What Could You Possibly Know About Sports, Little Woman?

(Forgive my image, I thought it was hilarious….and proved my point all at the same time.)


One of my biggest pet peeves is being dismissed. By this I mean having my thoughts or opinions cast off because the person hearing them thinks that I don't know what I'm talking about. What really bothers me is when men do it. Most of the time, it has an air of "Aww, how cute! It's a woman talking about ______." Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a football junkie. I eat, sleep and breathe NFL football (and NCAA football for the sole purpose of NFL scouting). I watch SportsCenter and NFL Total Access religiously. I also follow several teams on the Bleacher Report (link). Bottom line, I know my stuff.

Let's face it, most of my sports related conversations are with men because a lot women just aren't into sports (or they love basketball…which makes it worse). So the problem always comes when I'm talking about sports with men. No matter what I say men look at me like "what could you possibly know about sports, little woman?" This irritates me to no end!! Then not only do they question my sports knowledge, they start talking down to me like I'm a child. Being the person that I am, I never back down from a challenge. I just go there with them until they are blue in the face. What I've found out from these encounters is that there are two types of men.

1. A LOT of men that pretend to be football fans. They would rather discredit me as a woman than let me continue to chop their balls off while I kill them with my superior knowledge. These are the men that watch a few episodes of Sports Center so that they can be considered one of guys but don't know anymore than what Skip Bayless, Chris Berman and Mel Kiper told them. Deep down inside they are embarrassed that a woman knows more than them. These men make me laugh because I love to sniff out a fraud.
2. Male sports fans are generally sexist. Point blank. Period. These are the easiest to win over though. A woman with extensive sports knowledge is considered to be somewhat of a unicorn. Our purpose is generally served by making their lives hell when they are watching the game and making the best pre-game snacks (sorry ladies…..that's what some of us do *shrugs*). After 30 minutes of blank stares, I will have new male friend.

Boo Thang loves my love of football and stimulates my sports mind all the time. That I am thankful for….or he would have to go…..

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PepsiMax: When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

Did anybody catch the Super Bowl on Sunday night? Of course you did. It was the most watched TV program in history! I watch for the love of the game, but lots of people just watch it for the commercials. There was one commercial for PepsiMax that caught my attention. If you missed it, here it is for your enjoyment.



I laughed my ass off at this commercial. To me, it remains one of the best ones of the night (....well second to the guy sucking the Doritos cheese off the other man's fingers....but I digress). After I stopped laughed, I peeped in on Twitter and the reactions to that commercial were through the roof! The main thing that I kept seeing was that the commercial was racist and stereotypical. I thought my followers were on crack. Then I read all my favorite blogs yesterday and see the same thoughts.

Here is my impression of the commercial: Wife wants to keep Husband healthy. She does everything in her power to make sure he makes the correct food choices.....which in this case came down to down beating him up a little bit. Wife sees him looking too hard at another woman and tries to smash him with the can but ends up knocking other woman out. Husband sees that the police are probably coming and will Rodney King the shit out of them takes Wife by the hand and gets them the hell out of there before trouble comes. And they say Black love is dead. I thought it was hilarious. But there are SO many different nit picky things that others saw that I didn't....so I will address them here.

