Did anyone happened to catch Texas A&M’s newly released media guide for the 2009-2010 women’s basketball team? Or Florida State’s women’s basketball team website? Oh how times have changed since I was a college athlete.

The Seattle Times reporter Jayda Evans recently wrote about the newly redesigned women’s collegiate media guides and websites with an overt feminized message. One has to question if this is some kind of attempt to re-brand female basketball players based on widely accepted views that if you’re a female college athlete who plays basketball, odds are you’re a lesbian.

Evans’ article examines this seemingly new wave of over-feminizing female basketball players as a way to mask “butchness.” (Yes, even the WNBA has attempted to sex up/feminize its gals). Evans highlights Training Rules, a recent documentary film by Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker about former Penn State coach Rene Portland, who supposedly touted three rules for her female players: No drinking. No drugs. No lesbians.

Here’s the trailer clip from Training Rules:

Evans writes:

“The film is fascinating in its inside look at how homophobia has a choke hold on women’s sports in general. How it’s used against each other in recruiting, tagging programs as full of lesbians, and how schools/coaches over feminize themselves to not appear lesbian. All under the “innocent” veil of wanting to show women athletes can be “powerful, beautiful, strong and accomplished.” Or, to put it more simply, heterosexual, too.”

As a former high school basketball player and collegiate track athlete, I’ve experienced first-hand the turmoil female athletes (whether they identify as lesbian or not) endured at the hand of coaches and peer athletes. These same athletes, who were also my friends, were labeled as “butch” and “lesbos” and misjudged accordingly because of what others assumed or “saw.”

In high school, I was called a “man” a “horse” and a “dinosaur” for the way I appeared on the basketball court and track. My legs were huge. I’d curse when I got upset. I was faster than all the other girls (and some guys). And at times, I walked around with a head scarf wrapped around my head because 1) it was hella comfortable during track meets and basketball games, and 2) it was hella cold in Cleveland, Ohio. The folks who called me a man, horse, or dinosaur learned somewhere that if the fastest girl or best long jumper in the state didn’t act (or hell, look) like a lady or wasn’t girly in nature and in stature that she, that I, must be the opposite of that; manly, animal-like, and monstrous. Some people’s logic is the epitome of #epicfail.

The sexualization and over-feminization of female athletes is nothing new, and neither is the ridicule female athletes experience because who they are and how they act don’t measure up to another person’s standard of womanhood. I share Evans’ position that dressing up these women for a website or media guide is offensive because it works to undermine the ability each one of these athletes have worked to master since childhood. And I’ll take it a step further; the fact that these universities are promoting an overtly feminized “illusion” is asinine and creepy (Texas A&M coach Gary Blair adjusting his tie in the picture above is just all kinds of weird).

Whether these women like to wear dresses or not, or whether they identify as homosexual or heterosexual isn’t the issue. The problem is disconnect: What does wearing a silky prom dress circa 1999 or posing in a sultry manner while wearing a black cocktail dress have to do with how many boards these women can grab per game or how accomplished they are on and off the court? What does one thing have to do with the other? If my school or coach would’ve ever suggested that I pose wearing a dress or high heels for the sports media guide/website so as means to appear “powerful, beautiful, strong, and accomplished,” I would’ve laughed hysterically in their face and redirected them to my stellar grade point average, field goal percentage stats, and scholarship awards instead.

Don’t play me for a fool.

When the game means more than wind sprints and foul shots. When it takes on a different connotation. When it becomes as much about how these women look as about how they play and hustle on the court. When young girls, hoping to one day play for schools like Penn State, Texas A&M, Florida State, or the WNBA, think that part of being a powerful, beautiful, strong, and accomplished female athlete means looking good in a dress or high heels, then society—touting tolerance in the guise of fear and cowardice—has officially failed its daughters.

The day we start asking our men’s teams to pose for media guides and websites in Rambo outfits with machine guns strapped to their backs to appear, you know, “manly” instead of appearing like, you know, basketball players is when you’ll catch me on the first flight to a desert island. Ok, maybe that was kinda an exaggeration of epic proportions, but arguably not as ridiculous as female basketball players posing for “glamour shots” in collegiate sports media guides.

head desk

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is a film about an obese, sixteen year-old black girl growing up in Harlem. She is illiterate, has a really mean mama who beats, rapes, and berates her. She has two children by her father, who also infected her with HIV. Think Color Purple. After getting kicked out of junior high for being pregnant (and not for being too damned old) she arrives at an alternative school where she makes friends with other disadvantaged colored youth and finds herself by reading and writing. Think Lean on Me.

