It does not require a great deal of imagination to work out the marketing strategy of the Lingerie Football League (LFL), which opened its debut season yesterday.
The underwear-clad female players are hoping, however — probably in vain — to be taken seriously.
The LFL, born out of the commercial success of the “Lingerie Bowl,” a half-time show of women in scanty outfits broadcast during the half-time break in the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl, has 10 teams competing in seven-a-side full-contact American football, with players dressed in sports bras and the tiniest of shorts.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The branding is blatant — the teams have names such as the San Diego Seduction, Dallas Desire and Los Angeles Temptation — and their Web sites and promotional material are more akin to those for NFL cheerleaders than genuine professional sports.
The league’s founder, Mitch Mortaza, has described the venture as “Disneyland for football fans,” but those taking part say they are serious about the sport and about winning.
“I think it is eye candy for one, but it is also football and it is real,” says Kaley Tuning, wide receiver with the Miami Caliente, who opened the season yesterday at the Chicago Bliss.
“There were tryouts for the team and if you couldn’t play you didn’t make the cut,” she said.
“I’ve seen people say it is a joke and it is degrading and it makes me mad. We are real athletes, for them to not take us seriously, well I say wait till you see us play,” she added.
Watching the Caliente practice, at a sports facility in the suburbs of Miami under the charge of former college football quarterback Bob Hewko, the strange clash of glamor girls and sport is quickly evident.
The training is taken seriously and the players work hard and look intense in the huddle, but a Gucci handbag takes its place alongside the helmets on the sideline and one player, who like many is also a model, worries that she has picked up scratches ahead of photo shoot in a few days’ time.
Hewko concedes that looks played a major part in the selection of the squad, but, like everyone involved in the venture, says fans will see real football.
“I was surprised at the level — the level of talent. They can run, they can catch and we have a quarterback that can throw the football 60 yards,” he said.
Thousands of women play organized games of American Football across the US in amateur teams wearing conventional uniforms, and receiving little major commercial interest.
Miami Fury has been a member of the Independent Women’s Football League for all of its 10-year existence and the team’s co-owner Gayla Harrington said she was initially uneasy about the formation of the Lingerie team largely due to the attire.
However, with the Caliente recruiting two of her players, she said the team had become more of a sports project than she initially imagined.
“It is more athletic, a little more serious than I originally thought,” she said, adding that she would support the team in their home games, but was unsure whether the LFL would help her to generate backing for her own team.
“It could be a positive or a negative. It could be that people still don’t take [women’s football] seriously, but then again it might help,” she said.
Feminist writer Courtney Martin has no doubts over whether the LFL will help women.
“This is objectification at its most pernicious — give women an opportunity to participate in a sport that they haven’t had the chance to do for pay and publicly previously, but only let them do it if they are stereotypically pretty and willing to do it in their underwear,” she wrote on Web site feministing.com.
So why not simply play the game in conventional dress?
“But then half the people wouldn’t watch,” Tuning said.
“Sure, some people aren’t going to watch because they think it is degrading or they don’t want to watch it with their kids,” she said. “But then there is going to be a group of people who watch it because of [the attire] and they might say: ‘Wow — this is real, athletic and they know what they are doing.’”
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