The Politics of T-Ball
Strollerderby's Kelly Mills expresses excitement about Target's new line of pink sporting goods, which includes soccer balls, golf clubs, tennis rackets, and baseball gloves. Mills hopes that increased availability of these items will help to encourage young girls to participate in sports. She also sees in this trend aesthetic implications for the adult world, writing, "My long range hope is that with more and more girls participating in athletic endeavors, we'll see some serious improvements in the current palette of black-red-orange-forest green-white-gold that dominates most sports."
One assumes Mills is being at least partly facetious, since she points out that some boys would rather go barehanded than borrow her daughter's pink mitt (not exactly surprising). Any future changes in the color palette of American professional sports are likely to be subtle and gradual rather than "serious." But her proposal does provoke consideration of some serious ironies that come into play when design starts to reflect a changing social landscape.
Pink is, after all, still the color of conventional girlhood. When a color with specific cultural associations is put where it doesn't seem to belong, what is the overall effect? When a girl takes the field with a pink baseball glove, do people see a glove first and foremost, or do they see something pink (i.e. non-threatening)? Or is it possible, as Mills half-jokingly suggests, to change the popular perception of two elements at once by joining them?
I can't claim to know how to change popular perceptions, but it's a fact that they do change. A comment on Mills's blog entry asserts that girls are drawn to pink out of "nature not nurture." The truth, however, appears to be a great deal more complicated. The COLOURlovers blog recently published an interesting list of "color legends" examining the origins of some seemingly arbitrary associations placed on colors. The authors use excerpts from early-20th-century newspaper articles to make a convincing case that pink was actually a boy's color before the 1950s.
Pink stinks. JMO, but I was perfectly satisfied with the burnt orange color of my basketball. Having a pink one wouldn't have influenced me at all. Maybe feminists associate pink with someone trying to sexualize an inanimate object; which is the same message in reverse as treating a wife like a possession. What's better--a mate that is a possession or a pet? If we could change that perception in some men and women's minds, we could introduce the norm of equal partners--two people working together to make life better. That would certainly cut down on divorce rates. Thought provoking post.
It's a marketing scheme. This has nothing to do with getting girls to play sports, this is about catching the eye of the girl who thinks she wants to play sports, but doesn't actually.
Case in point: My friend Corrine purchased a pink product from Target, a grill. She's owned it for a year, it's still new as the day she bought it. It sits on her patio as decoration. The fact that it was pink and cute was the selling point, not the function of the product.
I think it's a horrible marketing ploy, that hides behind feminism when called into question, and only marginalizes the very athletes it seeks to bolster.
On a side note, Kelly Mills doesn't sound like an athlete at all, she doesn't speak of the functionality and quality of the products, only the color. Which automatically calls into question her intentions of having cute children she can usher around in her SUV and all the other stereotypes of being a soccer mom.
Sports are dirty, sweaty, and character building. They are made for both sexes and should be encouraged through parental and interscholastic influence, not Target.
While I completely agree that it's great to get girls into sports (I have three varsity letters myself), I find that a lot of female athletes (myself included) absolutely *despise* being clad in pinks, yellows, and baby blues.
I can't believe how difficult it is just to find a decent (non-pastel) biking jersey that's made for a woman! A recent discussion with other female athletes on a biking forum has revealed that many just give up and buy men's jerseys (even though these don't fit quite right) so that they don't have to ride around looking like they just fell out of an Easter basket.
Pink just screams "princess" to me, and those who aspire to that title generally seem to show more interest in manicures and cosmetics than in sports. While it is possible that they might want a pink soccer ball as a toy, decoration, or conversation piece, I would doubt that it would get much use as an honest-to-goodness soccer ball.
To be honest, I don't think that a girl who shows no interest in sports will find her interest piqued by the sudden appearance of pink sporting goods on the market.
In this day and age while women are still fighting for equal pay for equal work, do we really need to find even more ways to emphasize our differences? In my mind, all that this does is set her apart from her teammates because of her gender, rather than uniting them as a team – and isn't that what sports are all about?
I've had a positive experience with Target's new line and since all of the comments seem so negative I thought I'd offer a different perspective-that of a four year old girl.
I can do this because I have one, and she just finished her first season of T-Ball yesterday, pink glove in hand, pink helmet on head with a surprisingly thoughtful cutout in back for her ponytail.
After the first two practices, I thought we were done with T-Ball. I could tell by looking at her that she felt out of place on her nearly all-boys team playing a sport she knew little about. Although I was hoping she'd love T-ball this was not turning out to be the case.
At the next practice I noticed one of the few girls on her team had a new pink bat bag which her mother told me I could find at Target. Suddenly, I had a plan. My little girl is a true girly girl as much as I am not one. And pink speaks to her. So after practice and a little pep talk about giving T-ball a fair try we went to Target. She was so excited to see they had pink gear "just for girls". And her pink gear gave her the boost she needed to get excited about and open to something new. She looked forward to her next practice so she could "show all the boys" her pink gear.
I think we may be overthinking pink. My four year old is not thinking of feminism or gender equality or the longterm social ramifications of her pink gear. She just thinks her pink gear is special and yes, different, than the boys. She's happy to be different, she's happy to be a girl and I'm more than happy with all of that.