Recently, there’s been some questioning related to the outfits of the
female dancing teams within the NBA. An issue was raised with the Dallas
Mavericks Dance Team after they performed in ultra-revealing outfits during
Monday night’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers. Hyper sexualized women,
provocatively dancing to ‘cheer’ on a basketball team doesn’t make a lot of
sense, but I can agree that it does put people in seats. Besides being used as
a marketing tool, are these women being objectified as strictly sex objects? What exactly do the dancer's think of themselves? During
our discussion in class, we identified the change in attitudes regarding sex
and vulgarity within the past of couple decades. We all can agree that things
have changed, but the real question is, how far will this change go? Will a
line ever be drawn? How skimpy can cheerleaders/dancers outfits get before it
can be considered vulgar?
A.F. KIN 577
I definitely agree with some points that you make there, such as how much is too much. It seems as though every decade the bar for what is deemed appropriate gets moved higher and higher. When will it stop? It might never stop, but maybe the better question is when will these women stop? I think it's quite easy to quickly blame organizations for these promiscuous outfits but I think we really need to be thinking about why these women are ok with it? The women who wear these outfits are making a conscious decision to display promiscuity in public; most of them probably like the outfits and the way the look. The question even digs further to what kind of role models are we putting forth? At the end of the day it's their choice. I will have to be honest if there was a team out there who displayed men in scantly clad outfits, I would be a season ticket holder. And as ignorant as that sounds, it's just the way the human mind works.
ReplyDeleteJenny Higgs KIN 577
I think this topic is very interesting, because it is something that is becoming more and more common. On the positive outlook, the fact that the Dallas Mavericks Dance Team’s uniforms raised such a controversy shows that some people are challenging this hyper-sexualization of women. In the NHL, some teams have what are known as “Ice Girls.” They wear tops that expose their midriffs and their cleavage, and if they are not in skin tight pants, they are wearing short skirts. The job of these Ice Girls is to pick up the loose ice on the rink. Unfortunately, they are there for more reasons than just that. The Bleacher Report released an article titled “50 Hottest Ice Girls of the NHL Playoffs.”
ReplyDeletehttp://bleacherreport.com/articles/1148928-50-hottest-ice-girls-of-the-nhl-playoffs
Personally, I don’t think the NHL Playoffs have anything to do with how attractive the Ice Girls are. It’s upsetting that young girls and boys going to hockey games are exposed to this. They learn that it’s okay to objectify women, and that women (or at least some) are okay with it.
Sarah Valenti
KIN 577