the crew over and tell our loved ones that we can't do the dishes right now because the game's on.

And then we can sit back in our Lay-zee-Girl recliners with our clicker and our Diet c.o.ke-and shout at the television, as people who resemble us play some serious ball-and feel pretty d.a.m.n fantastic.

Chapter 21.

Give Us That Ol'-Time

Religion-So We Can Clobber

Sanctimonious Morons with It

The Bible contains 6 admonishments to

h.o.m.os.e.xuals and 362 admonishments

to heteros.e.xuals. This doesn't mean

G.o.d doesn't love heteros.e.xuals. It's just

that they need more supervision.

-LYNN LARNER You know, when it comes to Bible stories, I think our girl Eve has really gotten a b.u.m rap. She is constantly painted as this evil temptress because she ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, then convinced Adam to have a bite. But how hard must that have been, really, seeing as she was standing there naked? Heck, she could've told Adam to eat the snake and he would have gone: Sure, okay. Whatever you say, Babe.

Besides, it's thanks to Eve that, instead of living like blind, infantilized playthings in a garden, we humans are morally conscious and capable of thinking for ourselves.

I thought of Eve the other day as I was reading a speech written by humorist P. J. O'Rourke-an ex-Rolling Stone reporter who seems to do quite a lot of thinking for himself. In his speech, delivered at a Cato Inst.i.tute conference, O'Rourke argued that collective wealth is bad, capitalism is good. He based his argument on-what else-the Bible.

In his speech, O'Rourke argued that the Ten Commandments actually instruct folks to become free-market capitalists. The way he sees it, he said, the final commandment (which basically says: Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's stuff) implies that people shouldn't dream of making their neighbor's stuff their own: They should get up off their lazy a.s.ses, earn their own d.a.m.n money, and buy their own d.a.m.n stuff.

Wow. Simplistic little moi, I thought that the Tenth Commandment meant: Keep your hands off your brother's toys, you idiot. Jealousy and stealing are bad!

But his speech got me thinking. Not about people making their own fortunes, but about people thinking for themselves and using their own interpretations of the Bible to justify arguments before the Cato Inst.i.tute-and everywhere else, for that matter. And it struck me that those of us with XX chromosomes have not been doing this nearly enough-even though you'd think it would be our birthright and all, seeing as we're supposedly descended from that troublemaker Eve.

Western religion is a power tool in our culture, and we SmartMouth G.o.ddesses have much to gain by drawing upon it for our own arguments-by using it as creatively and selectively as everybody else seems to do.

Now, I know that for young women today, religion is an especially touchy issue.

First of all, we have enough people already trying to tell us what to think.

Second, some of us Western gals find religion mind-numbingly boring. The Bible? Great cure for insomnia. Just start reading those begats and you're out like a light.

Others of us see that ol'-time religion as downright dangerous and oppressive. In the eternal game of boys-against-girls, traditional patriarchal piety has not exactly been on our side: It's taught women to think of G.o.d as a big vindictive Daddy in the sky. It's taught us that our bodies are shameful; that we should shut up and submit to men; that our s.e.xuality is sinful; and that contraception and premarital s.e.x are the moral equivalent of homicide. It's also been used to justify slavery, c.l.i.toridectomies, war, and ”ethnic cleansing”-none of them big winners with us, either.

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