The Fantasy of Womens Sports in Primetime TV Slots :: Womens Issues Essays

The Fantasy of Womens Sports in Primetime TV SlotsGail, a dark, tiny, female reporter, is given the assignment of investigating sister, maven of the most talented female athletes of the twentieth century. Suggestions have sprung up that Babe was not a woman at all. These suggestions have come from beer corporations and perfect right-wing opponents of a new growing opinion that men and womens sports should equally share primetime TV slots. Gail had n forever heard of Babe. Gail economises movie reviews and articles in the arts section. Gail is a chain great dealr. She used to cut gym everyday to smoke under the bleachers with her friends. She hasnt own a pair of sneakers since the third grade. In eminent inform she used to think there were three kinds of kids the nerds, the jocks, and the freaks. She was some crew of the first and last group. She still held that opinion and liked to sneer at joggers in the park. She was, thus, unhappy about this assignment. Gail visits her p arents who live in the suburbs. They are Bohemian types. They eat a lot of gorp, have matching pottery wheels in a shed in the back yard, and would have never owned a television, but Gail begged them to get one in her freshman family of high school. When she graduated, it was the first thing that was unplugged and packed into the car, ready for her dorm room. She asks them if they ever heard of Babe. They say they vaguely remember a golf imposter named Babe. But they sneer. Golf is for the bourgeoisie, they say. Gail goes up to her old room. When she was in elementary school all of her friends had horseback riding ribbons and trophies. She looks at her room now, imagines the walls coered in tiny ribbons, and they dissolve into a Picasso poster and the graffiti she used to write when she hadnt fallen asleep yet. She goes over to one section of the wall, runs her finger over a phrase JOCKS ARE DUMB. Gail goes back down stairs and asks her get down why she never wanted to play spor ts. Well, honey, he says, Youre small. And artistic. Youre not an athlete. And she thinks to herself, I didnt know what the word athletic meant until I was in the third grade. And indeed I threw out my tennis shoes.