Why Women Should Not Be Allowed To Watch Football
Okay, I don’t really mean what I say in the title. But when I called up my business partner Jermaine on Friday night to discuss the idea behind this post, I admittedly did say, “Women should not be allowed to watch football. It’s not fair.”
On Friday evening, all the women I follow on Twitter, tweeted on and on about New York’s Fashion Night Out. For the readers who aren’t up on game, Fashion Night Out is basically a holiday for most women in New York. It’s a whole evening of shopping, partying, and schmoozing side-by-side with famous people.
So I’m reading all these tweets my female friends I follow and I think it’s great. Women should be able to have a night like this because guys have football on Sundays and the season just started. But then, I see a couple of tweets from women about how great it was that two days after Fashion Night Out, NFL Sundays were returning. That’s when I said to myself, “Not fair. Why do women get to have their night and get to enjoy my day too? Who let that happen? Where did us men go wrong?”
Now before we get up in arms, let me reiterate, I don’t really believe a woman should not be allowed to enjoy a football game and a runway show. It honestly didn’t really piss me off that a woman was having the time of her life at some Fashion Week event, and then was going to turn around and enjoy a full Sunday (and Monday) night of football. Still doesn’t.
But to see these things being said did beg the question: What activity or thing made for women to enjoy can a man enjoy equally, without the ridicule? If I wanted to go to Fashion Night out (because I like nice clothes and shopping), I would get laughed at not just by men but by women too. If not laughed at, given the side eye. Meanwhile, anytime a woman enjoys something more commonly associated for men to enjoy, she gets put on a pedestal.
Fashion Night Out, from what I read on Twitter and in the press, sounded pretty fun. More importantly, I am positive the streets of downtown New York City were teeming with pretty women. Of course, it wasn’t like I was banned from going down there myself, but I know if I was standing in Soho on the corner of Spring and Broadway with my boys, sipping on a red cup of something, and I tried to talk to some pretty young lady, she would probably write me off as some guy trying to be her BSB (best shopping buddy (and yes, I think I just made that acronym up)), when I know I’m really trying to be her JO.
Women, on the other hand, can round up all their girls on Sundays (or Saturdays if they’re the college football types), go to some sports bar, and enjoy the game just like a man and get applauded. Most other guys in the sports bar would probably offer drinks, take care of their meals, or engage them in a conversation, all because these women are into football, especially if they can talk about the importance of field position like a special teams coach. Sure the women may not have come for that kind of attention, but they know they’re going to get it, why else do they leave the home to do something they can do at home?
Like I will say for the third time, it is perfectly fine for women to enjoy the things men are more likely to enjoy, but when can men start enjoying some things women enjoy without being mocked by other women? As many women who may tolerate a man scheduling an appointment to get his manicure/pedicure, there are just as many who won’t look at him and think, “That’s just the kind of guy I like.”
And no I don’t get a mani/pedi, so let’s not get into semantics.
This is about all the men out there who enjoy baking and aren’t pastry chefs, who enjoy watching Sex and The City with a cold beer in their hands, who enjoy going to a spa and getting massaged in oils and stuff, who want to order a salad instead of a steak. When can men do these things without their woman looking at them quizzically?
The list can go on and on, but I think we get the point. When it comes to gender roles and leisurely activities, women can be a lot more flexible than men. And when I think about why this is, maybe it’s because far too many men encourage women to be like one of the guys and women have let that go to their head. Maybe women have started to ridicule the man who watches Project Runway on his own time, because other men have allowed her to believe a real man doesn’t like a girl who watches BRAVO, a real man likes a girl who watches SPIKE.
Well personally, all this putting a woman on a pedestal because she likes to watch the game is over with.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s great if I meet a woman who enjoys watching football on Sundays, but it’s even better if I meet a woman who knows I enjoy watching football on Sundays and enjoys that time I spend doing so, doing her own thing. So, no more extra cool points just because a woman likes to watch the same sport I like to watch (though if she is a Steelers fan like me she gets a million cool points). That’s really great and all, but I hope the woman who enjoys the game on Sunday enjoys going to Fashion Night Out as well, because if I’m still single by Spring Fashion Week, that’s where I’m going to be, looking for her.
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