The view that is commonly represented from woman playing American Football was commonly seen as irregular, uncommon, and not seen as important interest in many viewpoints due to the gender normality of the common intertest inside the realm of sports in the 1890’s through 1912. During this time (and still commonly seen as a prominent figure in the sport of American Football today), American Football was seen as a masculinity sport that embodied power, muscle growth, forceful nature and war like mindsets when playing the game that we love here in America today. As these characteristics are very true in the behavior of the sporting game, it is presented a negative look upon woman during the late 80’s and early 90’s just because of the rare opportunity that the game presented to woman in the playing field. As often as the stereotypical viewpoints of a gender class controlling game is seen often as not providing support or opportunities for woman to embrace American Football, History by far says well the opposite in the terms of Female involvement in the sport. According to the beginning of the article, Taylor writes that “while there may be no reason to suspect many women were playing football, it does not mean they were missing out. Gertrud Pfister has written recently in Touchdown: An American Obsession about the history of women playing American football. This fifteen-page outline of women’s history as players from the
1890s to the present day provides a broad overview but lacks the depth that the subject requires. A recent journal article analyzing media representation of female American football players between 1934 and 1979 proffers a starting point for further, more detailed, investigation.” Inside the introduction of Taylors article, it describes a setting where though there may be little reason to suspect woman were playing football, it does not mean this activity in womans sports were not taking place throughout America and around the globe. The rules upon these early woman football events were seen to depict Infantilization, as Bruce explains that media often describes ‘adult sportswomen as girls, young ladies or only by their first names’. This was done to promote non-sport-related aspects of “the practice of highlighting areas of sports women’s lives such as family, personal life, appearance and personality at
the expense of attention to their sporting performance’. As this is seen to resemble downgrading forms of resentment in rationalizing womans sports to their figures in the home front of gender roles, it was still used to describe the reality that woman sports even through masculinity games were evident to be happening during this time period of history. The rules that depicted woman’s involvement in Football of America was presented in ways that pushed norms for woman as “‘sportswomen don’t matter’, ‘compulsory heterosexuality and appropriate femininity’, and ‘despite conventional wisdom about the sports that middle- and upper-class women played, some took part in the masculine American football'” Though these rules were clearly set in stone of society, it imbodied and overly proved woman’s involvement in masculine sports as of the impact in American Football.
-Joshua Joyce
