The Gender Bowl: Battle of Sexes

AMERICAN football portrays general tenets of masculinity – which is socially acceptable – that a man should be bold, strong, assertive, while also rational. American football is a sport played by two teams in which each side is trying to obtain or retain the ball from the opponent and they are allowed to crash the opponents.

As players, men are portrayed and perceived as tough individuals who rarely express emotions other than aggression and anger and only smile to celebrate victory. On the other side, women play the role of cheerleaders who are perceived by the viewer to be feminine and glamorous, exhibiting cheerful emotions and glittering smiles. And when women decide to join American football, the society will readily view that as a challenge towards traditional constructions of American masculinity.

AND that is what Gender Bowl brings you. Gender Bowl is a reality show in the United States that pictured two teams of American Football – a men team and a women team. The men team consists of over 30-years-old-men while being opposed by the women team which consists of those who are members of National Women's Football Association (NWFA). According to the Macmillan Dictionary, reality show (which is also referred to as structured reality or scripted reality) is a type of television series featuring real people who are acting and talking naturally while being put in situations which are pre-arranged by the production company.

When the men team knows that their opponent is a group of women, they normally underestimate their opponents. Ivy, one of the female players, even said that “she has to be a man” to proof to society that women can also play football. We can see here how strong and prevalent is society’s construction about masculinity and femininity. Ivy said that she has to be a man which means she should have a tough nature to prove that she can also be a player of American football.

For sure, we still need to be critical with the show. Since it is reality show, there is always a possibility that the arrogance of men team and the ironic nature of Ivy’s statement are pre-arranged so that the event can entertain the audience thus raising its ranking. This event definitely able to entertain its audience considering that it got 8.7 out of 10 in a poll that is conducted by IMDb.

GENDER Bowl proves that gender inequality is very obvious even in the United States; in a developed state that has a habit to tell other states to uphold the rights of every human being and also habit to spread the democratic values to others. Senior Director of the World Economic Forum – Saadia Zahidi said, “both rich countries and poor countries can afford gender equality because gender equality doesn’t have to only come along once a country is fully developed.” Two examples are Rwanda and Nicaragua. They have less than $9 billion in GDP each, yet both rank among the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to gender equality while the United States is ranked below them.  Written by: Naura Nabila. The writer is a Staff of Indonesia Berbicara's Study Center (Pusat Kajian).