1. This commercial was full of stereotypes!! Ummm....yea. So is life. The way that most humans deal with people different from ourselves is based on stereotypes. Is it right? I don't know. What I do know is that stereotypes don't come out of thin air. They are based in part on the way a group of people act. If you don't want the stereotype, then you must work harder to fight it. Art tends to imitate life, so they had to get the inspiration for this commercial from somewhere.
2. Why does Pepsi have to act like all black women are angry?! Didn't you read the above statement? Art tends to imitate life. Case in point: This commercial was meant to be funny, but what was the overwhelming response from two-thirds of black women? To get very angry. Yep...I said it. There is a major problem when the only images that we see of black women in mainstream media are the angry kind. BUT we can't be mad when something goes mainstream that we celebrate in like company. One of my favorite bloggers, RiPPa, said it best: "don't we celebrate these images ourselves when we patronize NAACP Image Award nominated shows like, oh... The Real Housewives of Atlanta?" We love to watch Tasha Mack on The Game, the mom from Everybody Hates Chris, NeNe Leakes, and most of the women in Tyler Perry's plays and movies. We can't love it when it is made by us THEN turn around and hate it when white people see it and make it into a commercial. We all know that angry black sistah. She's your mom, best friend, lady at the church, boss.....and if you don't personally know any, it is probably you. To beat a stereotype, you have to stop being that stereotype.
3. Why did he have to make googly-eyes at the white woman? Why do they think that the epitome of beauty is a blue-eyed, blond haired white woman? Again....I wasn't paying that much attention to the race of the woman that jogged up. Since we are talking about stereotypes, the woman in that ad would have tried to hit her man upside the head with that can if the jogging chic was white, black, Asian, Latino, or a polka-dotted alien. Would it have been that big of a deal if all the people in the commercial were black? Probably not. The real issue to me is not that mainstream society sees the white woman as the epitome of beauty. The issue is that Black women have a hard time accepting interracial dating. The fact that a Black man could be attracted to a white woman still makes a lot of black women angry (there's that word again!). It still blows my mind to hear otherwise levelheaded black women go totally off (stereotype alert) when they see a black man out and enjoying the company of a white woman. It's 2011. We are supposed to be in a post-racial society (that phrase still makes me gag). Interracial dating should not still be something that sets us off (there I go again). I can admit that it used to bother me to see it, but once I got older and wiser I realized that it is hard to find love out there. I hope people find it with what ever color makes their hearts glad. 

The moral of the story is.....lighten up. The ad was supposed to be funny. I'm sure that PepsiCo didn't set out to make this commercial a conversation piece. They just wanted to make 111 million people laugh. Well Pepsi....ha ha. I liked it.
 

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The Game vs. Let's Stay Together: Do We Really Support Healthy Relationships?

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 was a very monumental day for many people in the Black community because it meant the long awaited return on The Game on BET. That show has a cult following. I can honestly say that I was one of those 7.7 million people who were pins and needles to see the continuation of the story of Melanie, Derwin, Tasha, Malik, Kelly, and Jason. Then the train wreck show came on. BET (and of course the original writers who they said all came back....that fact that I question seriously) managed to turn The Game into fried chicken, Black & Milds, and a Maury paternity test show. Thanks! The show really broke down to these simple themes.

1. Melanie is still traumatized by the fact that Derwin has a baby with his ex-girlfriend, Janay. She goes behind his back and gives the baby a DNA test. Finds out the baby doesn't belong to Derwin. Derwin, who's attached to said 2 year old, doesn't want to know the results because he loves the baby. Melanie tells him anyway. Melanie then finds out that the test was wrong and holds back that information from Derwin. Classic Melanie move.
2. Malik is sleeping with his boss's wife. Steals his cousin's girlfriend from him because he wouldn't drive Malik home.
3. Kelly and Jason, still divorced, have issues because Kelly is using her divorce as a way to gain fame by painting Jason in a negative light.

And the crowd goes wild!!!! I was on Twitter during commercial breaks and noticed that my whole timeline was about the show. It was going so fast that I could barely keep up with tweets.

Meanwhile, BET premiered a brand new show, Let's Stay Together right after The Game. Let's Stay Together is described by BET,

"Love has no limit or boundaries when it's real. LET'S STAY TOGETHER is an updated, urban - romantic comedy that takes an unconventional look into the lives of five young, ambitious African Americans. The series centers on a married couple, an engaged couple and a single sister who all take courageous steps as they navigate life, love and matrimony."

My timeline became totally different when the show changed. Tweets were coming in by the dozens that resembled this: "Changes channel." "Let's Stay Together, January 11, 2011 - January 11, 2011." "I'm not even going to give this show a chance." This bothered me not only for the obvious reason (you know the reason why major networks don't give Black shows a chance is because we don't), but because of what it symbolizes to me. Why are we so quick to tune into a show that portrays us as drama-filled, relationship challenged people but don't want to give out attention to a show that paints us in a better light. I watched Let's Stay Together. It's actually a pretty good show. The couples have their issues, but they are solved within 30 minutes in responsible ways. The show balances comedy with issues that are apparent in every relationship.

