Abby Wambach's dramatic stoppage-time header, Hope Solo's amazing reflexes, and an incredible 10-women team effort saw the United States Women's National Team triumph over the anti-soccer tactics of Brazil and capture the nation's interest.
Unfortunately, no matter how many heroics these women perform there will be one thing that they can't triumph over.. the blatant sexism that exists in our media. It's nothing new, but just like American soccer bashing, the mainstream sports media just can't seem to get enough of it.
Today's attack on what should be a seminal moment in American soccer history comes from the site, "Tauntr" (which I won't even link to to give them the page views they crave), who's sole mission seems to be make bad jokes that piss off everyone.
"Tauntr is a new brand in sports entertainment that stands for original,
edgy, humorous and intelligent multi-media content. Games, videos,
animations, images, articles, comics and taunting tools are distributed
through platforms such as the web, mobile devices, print, radio, TV,
merchandise and live events. Our very unique, rapid content creation
company is comprised of professional writers, animators and designers as
well as a game development team. Tauntr content is designed to evoke
emotion, spur debate and achieve viral activity."
There will be a few of your that tell us that we've played right into their hands with our outrage, but
we tend to fall for the trick a lot when the lamestream (yeah Sarah Palin... we stole your word!) sports media trots out their tired attacks on soccer. Being the promoter of American soccer and soccer in America also comes the responsibility of being its defender. An attack on soccer, men's or women's, is worth a sturdy rebuking.
Tauntr in their juvenile "Beavis and Butthead" sense of humor decided to make "propaganda posters" to help promote women's soccer and make even help them get the "right to vote". Very clever. We're still making voting jokes 90 years later.
Here are the posters in reverse order of how they're on the Tauntr website.
Exhibit C
We'll only half mention what a shitty Photoshop job this is. So eager to make the joke that they don't even try to do it with any creativity. Women's soccer is only an opportunity to see someone take off their shirt. Go to a beach.
Exhibit B
Sigh. An accomplished coach gets reduced to being compared to a man in the looks department.
Exhibit A
At first this one wasn't so offensive to us. We used the original "Rosie the Riveter" image in
our post yesterday explaining our "lust-to-love" affair with the Lady Nats. After seeing the rest of the posters, we realized the entire project was meant to be demeaning, it hit home that this one wasn't even celebrating the women's strength but mocking them that it took until the closing minutes of the match to get the job done.
Fine... Tauntr rolled out a bunch of tired stereotypes about women and soccer. We get that. This is their shtick. We're at the all-star break for baseball and basketball and football are in the off-season and locked out. They're desperate for content.
If they REALLY wanted to ACTUALLY be edgy as they claim in their "about us" they could've made propaganda posters that DID promote the women's game. The Abby Wambach poster would've been epic without the cheeky parenthesis, the Alex Morgan and Hope Solo poster should read "We're more than just a bunch of pretty faces... we'll kick your ass", and if the graphic artist dropped the "who looks like a man" line from the Pia Sundhage poster it might have been a legitimate criticism of the men's team.
Opportunities lost for a quick, cheap joke.
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Sunday, November 20
