Somebody should order a boat load of tank tops for the summer market before its too late, supply chains and all. A potential big seller could be: ‘Not bad … for an old white guy’ stamped on the front. Not too sure what image to add, if any. Maybe a dinosaur-style shadfly.
It would make a great Father’s Day gift, even if some of the recipients won’t get the joke and wear it with pride and all the self-awareness of a long-retired deer hound flatulating on the porch.
It must be those constant memes online that keep making me think of T-shirt marketing, not that there’s a lot of money in it or anything. This particular phrase came to mind while I was following an interesting link on Twitter earlier this week, with echoes of The Offspring’s ‘Pretty Fly (for a white guy) mock-rockery from 1998 in my head.
It was the Nipissing Lakers sports commentator issue that was sparked by an opposing team player flagging a remark for being misogynistic during a home game last weekend.
See related story: Lakers pull broadcaster
If you watch the OUA game, you can hear one commentator compliment a Laker player’s three-point shot “Nice stroke …” with another commentator adding “For a girl.”
And he sounded almost serious, there was no punchline or anything that gave a hint at being snide or sarcastic. There wasn’t even a lame attempt to explain how some studies about how the male body grows a bit different due to hormonal differences. You can almost imagine, in some parallel universe, somebody arguing that the physical mechanics of the male body can offer a certain technical advantage when shooting threes. Don’t they exclude some female athletes when their testosterone levels are higher than average? I’m sure Joe Rogan could have pulled something out of his hat.
But none of that came about, the commentators just pressed forward with the rest of the game like it wasn’t out of place. Later, I read comments on social media under a news story that said the commentators were already demeaning the players by calling them “girls” in the first place instead of women. It is, after all, the university women’s basketball league with many elite and national level athletes involved. Clearly, several people said, it’s 2022 and people should realize that demeaning anyone during a sports broadcast isn’t going to go unchallenged – maybe even more so at the university level.
I’m not sure if Nipissing is more sensitive than other universities and colleges, but I do recall being told as a sports reporter they’d prefer if we didn’t call them ‘Lady Lakers’ as it inferred a second-class status to the men’s teams. I didn’t like it at the time, for a variety of reasons, including a general revulsion to all things “politically correct” but didn’t push back much. ‘Women Lakers’ didn’t have the same ring to it and took up extra space in a headline. It wasn’t a hill worth dying on at the time and eventually, I accepted it as the university’s preference (although some players said it wasn’t a big deal either way). Society evolves and women have battled through oppressive social constraints long enough to know it helps to nip this stuff in the bud.
If the sports commentators did realize the “for a girl” reference was over the line, I can only imagine the shiver that would have raced through their spines as the modern gravity of those words sank in. There was just a tiny split second of pause, I think, before the first commentator refocused on the admiration of the shot – almost as if the quicker they moved on the better.
Naturally, one would wonder what you’d do in similar circumstances, whether something unwanted was uttered by yourself or you were working with someone who stepped in the goo. Is there time in a moment like that to consider an immediate retraction or explanation of some kind? Or was skipping over it, crossing your fingers, and moving on the better option?
It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback in a situation like this but much harder when in the moment. One of the social media commentators on the story argued it was no big deal and the university over-reacted by removing the person from their stable of game-day help within five hours of the first accusatory tweet. Even a fellow “old white guy” suggested the person stop defending the comment because he was embarrassing himself and the entire OWG demographic.
As someone born one year removed from ‘Boomer’ status and raised within a misogynist, homophobic and racist society, it’s been a long and humbling journey into the 21st Century.
I’ve had too many of those moments through the years where I strayed over the line of appropriate and respectful behaviour for the times. A confession example, in 1985 or so, I attended a college Halloween bash in the west end of Toronto dressed as an Indigenous warrior. It wasn’t even a very good get-up, a last-minute rush out the door as I recall. By the end of the night, I was running around without much on except a poor excuse of a black thunderbird smeared across my chest, the shoe polish melting into black rivulets that stain more than just my underwear. Think Rudy Giuliani’s sprayed-on hair incident but with an inebriated shirtless 20-year-old hiccupping in a stairwell.
Within 10 years, however, I was learning respect for Indigenous people, first at Canadore College while making friends with students in my program and then working with the ‘Native Student Services’ as part of a public relations job. By 1993, I was working at the Union of Ontario Indians and covering large gatherings of Indigenous leaders for the Anishinabek News.
If social media and cell phones existed in the 1980s, a photo of me at that Halloween bash may have surfaced and ended at least that portion of my career or more. In fact, there were some bumps on the road of learning respect that could have led to a shameful departure but they gave me room and space to evolve.
I guess, if anything, it’s a shame the current reflex in situations like the “for a girl” comment and even the girl vs women references, is that people are too readily thrown under the bus of progressiveness. If it’s not blatant disrespect and continuous, with all attempts at corrective measures failing, shouldn’t we be giving people every chance to do better as individuals?
Either way, I still think the tank top idea is a seller. I know a bunch of fellers that would wear them with pride at the trailer park this summer – even if the joke is on them.
Dave Dale is a veteran journalist and columnist who has covered the North Bay area for more than 30 years. Reader responses meant as Letters to the Editor can be sent to [email protected]. To contact the writer directly, email: [email protected] or check out his website www.smalltowntimes.ca
