Let's Hear It For the Boy

The large scale campaign conducted by the women of world to convince men that they are the only gender subject to the visceral weakness of our base desires has been wildly successful. In fact, if not for the periodic reminder that I get from a particular kind of young lady (including one particularly poignant example this weekend), I would have bought it lock, stock and barrel myself. Strip clubs, adult book stores and porn websites all cater almost exclusively to the Y-chromosome set, and the few all-male revues that do appear, at least to the exclusion of the gay male crowd, to be directed at women are often reviled as caricatures and are almost always overtly campy in their presentation. We have been told and shown time and time again that while women can always resist a gorgeous man most men are powerless to resist their female counterparts. In fact, as you read that, you men are probably nodding your heads and you women are smiling to yourselves in the global fraud that you have successfully perpetrated. But alas, you’ve been betrayed by one class of the sisterhood that, despite an almost universal attractiveness and, in many cases, high level of education, loses all perspective and judgment around their chosen type of man. Behold the Athletic Supporter.

Of course, I don’t mean the elastic protective device used by male athletes the world over to protect the family jewels from harm – although the parallels are both entertaining and difficult to ignore. I.e. uncomfortably clingy, never quite as good a fit as you were hoping for and, even with bleaching, always just a little bit dirtier than you’re comfortable with. No, all enjoyable double entendre aside, I’m referring to professional athlete groupies – that dedicated cadre of loose women who attend sporting events they have little or no interest in with the hopes of attracting the attention of one of the well-paid sportsmen, if only for the night. What is extraordinary about this platoon of pretty girls is not that they exist in such large numbers but that they continue to exist – especially in this enlightened age of empowered and educated women.

The only plausible explanation for this behavior flies in the face of conventional wisdom regarding the sexes. At first, I thought it might be attributable to the exorbitant salaries paid to modern professional athletes. Even mediocre players in the major professional sports are multi-millionaires and the allure of moneyed men is a concept as old as money itself. But the traditional gold-digger is looking for a seat on the money train, and not simply a short tour of the sleeper car. The appeal of wealth is usually the security it offers – and we are often struck by the other shortcomings it appears to allow women to overlook in their mates (e.g. advanced age, physical unattractiveness, poor hygiene, excessive body hair, and/or tragic lack of personal style). But these athletes do little if anything to hide their philandery, and are usually prototypical physically. So, it’s not the money, at least not in the traditional sense.

So that left only their physical prowess. But these are grown women. Sure, we expect teenage girls to be prone to flights of fancy regarding starting quarterbacks, hunky heartthrobs, and consummate bad boys. But the women populating this corps of marginally chaste ladies are usually in their mid to late twenties – and often times older. And here I’ve always thought that coming of age as a woman meant casting aside childish desires and searching for a man who, depending on their level of sophistication, could satisfy their emotional and intellectual needs, or at least reliably fund their shoe budget. The majority of these modern-day gladiators are hard pressed to offer much more than monosyllabic mumbling or the occasional visceral grunt in the way of conversation and not a whole lot more in way of emotional availability. Given their level of cognitive maturity, one might almost consider an academic attraction to men like this be like cerebral pedophilia.

We expect or at least tolerate attractive girls in their early to mid twenties to be gallivanting about town and making poor life decisions about who they spend their nights with – we certainly also expect them to grow out of it by the time they can drive a rental car, or at least before they stop getting carded on a regular basis to get into a nightclub.

These athletes offer little more than a one night soiree – and I can only imagine the sort of personal treatment offered to these ladies once the evening’s festivities have concluded. It certainly seems like the sort of blatant and obvious disrespect that only strippers and crack whores would be likely to endure of their own volition and even then, only in exchange for money and/or illicit drugs.

But these “teamwork hoes” (a term I first heard on the Stanford campus, no less) regularly volunteer for this treatment. They are grown, educated and intelligent. They are frequently well-groomed, well-heeled and well-spoken. And, yet, they persist in attending to this class of men as though they were gods – happy to simply be in their audience for a few moments, even if those same moments are stolen amidst a chemical and alcoholic haze in a hotel room from which they’ll be summarily dismissed once the chance encounter has been hastily consummated.

But as a life-long penis owner, this behavior is far from inexplicable. Like it or not, and despite our intellectual development, we are all still physical creatures. We are sometimes subject to and victims of our baser desires. As much as we’ve learned and matured in our lives, sometimes all it takes is the robust display of cleavage (be it of the chest or bicep variety) to make us forget ourselves and behave recklessly. This is far from an indictment. In fact, it’s comforting to know that for every Carmen Electra and Megan Fox we’ve got, you girls have some second baseman or quarterback whose only appeal would be their quiet acquiescence to a shameless romp in the hay. So thanks to the Athletic Supporters (including the one I met recently – you know who you are) for cheerfully reminding me of the immanent corruptibility of the fairer, smarter and more temperate sex. Besides, it’s nice to have some company down here in the gutter – especially when it smells like flowers.