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Sports and the sexes
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Not that women don't watch sports channels. But they don't turn sport into a religion the way men do
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The Brazilian fan sounded quite put out. Brazil played badly, he growled. Ronaldo was terrible, terrible. The TV camera swiftly cut to a group of waving female fans, all curves and giggles. Yeah, we love Ronaldo, they twittered. He was great.
It was the most naked gender-division of opinions on a match that I had seen. It was almost as though the television crew had deliberately set out to record analyses from the men and inanities from the women. But then I had an awful thought. Could it be that in a football stadium in particular, the bimbos outnumber the smart women?
I can answer that only if I know the modus operandi of the men (underscore "men") handling the TV camera. If I know anything about how TV journalists work, they must have pushed the mike into the faces of a few random spectators and the studio editor had selected the choicest bites. When it came to female fans (they had to maintain the mandatory balance of the sexes) I'm guessing that they avoided plain looks since the camera has always been partial to eye candy, and picked the most outspoken women. That's where we print journalists (ahem) stand apart: looks mean nothing, words are everything, and we coax shy people to talk.
Now I'm struck by a second awful thought. If the TV crew homed in on the first bunch of noisy but presentable women they could find, and they happened to be vacuous, the law of probability tells you some not very nice things about beauty and brains, not to mention empty vessels. If you are attractive, voluble, and exhibitionistic, is there a strong chance that you have nothing upstairs? Or is it a myth reinforced by chauvinistic cameramen?
These were the questions that kept me tossing and turning at night during the World Cup season, and not "Who will make it to the semis?" You must think me quite mad, for instead of immersing myself in the actual matches I was catching snippets of news and sidelights. Oh, those sidelights! Watching a BBC correspondent get his back scratched was more fun than any game could be. The said correspondent was interviewing an enterprising German woman who had set up a back-scratching shop outside the stadium, calling it "art that you can feel".
You must have guessed it by now. I am no football fan. I didn't root for Germany or cry for Argentina. It was rather late in the day when I found out that Ronaldo and Ronaldinho were two different entities. All I know about the World Cup season is that it arrives once every four years — like the Olympics, am I right? It is not only football that leaves me cold but sports in general. Well, if you're actively discouraged from sports at an early age you rarely develop a fondness for them. As a tall girl in high school I hungered to be part of the basketball team but I wasn't allowed to (the pang remains though my hair has turned grey). Studies were more important, you see.
Although I don't watch the sports channels I know that many women do. But they don't turn sport into a religion the way men do. Before you start hollering about sexism let me admit that yes, there are men who are allergic to cricket and women who can give you a lecture on the racing strategies in Formula One. But they are the exceptions. I dare say cricket draws an equal number of fans of both sexes, but on the whole there are more sporty men than there are sporty women — and the men are more fanatical. Men get depressed when India lose — I mean they actually walk about with long faces. Women have more important things to get depressed about. It's not just the competition that gets men agitated but also the intricate technical details — how men love those technical details! While women rattle off facts and statistics men engage in powwows on the finer points of the game.
If you disagree with my man-woman-sport thesis, let me humbly offer a couple of examples that might convince you.
Man refuses to drop mother-in-law at railway station because Germany will be playing Argentina when the train arrives. He sets wife and sister on the job. They take a happy ride in a taxi that moves swiftly through what should have been packed streets, and they mildly wonder at the sparse traffic. They wonder on the way to the station and they wonder on the way back. The dunderheads haven't figured out that it's because hundreds of men are superglued to their TV sets.
Man grumbles because he has to attend his colleague's wedding reception. It clashes with England versus Portugal. Wife dresses in a sari chosen specially for the occasion. They rush to the mantapa, go pounding up the steps of the stage to congratulate the couple, and race back home in record time. Nobody noticed my sari, mourns the wife. The man is happy, though. He has missed only 10 minutes of the match.
Now be honest and tell me, would a woman ever do that? Refuse to see off her visiting mother-in-law? Escape from a colleague's reception?
The answer, I believe, is no. But that could also be because women have a keener sense of responsibility. Gotcha!
Send your feedback to ckmeena@gmail.com
C.K. MEENA
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