I'm sure she would rather be shopping. AMIRITE?

Anybody else feel like Friday FAIL often just turns into “What the eff did XX sports network/news outlet do now to piss off female sports fans”?  Which means I need to keep up with the trend right?

Well, this week CBC (The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), the oldest broadcasting network in Canada, announced that they were launching a new series called “While the Men Watch”.

The tagline: “Where Girl Talk is a Sport.”

The premise?  These women are “sports widows”.  They watch a hockey game and cameras forever document everything they say during the game.  Most of the conversations surround the awfulness of playoff beards and discussions of uniforms.  You know the stereotypical things that guys think that the majority of women think about during sporting events.  Because clearly we’re not thinking about strategy or some nonsense like that.

My beef with this is not that these women don’t like hockey and enjoy talking about clothing and other girly things instead of paying attention to a game.  Hell, I’m pretty sure I spent most of the Cardinals/Phillies game last night discussing - in length – with one of my girl friends on what would drive a person to get a neck tattoo and then turn around and get a mohawk (he must be insane, right?).

No, it’s that, for whatever reason, sports networks seem to think that by reiterating that when watching sports, women love to talk about clothing and how hot the players are and aren’t going to really follow the game like a man does that they’re going to get the casual female sports fan to watch sports.

Isn’t the whole “I hate that my husband watches so many sports and doesn’t pay attention to me” bit a little played out by now?

Wouldn’t the sports networks actually WANT these females to learn about the sport and start to love it?  Why would you just want to limit their exposure by having two women sit there while a game is on and talk of nothing except how disgusting a playoff beard is?  Why can’t they find a female sports fan who can do both:  talk about the actual sport/game AND throw in those “girly” comments that could make the game relateable to the casual fan?

A better premise might be to pair an avid female sports fan with a casual one.  Just a thought.  Personally, I love when some of my girl friends want to watch a game with me and ask me questions about what’s going on.  Some of the questions can seem pretty simple, but if you never had any one teach you about something, how are you magically supposed to know something?  Oh, and they also often ask really great questions.

It just seems that women have been placed into 2 categories:  Those of us who are REALLY into sports (which sports media doesn’t really need to target because we’re already watching/reading) and those who know absolutely nothing about sports.  There is an in-between whom they’re probably trying to market.  Is dumbing down things really the right approach?  Women aren’t stupid.

Again this is in no way an attack on the women of “While the Men Watch”.  They don’t have to like hockey (or any other sport for that matter).  They also can talk about whatever they want during a game.  I think they’re actually pretty funny.  (And clearly, I have no issue with spending time talking about how hot a particular player is…y’all have seen Monday Morning Motivation, right?)  It’s what they represent: Media giving up on actually trying to make women like the sport and taking the easy way out.

BONUS FAIL!

(Photo via @keithlaw.)

LOLLL.  Spellling is hard.