Exploring the culture of Footy Chicks
While many of the revelations in the recent Four Corners show about rugby league were unsettling, I also had problems with the investigation.
For starters, it focused on rugby league and excluded other sports, including AFL which has had its own culture of less-than-ideal attitudes to women.
Witness this week's statements by former Carlton boss John Elliott that the club paid hush money to women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by players.
That certainly made it appear to me that someone involved in the episode may have been out to "get" rugby league.
That concern was buttressed by the rather one-sided way the story was covered. Everything all the women said was accepted without question.
Now, I'm not suggesting that someone talking about an alleged sexual assault should be badgered, far from it. What I'm suggesting is that, when someone says something frankly ridiculous, such as claiming when a player talked over her that it was "violence against women", that shouldn't have gone unchallenged.
I'm also suggesting that maybe the show should have looked at both sides of the equation. Take infamous "cougar" Charmyne Palavi for instance. Palavi, who was interviewed on the show, seems to view sleeping with footy players as a sport. No problems there, to each their own.
But Four Corners declined to use Palavi as an opportunity to explore the group of women who like to go out on the weekends and see if they can get a footballer to take them home. It's a relevant issue, as it gives a great insight into the warped world of the football player, where they just sit back at the pub and have women aggressively hitting on them.
But who knows why Four Corners left this area untouched. Perhaps they didn't want us to think that some women treat footy players like meat as well. Perhaps they wanted us to think it was just footy players who did that to women.
Even when they showed the sport doing something good, they had to end it on a bad note. Such as the courses run to educate young players on their responsibilities that ended it with that poor Newcastle Knights kid saying something inappropriate - though it's a statement those who were running the course insist the show took completely out of context.
If you want a more even-handed and in-depth look at the world of footballers and the women who chase them, check out Footy Chicks this Friday night on SBS. This one-hour doco makes the Four Corners "expose" look superficial, sensationalist and shallow.
It covers the three main codes of footy - league, union and AFL - and they don't come out smelling like roses. Some of the stories ex-players tell are rather distasteful.
It talks with some women who chase footy players and asks them why they do it, and the women respond with honest answers. Even if those answers might make you think they're a bit dim.
But some of the answers are quite thoughtful. One woman in particular admits that the actions of her and others in throwing themselves at footy players is probably a significant contributor to the skewed attitudes towards all women that are held by many players.
If most of your contact with women is limited to those who desperately want to sleep with you, that just has to give you a seriously warped view.
Also, an academic offers a pretty reasonable explanation for why footy players have such a liking for group sex.
The utterly riveting Footy Chicks handles what is a complex and explosive issue with a steady hand.
In the end, like the morning after, nobody comes out looking good.
Posted By: By GLEN HUMPHRIES on 24/06/2009 12:19:03 PM |
