tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6022375001701209500.post2721565062638182737..comments2023-06-15T08:46:27.898-07:00Comments on BELLABELL SOUNDINGS: Bellabellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14272996485620573797noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6022375001701209500.post-3048336317478420032007-03-23T15:33:00.000-07:002007-03-23T15:33:00.000-07:00uhhhhhh (to quote cb) ... you first knew me as alt...uhhhhhh (to quote cb) ... you first knew me as alto ... and i remain, altoreduxirenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09013768339843308839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6022375001701209500.post-24134667340981235342007-03-23T15:30:00.000-07:002007-03-23T15:30:00.000-07:00ahhhh, bella. was there anything quite as stultif...ahhhh, bella. was there anything quite as stultifying as the rules which governed basketball for "ladies" back in the days of our youth? and ohhhh those costumes of the absurd. <BR/><BR/>is it not refreshing to see that the wicked witch of women's basketball has finally resigned after 27 years of overt homophobia?<BR/><BR/>more words of wisdom and truthspeak, s'il vous plait.irenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09013768339843308839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6022375001701209500.post-7737144880822542272007-03-20T17:33:00.000-07:002007-03-20T17:33:00.000-07:00Cara thank you for reminding us to resist the stat...Cara thank you for reminding us to resist the status quo!Juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16667555186526203482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6022375001701209500.post-80809975498140752362007-03-14T19:58:00.000-07:002007-03-14T19:58:00.000-07:00Greetings,Excellent post, thank you. One of my fa...Greetings,<BR/><BR/>Excellent post, thank you. One of my favorite stories is beating two men in a row arm wrestling at the 'Metro' bar in San Francisco. I would have probably beat the third, but I didn't change arms. The first guy I beat had wagered that I would have to go on a date with him if he won. A reward for me in case I won was not discussed (such was his overweaning pride and assurance that he would best me). He was so ashamed for losing he slunk away from the bar. Note, this is a gay bar. I struck up a friendly conversation with him and his cronies while a friend of mine left me alone to make a phone call. I asked him if he was gay (since he and his friends did not look it). He said, "You'll have to arm wrestle me to find out." I suppose he meant because he was straight he would beat me. Obviously he is not familiar with the buffed and beefy "Castro Clone"--gay men who spend all day at the gym.<BR/><BR/>Whatever. Where's my prize?C. Caricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06779884322556835297noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6022375001701209500.post-75813511394957655462007-03-14T00:28:00.000-07:002007-03-14T00:28:00.000-07:00Ok, ok, as a post-Title Niner I promise no more se...Ok, ok, as a post-Title Niner I promise no more self-pity that I'm only just now getting to play full-contact tackle football on a women's team at the age of 34, which in male NFL football years is about like 64.Emilyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10506678625592788292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6022375001701209500.post-23925984268545953092007-03-13T21:47:00.000-07:002007-03-13T21:47:00.000-07:00I can’t resist offering a comment or two in respon...I can’t resist offering a comment or two in response to "Born Too Soon". I was born in the sixties, and entered the world of sports in the seventies, a full twenty years after the two-dribble half-court travesty once called women’s basketball (or did it go by a different name then?…perhaps “Maypole” or some other long-lost bizarre but expected female pastime?). The seventies, you say? 1978 brought us the first Women’s Professional Basketball League…surely things must have been so different by then! Well, change is always relative. The seventies, being most notable for following the sixties, should have afforded us fem-jocks more options than those of poor Bellabell’s fifties. Despite its timing – in the throes of the women’s liberation movement - we jocks remember that disco-burdened decade more as “pre-Title Nine” than as “post-revolutionary”. Our nifty two-toned (light blue and lighter blue) gym-suits had perhaps lost the elastic knees of those oppressive days on the outdoor cement court, but they were still one-piece in nature, and made of the new un-breathable polyester, the pinnacle of seventies ingenuity. This seemingly small fabric improvement simultaneously increased our body heat and also allowed for sweat to roll freely down our skin without the inconvenient underarm and v-shaped sweat marks that only cotton can absorb and properly display. But at least it wasn’t a skirt. In the Midwest in the seventies, girl’s sports were limited to those in which one wore a skirt - and basketball (polyester un-skirt). The feminine so blatantly disallowed in women’s athletics in the fifties served to define our options in the seventies: we could choose from field hockey, tennis, and softball (yes, they wore skirts too). On the east coast they could also play lacrosse, but we had never heard of that skirt-clad sport. As young tom-boys, we had no bras to burn, so instead we turned our pre-adolescent-feminist anger toward that other article of clothing that bound us metaphorically by male oppression: the hated, the dreaded, the un-jock-like skirt. I finally refused to wear a skirt and played right out in public in boy’s gym shorts in my final match at state tennis championships (don’t be too impressed…it was "my" final match not "the" final match). Surprisingly, I was not disqualified, and claimed a resounding triumph for female athletes everywhere. The effects were admittedly localized. My perceived ripple effect through the sports world may have actually been confined to a one-block radius of my high school, but it was a triumph nonetheless. That bold display of civil disobedience was followed by my refusal to dissect a frog, but that, as Bellabell says, is a story for another day. But alas, even post-Title Nine, we are struggling for athletic equality. Perhaps we sweat more and enjoy more comfortable uniforms and wow the crowds with slam dunks and three-point shots, but the powers that be still conspire to keep us in our place. Thirty years after my skirt-burning, I found myself standing on a podium with a bronze medal around my neck, at the 2002 Olympic Trials (for a winter sledding sport you’ve never heard of). Five other athletes stood with me: the Gold, Silver and Bronze medalists for the men, and the Gold and Silver medalists for the women. As the cameras flashed, my emotions reeled from the blatant display of gender inequality in sports. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just make out the ghost of the 1950’s Delicate Female, standing beside me on the podium that day, her eyes averted, her shoulders drooping. The top three men from trials were going to Salt Lake City, you see, to compete for the USA in the Olympics, but only the top two women were going. In 2002, those were the rules. As Bellabell says, “don’t ask; I don’t know why”. Wait, yes I do: he had a y-chromosome and I did not (no need to be crude and use other means to paint that picture, you get the point). My male bronze-medalist Olympic Trials counter-part was going to parade his y-chromosome into Rice-Eccles Stadium that February for opening ceremonies and then have a shot at Olympic Gold, while I was to watch those ceremonies with the rest of the world and then “forerun” the women’s race, a form of humiliation so scarring that I might as well have been wearing my light blue 1975 polyester gym suit, or even (spit-when-you-say-it) a skirt. Perhaps every girl jock is simply destined to echo those words at some point in her life, despite her version of a near-perfect fade-away jump-shot: “I was born too soon.”fasticehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14881371599588576466noreply@blogger.com