Gendered Hobbies and Limitations for Girls
After reflecting on the two articles, “No Girls Allowed” by Tracy Lien and “As a Female NFL Fan, I want a Better Stadium Experience- Not a Pink Jersey” by Shawnee Barton, there is a clear relationship between the two phenomena and their stereotypical limitations towards the female gender. The two are similar in that they both discuss the perils of being a girl and enjoying a hobby or activity seen by society to be “for boys only”. Lien and Barton show how unfairly segregated the merchandise, products, and advertising for two different hobbies loved by many men and women alike, football and video games. Although common society would tell us the NFL and gaming is something only boys do (or should do), these articles argue in support of women participating in these hobbies and aim to promote equality and fairness for the sake of the fans who happen to be female.
Lien’s article begins by giving a summary of the history of video games. She begins by describing the original arcade-style video games, and their transition to the personal consoles that could be transported into families’ homes for the whole family to enjoy whenever they please. For a while, marketers attempted to gather usage information and statistical data from customers to asses which family members were actually using the video game console. They were highly unsuccessful in retaining responses from customers and consequentially marketed the games to all members of the family, which eventually stopped working in the 80’s (Lien). The time when the sales plummeted into a crash was known as the “video game crash”. Lien says that this eventually led to Nintendo’s rise through its promise to provide quality games that wouldn’t disappoint consumers as previous, lesser quality games had been. Once video game companies gained more solid ground, they realized they needed to hone in on their marketing strategies as they couldn’t “just go after anybody”. Once the 90’s came around, most video game advertisements featured only men or young boys, and the titles became more centered towards the male gender. The marketers chose to portray women in a supporting, boy-crazy role in the advertisements, which led viewers to believe the games weren’t intended for anyone except young men. Market research continued to lead companies down the gendered path into the future years, and seemingly has continued to increase on the imbalance of marketing towards men only. This relates to Barton’s article in that she describes how women are seen as a sort of mockery to the male NFL fans and are offered limited choices for merchandise, and often looked-over as nothing but a girlfriend there to impress her beau.
Barton describes the recent surge in the NFL female fan base is due to marketing towards women with logo-embossed lingerie and pink official NFL jerseys. The consumerism is something of a joke to Barton, as she is a fan through and through and attends sporting events as a true supporter, not just to look pretty like society might say. This connects to Lien’s article in that they discuss the color difference in merchandise and how women are limited in their ability to prove themselves as a true fan on the sport or game. The two authors would agree that current marketing techniques towards females are continually becoming more and more stereotypical and discriminatory as time goes on and fan bases continue to grow.
Barton, Shawnee. 2013. “As A Female NFL Fan, I Want A Better Stadium Experience—Not A Pink Jersey”. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/as-a-female-nfl-fan-i-want-a-better-stadium-experience-not-a-pink-jersey/279915/.
Lien, Tracey. 2013. “No Girls Allowed”. Polygon. http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed.