I took up tickets at a basketball game the other night. Despite sleet, there was a fair-sized crowd.
As the team entered the building, I made a colossal blunder. We at the gate were trying to figure out which were the visiting team, and which were just trying to sneak in for free. A bunch of girls came through. “Here are the cheerleaders,” I said, like an idiot. Their coach gave me a well-practiced drop-dead look and said with aspersion, “These are players.”
“Of course they are!” I babbled, realizing the damage had been done and there was nothing I could say to take back my ignorant remark.
Meanwhile it was Old School night at the gym. Former players from all years were recognized. This is only my second year at this school, which has a long and proud history, and I haven’t quite clued in on all the former athletes who are now teaching at their alma mater. Also I should say that I came from a town that had no organized women’s sports in the 1970s, and that I was into baseball and tennis back then anyway.
The teacher sitting next to me brought over a poster of the girls’ basketball team from 1968…both group photos and action shots from the yearbook…and there she was, her teenage self, looking confident, young, and quite lovely. The first thing I noticed was the hair, a perfectly lacquered bouffant worthy of Diana Ross and the Supremes.
“How did you get your hair to stay like that while you were playing?” I just had to ask. She told me the photo was staged. They got all dressed up and then dribbled a ball or faked a shot for the camera.
I had this sudden mental image of women dressed like stewardesses or girl-group singers or even drag queens, ultrafeminine, trying to run around a gym on high heels, squealing, more worried about breaking a nail than nailing a free throw. Before Title IX, how hard was it to be a girl and an athlete? How many different kinds of looking good were there? Was it a choice between beauty queen or tomboy?
Then I went and watched the girls’ game. Our team won and looked really good doing it. Their hair was braided or ponytailed and not a problem. Their hands were precise and strong, and they played hard and trusted each other to be there for no-look passes. Their brand of femininity is feline, sleek, but not fussy. Hair, nails and makeup are beside the point.
Of course the old-school ladies are to be commended for doing it all. Their hair probably did stay put as they managed to be pretty while playing the game. (I just found out they played half-court in those days, which probably helped keep up the ‘do). They went on to have these daughters that formed the WNBA and figured out how to play the game their way.
We look at our daughters and think about all we have had to learn about what it means to be a woman…then, now, and in years to come. We remember (barely) girdles, sleeping in giant plastic hair rollers, and eyebrow plucking, and how it was social death to be “butch,” and today we embrace sports bras, cornrows, and stretch jeans. And we cheer for these sporty girls who own their identities and own the game.