In discussing this with the boyfriend and another close friend of mine, a bigger question came to mind. Does the way we allow ourselves to be portrayed in entertainment affect our real-life interactions? The answer seems to be a resounding "yes!" Some times it hurts me to my core to hear some women talk about how Melanie is always right and is always the victim. These are women that emulate that same behavior in real life. Sleeping with random men to get over the one they truly love. Holding men to an impossible standard that they wouldn't be able to handle if tables were turned. Being selfish. Playing the victim. Taking drama to their man's place of employment. They do all of these things thinking that it is right and it is validated on TV. These are the same women that are struggling to figure out why they can't keep a man. I guess they ignore the fact that Melanie is barely able to hold on to Derwin. I'm an equal opportunity stone thrower, so I am not leaving out the men in this equation. Men look at Malik and think it is okay to still live with their mother and be too dependent on their mothers well past 30. Or being so cocky that you think it is okay to sleep with your boss's wife for revenge. Or hurting your loved ones because they refuse to hold you up in stupid behavior is the way to go. Malik may be the quintessential playboy on TV, but some men haven't figured out that this is why the world is a lonely place for them as well.

I think that we are doing ourselves a disservice by not viewing and celebrating healthy Black love. With all the studies out there that show that a lack of examples of healthy relationships being the reason why there are so many single parent families and so on and so forth, why shouldn't we help keep Let's Stay Together on the air. What do you think? Do the antics of characters on TV validate unhealthy ways of dealing with relationship situations?

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New Age Dating Issues.....or Why I'm Glad I'm Not Single

The name of the above video is called "Black Dating in a Hip Hop Society." I found this video while I was peeping around on Tumblr. I must say a HUGE thank you to eyedlethoughts for posting this. It truly made my day.

On to the matter at hand. While this video/cartoon was funny as hell to me, it does highlight something that is very real in the black community. Though I may be crucified for this, I am going to be VERY real in this moment. Here goes: SOME BLACK WOMEN GIVE US ALL A BAD RAP WITH THE DECISIONS THEY MAKE WHILE DATING!! *whew* It's out there now. (Who gone check me, boo?)

So this video/cartoon starts off with a woman and her boyfriend. He is trying to take her out. After making excuses, she tells him that she is living a lie and doesn't want to date him anymore. This is the following exchange:

Girl: I need a boss, I need a baller, I need a man like Lil' Wayne.

Dude:Yea...I don't have a lot of money, but I am in graduate school trying to improve my life so that I can improve yours.

She goes into great detail on how she needs and deserves Gucci bags and diamonds and how she can't be with him because he doesn't give her that. Towards the end of the video, the guy tells her that he is glad that he sees her true colors because he was going to propose that night and he just won the lottery. At this point, she tries to turn it around on him....telling him he must be cheating since he doesn't want to fight her and begging him not to leave.

Today, women are always talking about how there are no good men left. In actuality, I wonder how many men think the same way. People in general, not just women, are not willing to work and grind for the things that they need. They want someone else to do the work so that they can ride their coattails. So this video makes sense to me, no matter how sad the effects. Hip hop videos give the fantasy that some rapper/singer with lots of money is gonna scoop you up from your job at MickeyDs, tell you he has money to blow and you can throw it in the bag because you can have whatever you like. There are so many of those videos out there that I believe young girls actually are waiting for somebody to "save" them and buy them lots of high end trinkets.

I, personally, want Coach bags, Louboutins, diamonds, and fast cars. Isn't every woman's dream to have really nice things? My goal to get these things is/was very simple:  go to college, graduate, get accepted to law school, graduate, pass the bar exam......wait til the money starts pouring in. I want to get these for myself! I don't want to be a Twitter trending topic to get nice things (i.e., #hoesfuckingfor Louis bags). Many times great men are passed over for the dumbest things. I would take a man any day that is going to school with a good work ethic and life plan who is currently broke over a man making fast money who isn't guaranteed to buy me the same things 6 months from now because he might be in jail. I have a lot of male friends who are actively weeding out the women who just want to benefit from their hard work. They recognize within 2 weeks when a woman wants them or just wants what they have. The ones out there trying to see how much they can get are put on the booty call list and are treated like crap.....immediately. Not going to let men totally off the hook though. There wouldn't be nearly as many of these women out there had it not been for SOME men out there trying to buy love and pussy. Yea.....I said it.

I was always taught that you get out of ever relationship the same thing that you put into it. In the words of Lyfe Jennings, "be the person you want to find, don't be a nickel out here looking for a dime." (more hip hop for you...) Instead of looking for a man to come and save you, save yourself first. Get out there to make things happen for yourself and I guarantee you will soon find a man willing to shower you with everything you ever wanted......if you even still WANT a man when that happens.

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