My final college softball season starts in three weeks. Time to worry about my makeup and hair?

Softball may be a serious, competitive, slide-in-the-dirt sport, but as it grows in popularity (and TV interest), there is heightened attention — to looking good.

When I tuned into the Women’s College World Series on ESPN at the end of last season, it hit me: The players sported a perfect ponytails, sparkly headbands and ribbons — and enough layers of make-up to suit them for a magazine spread. From the shoulders up, they were vying for Miss Teen USA, not an NCAA national title.

One has only to read the coverage to discover that, like competitors in a beauty pageant, players actually schedule pre-game time for hair and makeup.

These women are fierce competitors and I know they mean business. We may be accustomed to noting perfect hair and makeup in gymnastics, but in women’s softball? (check out a few photos here, here, here, and here). Does Derek Jeter take time for foundation and bronzer before stepping onto the field?

Why must  female softball players reinforce their “girly” side, particularly for ESPN cameras? Doesn’t this hinder the message of female athletic empowerment that the Women’s College World Series is meant to convey?

Sure, we are all aware of the stereotypical line about softball –  that everyone is lesbian, that we are “dykes on spikes.” Why is it that no matter what sport women participate in that still today — it’s 2010! — gender and sexuality must take center stage over raw talent, athletic ability — and the drama of the game?

Wearing gobs of makeup (look at stills or clips and it’s not just a swipe of blush) during a national championship does not prove some quasi-feminist point that you can be cute and athletic at the same time. Rather, it reveals to the girls who are watching that no matter how strong, fast, talented or competitive they are that how they look matters most.  The Women’s College World Series is an opportunity to collapse female stereotypes of passivity and weakness, yet it’s become a stage to codify and perpetuate them.

And it’s not just softball. Just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Lancome has unveiled a cosmetic line apparently inspired by the female athletes who will be competing for a gold medal.

Please, fellow female athletes, let’s stop getting dolled up to compete. Leave heavy make-up and perfect hair for dinner or the runway — not the diamond.

By Laura Pappano

I can’t wait to see what happens when I tune in to the NFL this weekend. Will we see more dropped passes? Missed routes? Hugging and giggling in the huddle?

After all, the league is kicking off a month-long effort to support breast cancer awareness through its “Crucial Catch” campaign to encourage regular mammograms. Unlike last year, when teams handed out pink ribbons and sold pink fan T-shirts, this year players, coaches, and refs will be having actual pink-colored items touching their bodies.

Smartly, however, the NFL (as it does so well) has imposed limits on the amount of pink. About 100 players will be wearing pink cleats like this, others will wear pink wristbands, gloves, and helmet decals. The captain’s patches will be pink and they’ll use a pink coin for the toss.

Pink, as I’m sure you know, is a very dangerous color.

The explosion of pink merchandise (MLB, NFL, among others), like pink sports gear — from baseball and softball gloves to soccer balls and lax sticks — after all, has been positioned as a concession to female fans and girl athletes. Turn it pink and it’s a little less threatening. We’ve been conditioned to think of pink as soft, gentle, diminutive, a little ditzy, perky, bubbly….(you get the idea). Not hard core competitive stuff.

Of course, that’s precisely what University of Iowa football coach Hayden Fry insisted when in the 1970s he had the walls of the visiting team’s locker room painted pink to “weaken and debilitate opposing football players.” (In 2005 the color was extended to the carpet, urinals and lockers – setting off more than a little debate — photo here).

To be fair, the Iowa shade is a bit paler than the NFL is showing this month. Perhaps it is the difference between dusty rose and a near magenta? We can call it “Power Pink,” but there’s no doubt that the psychological signaling around this color is getting awfully confusing (for a change).

Just 10 days ago Nicole Lavoi wrote on her blog One Sport Voice, about the still-alive-and-well practice of a hockey coach belittling a player by making him wear pink gloves. Did this coach not know about NFL players wearing pink gloves? Or might pink –gasp! — be on the cusp of an image makeover?