What Sapphire gives us in the book version of Precious is a long ways away from the politically safe propaganda film served up by Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, and the film’s director Lee Daniels. While the book proved to be a nuanced and critical look at failing school systems, drug-ravaged communities, child abuse, and alternative education, the film is completely sanitized of the book’s radical politics. There is no Farrakhan, there is no dreadlocked lesbian instructor, and there is not one crack addict. Instead we are steered towards conservatism through anti-welfare signage, black leader montages, and gospel. As time passes we should just assume Precious’ personal growth is because she has both seen and read (never mind she’s illiterate) the anti-welfare signs (even though they are typically hung well above her head) and that the church choir she discovers upon leaving home foreshadows things getting better. All things are possible through the Lord. Self-preservation and Christianity, popular themes for both Winfrey and Perry, are force-fed to the audience without evidence of their real-world utility. In the book we are confronted with Precious’s simultaneous disdain for and veneration of white people. Her politics are fueled not only by her own deep sense of self-hatred, but also by Farrakhan’s political ideology that informs her views on whites, drug addicts, and homosexuals. Perhaps Daniels’ team didn’t like Farrakhan’s tendency to point the finger, thus Precious loses this reference point. As a result, her values and behaviors appear more the result of improper upbringing and less grounded in deliberate political ideology. Think The Moynihan Report.

While the film may be tamer and less violent than its written counterpart, it plays directly on the audience’s innate negative reaction to things big and black and then fails to challenge us to think otherwise. Instead, our most vile beliefs about dark skin and obesity are reinforced through dramatic intercuts of boiling pigs feet, chicken theft (Precious steals a 10-piece chicken meal before her first day of alternative school), and glistening black skin. Just when we’ve had enough cursing, beating, and raping, we are all, along with Precious, rescued by light, pretty, asexual, racially ambiguous people.

The juxtaposition of light and dark—and by extension good and bad—holds steady throughout the film. It is Precious’ white principal Ms. Lichtenstein who delivers the news about the alternative school, while the mother pushes welfare in the background. From here Precious proceeds to meet Mrs. Weiss (played by Mariah Carey), whom she openly questions about her racial identity, and who in true Mariah form opts to be everybody. And last, but not least, there is Ms. Rain, the glowingly light-skinned lesbian instructor who wears turtlenecks, high-laced flat boots, drinks red wine, and plays Scrabble with her equally femme, racially ambiguous partner. As a result, a film that works so hard to offer a path away from the stereotypical welfare-dependent, absentee parent, high school drop out, only works to reinforce negative color politics. By the end of the film, we are no longer bearing witness to Precious’s fantasies (in which she is white or receiving affection from someone white), but are now active participants in Precious’s dreamscapes.

Finally, something real from Rihanna. After months of silence about her ex-boyfriend’s violent attack on her last February, Rihanna finally put her true emotions into her music and gave the world a piece of her pain and internal conflict.

The song “Russian Roulette” is most likely an analogy to her troubled relationship with Chris Brown. The song and video evoke chills and emotion. For the first time, the pop princess provided us with real soul, using her music to express the struggle that she, as well as many others, have had to endure.

The eerie sound of the electric guitar solo screeching sorrow at the opening of the song blended with the heart beat like drums that give the mystical quality of human life to the music, contribute to the dramatic mood of the song.

The verses ‘’I’m terrified but I’m not leaving . . . so just put the trigger” seem to describe her fear of leaving a harmful situation even though the cost could be her life.

“I get a scary thought that he’s here /means he never lost. As my life flashes before my eyes. So many won’t get the chance to say good bye/but its too late to think of the value of my life.”

It’s likely this verse relates directly to how she was feeling the night she was in the car with Chris Brown, struggling to get him to stop, as he relentless beat her nearly unconscious.The lyrics are a metaphor for the struggles one endures during a violent relationship. People identify domestic violence as physical abuse they often forget what a mental FUCK it is! Similar to playing a game of Russian Roulette.

As far as the controversy over this artistic expression promoting suicide, throw that out the door. If anything, this song provides troubled young people with a musical outlet for suppressed emotions and a way of knowing they are not alone in their experiences. I’m calling this one Russian Relief!—Silent