Strollerderby : title IX

The Longshots: Girls Can Play Football . . . and Make You Cry

JeanneSager — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:29:00 GMT

If somebody just gives them the boost, kids can forget what "other people think." It's one of those "messages" that comes blaring out of the newest "kid as sports phenom/role model to America" films to hit DVD just in time for Christmas.

"The Longshots," based on the true story of the Jasmine Plummer, the first girl to lead a boys Pop Warner football team to the national championships, got so-so reviews when it was making the rounds of the theatres over the summer. But I've always had a thing for those stories of the girls playing "boys" sports, and when you're talking the real deal . . . a shy, smart girl who simply has physical talents . . . who cares that the director used to bounce around a stage telling the world he did it all for the "Nookie?"

The movie puts Keke Palmer in the role of Plummer, the now teenaged Illinois high school student who told a Chicago-area paper over the summer, "I was always taught to go after what I wanted and to be the best I could be. To me, it was just me doing what I loved and having fun with it."

Palmer as Plummer is the kind of kid you root for - even through the somewhat predictible plot points that these girl playing a boy's game films have to hit (getting blitzed by a pissed off male teammate during practice until she shot the ball right at his nuts? come on, you sort of saw that coming). Her uncle, played by Ice Cube, comes out of his shell from the dopey layabout with a fondness for forty-ounce cans of beer from the local convenience store into the guy who finds himself again by helping a child change her life. Preditable? Aaaach, it still made me weepy.

But what really makes "The Longshots" worth watching - and the story worth hearing - is the fact that this story came to light in 2003. Remember - the real Plummer is still a teenager in 2008. The film tells a story of her as a pre-teen, with Palmer sporting sweet braids and getting stood up for a game of double dutch by the class mean girls.

It took until 2003 for a Pop Warner quarterback at national levels not to need a jock strap.Why? Because Title IX isn't working? No, girls have to be allowed on the teams of their male classmates these days, and as a reporter for the local paper, I've written about them. Girls on the wrestling team. Girls on the football team. In both of the cases here in my area, the coaches were from the old school (one was my father's assistant football coach in high school people . . . it doesn't get much more old school). Those coaches' biggest concern? Making sure EVERYTHING was equal - equal playing time, equal training time. They weren't that concerned about coaching girls. So, no, I wouldn't put the blame on the coaches anymore - at least not all of them.

In the special features of "The Longshots" DVD, Plummer's real uncle revealed the people making the biggest fuss about his niece making directions from inside the huddle were the other mothers. This wasn't part of the movie or manufactured by Fred Durst to move his story along. We've still got the Mommy police out in full force, making parents second guess what they allow their kids to dream and do.

Remember the "what will the neighbors think?" argument from your mother, when you wanted to stay out until midnight on a Saturday night? It's alive and well, and holding back our kids for no reason other than the jibber-jabbering that parents love to do about other parents. We can give our little girls trucks and send our little boys to twirl around the backyard with tutus, but someone else can always make them question it.

It's our job to help them ignore it.

Image: Amazon

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National Organization for Women President Endorses Palin

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:10:00 GMT

Remember that video of Sarah Palin misquoting Madeline Albright at a rally in California? Well, the faux feminism gets more and more outrageous. Guess who introduced Palin? Shelly Mandell, the president of L.A. National Organization for Women, who has endorsed the McCain/Palin ticket.

I attended the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. back in 2004, which Mandell organized. It was one of the most unifying, uplifting experiences of my life, to be surrounded by thousands of women peacefully demanding reproductive freedom. The fact that Mandell would go on to endorse a staunchly anti-choice presidential ticket is not the only reason her judgment should be seriously questioned. Jezebel has done some digging on Mandell and it turns out that she’s got some skeletons in her closet, including helping to get a fellow NOW rising star arrested.

In her introduction for Palin, Mandell pointed out that Palin will be a champion for Title IX because she plays sports. I'm all for Title IX, but will having an athletic woman in office help other women when her running mate opposes equal pay, as McCain has already done? Will the fact that Palin played basketball in college help women when she fights to make abortion illegal even in the case of incest or rape?

If it were up to Mandell, the National Organization for Women would need to change its name to the National Organization for Powerful People with Female Genitalia. Fortunately, it’s not up to Mandell. The California NOW president has issued a statement that says, in part, “I can assure you that there is no local or state affiliate of NOW, including LA NOW, which endorses or supports the McCain/Palin ticket.”

Photo: Jezebel

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High School Cheerleaders Upset About Having To Do Their Job

Patti — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Cheerleaders in upstate New York are begrudgingly following a new policy laid down after a parent filed a discrimination suit with the US Department of Education under Title IX. Their tragic fate? Having to cheer for the girls' basketball team. Oh, the horror! Over half the squad at Whitney Point High School quit after the policy was enacted, and the remaining squad members only cheer at home games now instead of traveling with the boys' team as they had in seasons past.

Schools in Maryland and Massachusetts have cheerleaders-for-everyone policies, and a group of P.E. teachers in California made a call to arms for equal moral support for girls' teams last spring.

In New York, the changes are being implemented with little grace or joy. The boys' basketball team misses their cheering section when they're on the road. The girls' team isn't entirely on board with being cheered for in the first place. And the cheerleaders themselves are making the best of it, but as Whitney Point cheer captain Katelin Maxson notes, it's a lot of work to decorate twice as many lockers on game day with a third of the cheerleaders they had before. “We joined sports to have fun, but they’re basically taking the fun away and giving us more work,” she said. “The interest is down so much, and it’s going to keep dropping, until there’s no cheerleading anymore.”