Credit those who take a stand and raise awareness about the critical importance of cancer screening (and kudos to Susan G. Komen for the Cure for pioneering the pink ribbon as a symbol of breast cancer awareness in 1991). Heck, the other day I saw a pink oil tank truck and yesterday a pink newspaper landed in my driveway. If this isn’t a sign of success, what is?

Yet, how can we normalize the overly-loaded color pink when guys like my friend, political writer Dave Denison, point out that they have been trained since childhood to find the color repellant? (And Dave in print and in person is the quintessential fair-minded dude).

Can Dave be persuaded by the likes of Brett Favre to rethink his pink aversion? (To be fair, I’m not nutty about the color, either, but perhaps I, too, have fallen under Fry’s spell?) Maybe the NFL needs to stop being so timid and go full tilt. Make the jerseys and helmets pink (think of the merchandising – it could rival throwbacks!). Why not make the football pink? And who says the lines on the field have to be white?

Then maybe we could move past all this silliness about pink – and onto whatever is next.  Like, say, What color is prostate cancer awareness?

By Katie Culver

At the playground the other day a girl struggled to climb up a curved ladder after my son. She was wearing sandals. Her feet kept getting tangled in her dress.

Another day, a brother and sister at the park with their grandparents were swinging when the boy jumped down and ran to the next piece of equipment. The grandfather lifted the girl out of the swing and warned: “Now remember, no running! You have sandals on.”

“No running?” At the playground? Really?

When we wonder why women and girls still struggle for equal opportunity in this country, when we puzzle over why girls are so often discouraged – if not outright excluded – from sports, it might be time to consider how we dress our kids. From birth.

This is about more than the fact that gifts that come with a new baby differ strikingly. When parents shop for children’s clothes there is a clear (if oft-ignored) message being sent. Girl’s clothing has a common theme: “I’m cute” or “I’m a helpless princess” and “my looks matter the most.” Boy’s clothes, on the other hand, are all about cars, trucks, and sports — themes that suggest action and physical activity.

When my own daughter Mia started to creep it was obvious: It’s tough to crawl in a dress.  Yet, baby girls are always clothed in dresses.  Girls are at a disadvantage already.

I make sure Mia wears leggings/shorts and t-shirts and insist on sneakers she can walk/run in whenever we go out to play (the rule is the same for my son, who is five. You can’t run in crocks!).  The good news: At two-and-a-half, Mia runs and climbs like a champ, dribbles a soccer ball – and can throw a curve ball.

Yes, she is coordinated — but this is no accident.

Girls must be encouraged to develop physical skills early on and especially once they enter school. More often than their boy counterparts, girls opt out of physical activity—sitting out at recess and during gym class. Girls also tell researchers that they don’t “like” to play sports, both findings that emerged from my own dissertation study (“Shut Out: How Hegemony, Discouragement, and Opportunity Affect Access to Sports for Low-Income, Urban Girls.”) Or check out the joint study by Harvard School or Public Health and the National Women’s Law Center on Massachusetts girls lagging behind boys in sports participation.

(For those interested in more: see W.C. Taylor’s study, Physical Activity Among African-American and Latina Middle School Girls, 1999, or Lena Williams, Women’s Sports: Hispanic Female Athletes are Few and Far Between,” 2002.)

The point: It is tough to play when you lack skills and boys dominate the play space. But it’s even tougher when you are a girl who is not dressed for playing.

Forget puffed sleeves, ribbons and fancy shoes. Let’s change the focus of girl clothes from some rigid notion of gender appropriate “fashion” to function. From pretty to comfy. From the emphasis on looks to an emphasis on action.

And, while we’re at it, as long as we parents are consumers, why don’t we favor clothing companies that feature girls playing sports, driving cars and being active? Consider how girls’ perspective on sport would change if they could picture themselves actually in the game — from the start?

Katie Culver, a mother of (soon to be three) children, is a consultant for the Barra Foundation and conducts Gender Workshops for teachers and parents. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban Education from Temple University.

By Laura Pappano

The visual is stunning.

Click here to see the Little League Softball World Series championship TV schedule.  You’ll find ESPN2 (the channel broadcasting women’s college hoops unless there is a men’s game that can’t fit the ESPN or network schedule) is showing two semi-final games on Tues., Aug. 18 and the championship on Wed., Aug. 19 (7 p.m. EST)

Reasonable airtime given that this is Little League. Kids. Right?

