The Objectification of Men: Now, Drunk, Never and the Australian Football League
I wanted to write about this on Friday, but this weekend got totally out of control. Though it’s good that I put it off, because yesterday’s events tie in rather well.
Friday afternoon, I take a break from the website, the articles, the play, the book…I take a break from everything. My brother is watching tv. In the days before cable television, when he was still tiny enough to fit in my grandmother’s pushcart, my brother would often wake up at sunrise, flip the dials on the television, mess with the antenna, and find soccer. In Spanish.
We don’t speak Spanish.
He does not play soccer. But he’ll watch it. He’ll watch anything with a ball.
Friday afternoon, he’s flipping stations and discovers the Australian Football League. Well, he already knew it existed, so it wasn't technically a discovery for him...(He went off on a tangent about not confusing different sports, and rugby terminology, and "league" and "union" and random Australian slang. He then pulled out a Playstation 2 Rugby game and suggested I play it.)...but this sport had never previously entered my consciousness. I had no idea what I’d been missing.
I relate to sports on two different levels. First, there is the fact that I do enjoy doing insane things and very much enjoy watching other people do insane things. So: no protective gear, and people taking each other down? That's sick; that's sadistic; that's fun! And then there's the level that you just knew was coming: impressively athletic men running around, doing impressively athletic things? Yes please. This was a whole new league of men that I'd never seen before, and we were watching a round-up of the week's action. Which means, I got a quick look at nearly every team. Player for player, the Kangaroos might be the most attractive team in international sports. But, as I said, it was a quick look.
Competence--my girl friends and I have been on this particular topic for quite a while. As Kim said, "Competence is so sexy." It was so quotable I wrote it into one of my travel essays. And then Joy read it and said "Can we have t-shirts made of that?" There's nothing better than watching an attractive man do what he loves to do. Competently. Don't care what it is. If he loves it and he's good at it, it's exciting to watch.
So I call Kim. Immediately. "Remember all those soccer players we saw in Florence last year?" Friday was June 24--La Festa di San Giovanni, the feast day of Florence's patron saint, which is celebrated (of course) with soccer--calcio storico to be exact (that link is in Italian). It was one year to the day that we had discovered the parade of men who had returned to their city to play an historically violent game which pitted the each quarter of the city against the others. Though the game didn't actually happen last year, we got quite an eyeful anyway.
"That's a rhetorical question, right?"
"Well, have you ever seen the Australian Football League?"
She apparently has not.
I have one word. "Competence."
Fast forward: it's Sunday afternoon. We've just finished a read-through of the play; because our one male actor couldn't make rehearsal (though he did, in fact, return from Mexico), Sunday was all estrogen. We decide to go for a walk and get some food. Fifteen minutes into our wandering, Megan asks me, "have you ever played 'Now, Drunk, Never'?"
If you've never heard of it, it is what it sounds like. You evaluate passerby, deciding whether you'd do them now, when you are drunk, or never. The game's character depends on who the other participants are: if it's just friends, you get to critique your friends' taste; if, on the other hand, you play it in a group that includes someone you're actually interested in (and the feeling is mutual but as-of-yet unexplored), the game could escalate into some all-out battle-of-the-sexes psychological warfare. (Ok, so clearly it wasn't my first time playing the game.) Either way, it's damn entertaining.
So we spend the next hour walking, eating, and evaluating men. If I had to quickly estimate an average, I would say the percentages seem to work out this way: 3% now; 17% drunk; 80% never. (Only slightly different than a typical bell curve? I'd have to break down the "nevers" and see if they distribute like the typical bottom half of a bell. Yes, I've been brainwashed; everything is a GMAT question.) Are men quite so picky? My immediate reaction is "no way," but I don't want to underestimate you all.
The Australian Football League? The nows skyrocket. But I didn't get to see them as up-close-and-personal as I did those Italian soccer players.
Friday afternoon, I take a break from the website, the articles, the play, the book…I take a break from everything. My brother is watching tv. In the days before cable television, when he was still tiny enough to fit in my grandmother’s pushcart, my brother would often wake up at sunrise, flip the dials on the television, mess with the antenna, and find soccer. In Spanish.
We don’t speak Spanish.
He does not play soccer. But he’ll watch it. He’ll watch anything with a ball.
Friday afternoon, he’s flipping stations and discovers the Australian Football League. Well, he already knew it existed, so it wasn't technically a discovery for him...(He went off on a tangent about not confusing different sports, and rugby terminology, and "league" and "union" and random Australian slang. He then pulled out a Playstation 2 Rugby game and suggested I play it.)...but this sport had never previously entered my consciousness. I had no idea what I’d been missing.
I relate to sports on two different levels. First, there is the fact that I do enjoy doing insane things and very much enjoy watching other people do insane things. So: no protective gear, and people taking each other down? That's sick; that's sadistic; that's fun! And then there's the level that you just knew was coming: impressively athletic men running around, doing impressively athletic things? Yes please. This was a whole new league of men that I'd never seen before, and we were watching a round-up of the week's action. Which means, I got a quick look at nearly every team. Player for player, the Kangaroos might be the most attractive team in international sports. But, as I said, it was a quick look.
Competence--my girl friends and I have been on this particular topic for quite a while. As Kim said, "Competence is so sexy." It was so quotable I wrote it into one of my travel essays. And then Joy read it and said "Can we have t-shirts made of that?" There's nothing better than watching an attractive man do what he loves to do. Competently. Don't care what it is. If he loves it and he's good at it, it's exciting to watch.
So I call Kim. Immediately. "Remember all those soccer players we saw in Florence last year?" Friday was June 24--La Festa di San Giovanni, the feast day of Florence's patron saint, which is celebrated (of course) with soccer--calcio storico to be exact (that link is in Italian). It was one year to the day that we had discovered the parade of men who had returned to their city to play an historically violent game which pitted the each quarter of the city against the others. Though the game didn't actually happen last year, we got quite an eyeful anyway.
"That's a rhetorical question, right?"
"Well, have you ever seen the Australian Football League?"
She apparently has not.
I have one word. "Competence."
Fast forward: it's Sunday afternoon. We've just finished a read-through of the play; because our one male actor couldn't make rehearsal (though he did, in fact, return from Mexico), Sunday was all estrogen. We decide to go for a walk and get some food. Fifteen minutes into our wandering, Megan asks me, "have you ever played 'Now, Drunk, Never'?"
If you've never heard of it, it is what it sounds like. You evaluate passerby, deciding whether you'd do them now, when you are drunk, or never. The game's character depends on who the other participants are: if it's just friends, you get to critique your friends' taste; if, on the other hand, you play it in a group that includes someone you're actually interested in (and the feeling is mutual but as-of-yet unexplored), the game could escalate into some all-out battle-of-the-sexes psychological warfare. (Ok, so clearly it wasn't my first time playing the game.) Either way, it's damn entertaining.
So we spend the next hour walking, eating, and evaluating men. If I had to quickly estimate an average, I would say the percentages seem to work out this way: 3% now; 17% drunk; 80% never. (Only slightly different than a typical bell curve? I'd have to break down the "nevers" and see if they distribute like the typical bottom half of a bell. Yes, I've been brainwashed; everything is a GMAT question.) Are men quite so picky? My immediate reaction is "no way," but I don't want to underestimate you all.
The Australian Football League? The nows skyrocket. But I didn't get to see them as up-close-and-personal as I did those Italian soccer players.
Labels: on men, wanderlust, with the girls
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