Marie Claire Gives Us Idiot Women a Pre-Super Bowl Tutorial

Image by Vancouver Laser & Skincare Centre via Flickr

Quick, ladies! The Super Bowl is only a couple days away, and by virtue of you having ovaries, that means you better get to studying up since you’re clearly too stupid and/or busy baking up treats for your husband’s pals to know what all those men are doing out there on that big green rectangle.

Or so suggests this piece in Marie Claire giving women a quick tutorial on football. It’s full of patronizingly obvious pointers, like “A yellow flag on the play indicates that the referee is calling a foul on the play.” Tell me more about this yellow flag … right after you explain to me what a referee is!

It also warns that women should refrain from making their stupidity known. Girls, even if you’re dying to know how that little yellow line appears on the field on every play, don’t say that stuff out loud!

Look, I’m aware that not every little girl grew up painting her face with her team’s colors, and spent her college weekends at the stadium. But a lot of them did. I cherish the fact that my first “I’m Finally a Real Adult” moment came not when I received my diploma, rented my first apartment or bought my own car. It came when my first season tickets arrived in the mail.

I’m always horrified when I see local car dealership commercials where a woman tells the camera “I love La Brea Chrysler/Jeep, because I’m a woman, so they take the time to explain everything to me.” But at least in those situations, I can assume that some old, out-of-touch dude commandeered the ad and wouldn’t allow more reasonable input. Marie Claire, however, is supposed to be all about empowering women, and with that should at least come the assumption that females are not, you know, exceedingly stupid.

Similarly, the gym in my apartment building has two treadmills and one TV. I’ve gotten enraged more than once when, as the man on the treadmill next to me finishes up, he does what he thinks is a grand gesture: Offers to change the channel for me from that vile football playing on ESPN. Because in addition to being too dumb to understand football, I’m probably similarly clueless on how to operate a television! Thanks, guy.

My best friend and I exchange about 10-15 e-mails a day from across the country. Here are a few snippets of our discussions:

After the BCS National Championship game:

Beth: Texas fans are so bitter. It’s a great morning in America.

Sara: God, that end of the game with two interceptions was awesome. My friend Cortney and I decided that in the movie version of this game, that crybaby Texas QB would be played by Michael Cera (and James Van Der Beek if they had won).

After Coach Pete Carroll announced he was leaving USC:

Sara: So I just unfollowed Pete Carroll. I don’t need to read about Seattle.

Beth: God, Sara, I’m SO MAD STILL. I not only feel betrayed as a USC fan, I feel betrayed because prior to this season, I felt as if Pete Carroll was a genuinely great man. NOT ANYMORE. Let’s see if he cares about “A Better LA” now…

You get the idea. More than a few women like football, but even if that weren’t the case, Marie Claire should give its readers the benefit of the doubt. I’d bet that for every lady whose only involvement with football is cooking up snacks for the big game, or bedazzling a jersey for the dog to wear, there are just as many complaining about how that penalty clearly should have been off sides, and not a false start.