Mistake. That is the Little League Softball World Series. Click here for Little League Baseball’s World Series broadcast schedule.

Softball games may be limited to three on TV, but from Fri., Aug. 21 to Sun. Aug. 30, you can basically watch 12-year-olds play baseball all day long (and into the night).

Between the three channels — ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC – broadcasters will bring you 36 – yep, THIRTY-SIX!! – Little League games (including consolation play).

The disparity in prestige and attention might be chalked up to the American passion for baseball over softball, if Little League didn’t have such a troublesome record on gender issues. Sure, it now “celebrates” the move to allow girls (following a successful civil complaint by N.O.W. on behalf of Maria Pepe of New Jersey in 1973).

But the move in early 1974 to start a Little League softball program has been seen by some, including Jennifer Ring author of Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball (Illinois, 2009) as a strategy to steer girls into softball and keep baseball for boys. Today, there are few girls on Little League teams. (see post)

It may be unfair to blame Little League for what is a larger cultural truth: baseball is not merely a terrific game, but an institution that celebrates male power. But it surely is not an accident that Little League dugouts are loaded with Dads re-living their youth and it’s a rarity to see a ponytail on the field.

I am the mother of a boy smitten with baseball and Little League. I love the game and played as a kid. But as an organization (and an effective one  – is there a better brand in youth sports?) Little League is missing an important opportunity. This is not just about allowing girls to play, but encouraging them.

And if there is a Little League Softball World Series, make it as big a deal as Little League Baseball. Otherwise the message is that 12-year-old boys are just more worth watching than 12-year-old girls. And, as one who has attended my share of games, I certainly don’t think that’s the case.

The lead women’s pack at mile 18 of The Boston Marathon 2009

One of the most frustrating things about watching the Boston Marathon is that it’s hard to tell how fast the runners are. I’m not talking TV coverage or the delay in the Boston Athletic Association website in recording runners’ progress (it’s actually a GREAT site). Or even the what-just-went-past? sensation one has watching from the race course.

What I mean is that we are keenly aware – especially this year – of how much slower the elite women’s pack was than the elite men’s pack. But that glaring gap misses the story.

Pause to note: This comment doesn’t diminish the fact that the women’s race was a riveting, nail-biting-scream-at-your-TV-exciting finish. American Kara Goucher put on a stunning effort for the USA, finishing third at 2:32:25. And she wasn’t even the one offering the tape line drama of Salina Kosgei of Kenya edging out Dire Tune of Ethiopia  — that’s 2:32:16 over Tune’s 2:32:17. Tune collapsed at the finish line. (Wouldn’t you, if you’d just lost a 26.2 mile race by ONE SECOND??!!)

My point, though: The men’s race was less dramatic, but swifter, with Deriba Merga gliding across the finish at 2:08:42, nearly a minute ahead of second place finisher Daniel Rono of Kenya and Ryan Hall of the USA.

BUT because the women’s race begins before the men’s race and because results are reported by gender first, the take-away is about how much faster the men are than the women (and, again, particularly this year when the women started off slow – the part of marathon running that is not about sheer speed but about gaming and strategy and how to beat your field).

Yet, if we look at the big picture of marathon running, we see that – heck – many of these really good women are running as fast as these really good men. Take Colleen De Reuck of Colorado (she led the women for a few moments at mile 18), who finished in 2:35:37, that was top among women aged 45-49. A little-made comparison: She came in second among the men in the 45-49 age group, right after Oleg Strizhakov of Florida (2:31:27) but before Michael Platt of Massachusetts (2:39:07).

Go through the race results and you find women finishing among top men around their own age. In the 40-44 age group, Alina Ivanova of Florida (2:36:50) was just a few seconds behind Robert Landry of Massachusetts (2:36:46), who finished 10th among his age peers.

Marathons are reported as men’s races and women’s races, but when we look beyond gender, it’s hard to miss the other story: There’s an awful lot of overlap among really good male and female distance runners.