After winning the Women's World Cup against China, Mia Hamm and company set out to create a professional women's soccer league. She refused to go the route of the WNBA, which used feminist blackmail to extort money from corporations in order to pay their expenses. Instead, she intended to make it legitimately on merit. It was a very honorable attempt, but it failed. It went bankrupt after only a few seasons. And I think I know why.
When flipping channels at an average speed and clicking past a women's soccer match, a men's soccer match, a women's basketball game, a men's basketball game, women's tennis, men's tennis, and football, the average person has the following reactions:
1) I saw 2 soccer games. I have no idea if both games were men's soccer or not. I couldn't tell.
2) I saw 2 basketball games. I think one of the games was women because of the long hair and slow, awkward movements.
3) Women's tennis, eh? I love those Russian girls. I wish Hingis and Kournikova were still playing. I loved watching them.
4) Eh, men's tennis.
5) Football!
I'm sure this is politically incorrect to say, but I don't care because I know it's true. Men and women are different. There, I said it. Big shocker, I know. Men and women are different and have different strengths and weaknesses. Male athletes are faster, stronger, and jump higher than female athletes. People like to watch them perform because they are exciting in what they can do. Female athletes are exciting to watch, too, but not necessarily in the same way. They don't jump as high, run as fast, or kick the ball as far as the men. So why do we watch them?
Maria Sharapova can't hit the ball as fast or hard as anyone in the men's circuit, yet she's immensely popular among fans. Anna Kournikova was even more popular even though she never won a major tournament. Yet neither of them can hit as hard or fast as the men. Why are they both even more popular than the men, then?
Because they have something that men don't have. They have women's bodies. When they move, it is exciting. It is mesmerizing. It can be hypnotic. It helps that they are also very athletic, but even if they weren't, their movements would attract attention. Maria Sharapova has been photographed more times while simply walking onto the tennis court than most male tennis players have in an entire year of play. Why? Because she is exciting to watch just walking out to play.
It doesn't matter why this is. It just is.
Women in tennis get to choose their own clothes. And they almost all choose clothes that they feel pretty in, even sexy. Audiences have responded to that in a big way. We like pretty women. And we love pretty, young, athletic women.
Women's beach volleyball is enormously popular. It started out as people just playing around on the beach. It got increasingly more competitive until one day ESPN picked it up as a filler, and today it is a huge money making success. Why wouldn't it be? It has athletic women in bikinis competing in a sport. Men love watching that. Women do, too, apparently. When was the last time you saw a men's beach volleyball match on TV? Can you name a single pro men's beach volleyball player?
We like women because they are women. We respond to women who look like women and move like women and are different from men.
In soccer, the women wear uniforms that are identical to the men's uniforms. They are baggy sacks that hide everything about a woman that makes her different from a man. Even when the women grow their hair long and wear it in a big ponytail it doesn't necessarily help because so many European and South American male soccer players do, too (proof that soccer is a girlie sport.)
I think women's professional soccer would make more than twice as much money in the United States if the women ditched those saggy old men's uniforms and switched to something more girlie, something that made it instantly obvious within the first tenth of a second when a viewer is flipping past a game on TV that those are girls out there, with no room for confusion, no doubt, no possibility that it's just guys with long hair.
Brazil's Women's World Cup Soccer Team
If you do an internet search for women's world cup soccer team photos, you will find that almost every team has at one time or another posed in their underwear or even nude - the entire team! Why do you suppose they do this? Is it possible that the women themselves aren't fond of the ugly men's uniforms they wear? Could it be that they'd like to show the world that they are, in fact, beautiful athletic women under there? I think so. I think if the women who play the game were to choose for themselves a new uniform, it would look a lot more feminine and a lot sexier. And TV audiences would eat it up, bringing the money flowing in.
No, I'm not talking about bodypaint or lingerie. I mean real uniforms, but girlie uniforms that look nothing like the guys.
Asian world cup teamI wish someone would suggest this to Mia Hamm. I think it would work.
What do you think?
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