WTF - This is Totally Late
Kelly Vance
All right, all right, I should probably have reported on this in December when it happened, but I have only just escaped from the haze of baby-related sleep-depravation and I’m just now testing my brain to see if it remembers how to be snarky. Anyway, I figure I’d better bring this up now, before the jerks at the Dew Tour go and decide that female snowboarder’s schedules are just too demanding to even handle two events.
Oh, oops, sorry, that “jerks” just slipped out. I meant to say “professional people.”
Anyway, if you’re not aware of it, the Dew Tour cut female snowboarders from the Killington stop of the tour (check out this article on ESPN for details) while pretending to be doing a favor to the women, claiming that they needed to do what was best to “grow the sport” and kindly offering to provide a “less demanding schedule” for the women in snowboarding. Though no worries for you men, they feel totally confident that you can handle a demanding schedule. It’s just the ladies who need lots of breaks: good thing they have so many competitions without women’s divisions, or it’d just be chaos!
But seriously, what message does this send to the ladies? They are saying that they plan to grow the sport by eliminating women? That doesn’t exactly seem like growth to me, but maybe I’m wrong, maybe they’re planning to grow in some direction that’s best left to men. It could be that they’re planning to add cheerleaders, and they are afraid the women’s division might direct hot chicks with a high tolerance for cold away from this new profession? Or maybe they are concerned about the growth of Shawn White’s fan base. Wouldn’t want the women to steal any of that media attention. Or it’s possible that they’re just confused by the meaning of the word “growth.”
As for growing the snowboarding economy, sorry dudes, but according to SIA “Women influence 92% of vacation spending and 80% of the money made from sporting goods and apparel, which then translates directly into the profits inthe snow sports industry.” So you’d better not piss us off with too much misogynist bullshit, or we’ll be buying little Jimmy a Razor Scooter and telling him to suck it up. After our vacation to someplace free of sexism, like Disney World. Oh wait…
Pro riders, while grateful for the thoughtfulness for their busy schedules, were generally annoyed by this change, and pointed out that the poor showing at the Killington stop last year was probably due to recovery from the Winter Olympics. Jamie Anderson spoke out about the schedule change, saying that she didn’t understand how this change would progress the sport, and commenting on her overall decrease in stoke for the Dew Tour, “I used to be really stoked on the Winter Dew Tours, but [this] really changes my opinion. It’s almost 2012—treat male and female athletes fairly.” Spencer O’Brien, in her blog says that the decision was a “huge step backwards for our sport….the girls have been stepping it up so much the past few years and it’s a huge let down to have something taken away when we’ve all been working so hard.”
So what’s next? This year’s women’s divisions of the Dew Tour looked successful to us, with tons of girls vying for the select few spots. And I personally saw a lot of great riders in the semi-finals and finals… but did enough “big name” athletes show up to satisfy the Dew Tour officials? I wonder who “counts” for them - maybe they should provide us with a list, so we can help motivate those girls to participate. Because I certainly don’t think that eliminating events is the way to motivate anyone. In fact, if you really want to motivate the girls to show up, maybe you should focus on giving them some INCENTIVES! So let’s hope the Dew Tour’s response to this is… “Oops, my bad.” And then they rapidly decide to add a Killington stop to 2013 while pretending this is big news in women’s snowboarding and they’re doing a huge favor to us all.
By the way, I wonder how easy it would be for a bunch of girls to crash one of these events that’s just for dudes and protest…
{other_episodes}Posted by Kelly Vance on 04/11
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