Bikini Basketball - Another "Entertainment" Option to Degrade Womankind

Last summer I wrote a piece that fell to the cutting room floor. Basically, I lamented the consistent objectification of women and the diatribe was initiated by the dance team brackets in the NBA in March 2010.

This week it was pointed out that the NBA Dance Brackets are here and are completely un-woman friendly. Sarah Tolcser's piece on how the NBA and her particular team of choice, the New Orleans Hornets, don't do a swell job at catering to the estimated 40 percent of NBA fans of the female persuasion started a melee of sorts. Bedazzled and pink team gear, "name those boobs" contests (really, Memphis Grizzlies?), and the aforementioned Dance Bracket make the cut as terrible, terrible ways to draw in and keep women sports fans.

This fall in Oklahoma City, the Lingerie Football League made a push to enter the market. That failed. The mayor didn't want the league to have a home in Oklahoma City. I was glad to know that someone other than myself was not interested in continuing the cheapening of women even further by having a team in football pads and underthings take the field to play a game I love. Many have told me that the LFL has some serious athletes on their rosters. Fine. But do these athletes really need to play sports half clothed?

The fact that OKC rejected the league gave me a little hope that maybe - just maybe - some people were evolving from the "A League of Their Own" days where women in baseball had to wear skirts to play the game.

Today, I was very unfortunately reminded that the ogling of the female body as a widely acceptable part of current culture is still in full effect. Bikini Basketball, with a motto of "Excellence or Bust", could be coming to a city near you very soon, folks. In fact, there are tryouts being held in Toronto for a TV pilot about this craziness and the ad reads:

The TV pilot is about sexy female players trying out for Bikini Basketball Entertainment some have never played basketball, and others have some basketball skills from playing in high school. The players get into tense battles as they try to get the one and only spot given with the company that day. The players are judged on their bikini modeling skills, fitness, and basketball skills. 

How nice of the BBE to add that players will be judged on basketball skills in their casting call for a basketball league. Especially a casting call that says "some will have never played basketball". This is a mockery of the sport. That makes me ill.

I have on numerous opportunities in my life played the role of Switzerland - finding the middle ground, looking through rose colored glasses at not-so-rosy situations. Sometimes in an effort to avoid confrontation, and others as some sort of asenine coping mechanism to allow me to stay blind to stark realities that I wished to be untrue. In the scrapped article, I closed with:

"Boys will be boys" as the saying goes, and the world will keep spinning on its crooked axis. Dance bracket winners and losers will be decided on by guys who are unaware of their reprehensible behavior and little girls will be prompted to continue the vicious cycle, one pompom at a time.

But one can dream of that perfect sports utopia of equality, right? Close your eyes, make that wish, and think big - someday it will happen and my rose-colored glasses can faintly see it...

Wow - I must have really wanted to take the glass half full approach on that March day.

Well today those rosy glasses are off, those wishes of equality for men and women in sport are disappointingly unrealistic. The objectification of women, coupled with the promotion of such ridiculous leagues such as the LFL and BBE, prompt me to toss my portend Swissness out the window. In my crystal clear vision, Bikini Basketball isn't just unacceptable and reprehensible. It doesn't just insult the game of basketball and its female athletes. It insults me, as a sports fan and as a woman. And I think it needs to go away. Now.