Showpa?

     In athletics, girls and boys sports are one in the same.  Everyone wants to win, everyone plays their hardest to beat their opponent.  Boys play against boys and girls against girls because if we all played together boys would have an unfair advantage. (if a girl and boy are both GREAT at soccer, the boy will beat the girl because of muscle mass and structure of the body).  That is just a fact I'm not admitting that boys are better than girls at everything because that is an unfair matchup.  However, if a girl is great at field hockey, and a boy has never played before the girl could probably beat the boy off of pure skill.  It is only if the match is equal that the boy will "win".
     One thing that differs between girls sports and boys sports is appearance.  Talking to one of my guy friends on the baseball team yesterday I found out about a whole new world of male grooming.  When boys are playing their sport they have something called "Showpa".  A boy's showpa is the most important  aspect he can prepare himself for on game day.  My friend told me that his showpa includes tape and pre wrap on both wrists with his socks pulled up and sunglasses on upside down on his hat.  This seems insane to me, I never thought boys got so "made up" for games like this.  Also eye-black is an important aspect of a boys showpa, they spend lots of time on this in the locker room.
     Let me just tell you.... When girls get ready for a game, all I do is put on my uniform and braid my hair in a way that it won't fall out during the game then I am set to go.  I know some girls who have certain rituals in the locker room but nothing as crazy as the showpa procedure.  Some people have certain braids they like or pre wrap they always use, but no unnecessary wrist taping or sunglass wearing.
     I'm sure not all sports do this and that the baseball example is an extreme of the normal boy sports team.  But I know for a fact that lacrosse boys have the "lax flow" meaning their hair is long enough that it has a flow to it coming from under their helmet.  Their are also many stereotypes to athletes like the "lax bro" and the softball "lesbian".  I don't mean to relate to any of these stereotypes at all because I believe even if you play a sport you are not only defined by that sport.

A League of Their Own

     In the movie, A League of Their Own, World War 2 is threatening to ruin America's favorite past time, baseball.  With all of the men overseas fighting, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League starts up to save the sport of baseball.  They recruit women from all over the U.S. and... let the games begin!  This real life historical event started out in CHicago because the Cubs manager wanted to make money even when the men were away at war.  The AAGPBL ran from 1943 to 1954.  The movie takes place in 1948 when the Rockford Peaches win the World Series.
     This movie is uplifting and inspiring to women like myself because it shows that even a manly sport like baseball can be played and  successfully held up by women in a professional setting.  The women in this time period were sassy and demanding, they knew what they wanted and fought for it.  This is about 20 years after women earned the right to vote so the fight they won was still fresh in their memories.  I feel like women nowadays have no recollection of the adversity we overcame to have the rights we have today.  Obviously, I believe we never should have had to earn the right to vote or be treated as equals, but since we did, we should never take it for granted.
      Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for our futures when they refused to live in a man's world.  The women in the AAGPBL remembered this and when their husbands, fathers and brothers went into the war they paid their country back by playing in this baseball league.  Even learning about the Women's Rights Movement isn't enough for kids to realize the full extent of what women went through to have the rights we have today.  Even I can't fully understand it because I've never lived in a world where women didn't have the same rights as everyone else.

Gaming- An Addiction

Why are boys addicted to video games? I have asked myself this question hundreds of times, is it the escape into another reality...? The thrill of killing a German soldier in COD?  My brother, cousins, and countless ex-boyfriends have been addicted to the killing games like Halo and COD.  And don’t be fooled, because I’ve played my share of these games as well.  When your cousins are all boys and they come down to go to the beach and everyone’s tired afterwards, playing video games wasn’t a bad way to wind down the sunburned day.  I got pretty good too.

But once or twice a month was enough for me… so why do boys have to play every day/night?  Why, when a game comes out, do the boys have to get it at the midnight selling and play the entire night so that they show up to school as zombies?  And why do I only know of maybe one girl who would do this?  For one thing, the video game companies have never really made their addictive games appealing to women.  The games are usually degrading to women because they have no female avatars to choose from, they will have women in the games but almost always the women are hookers dressed scantily trying to sell themselves to the men. 

Now, I’m not going to lie to you guys… I have been addicted to a couple video games myself, I played dance dance revolution (DDR) and Mario Kart Wii everyday with my best friend for a couple months during my 8^th grade and high school years.  And I might be biased on this topic but I’m certain many people would agree with me that DDR and Mario Kart are not as bad as COD and Halo.  Am I right?  DDR at least offers some sort of exercise and Mario Kart got old after about an hour.  I guess I don’t really have any reasons for why boys are addicted to killing games other than they enjoy them, it just doesn’t seem like a good enough reason!