The NFL Saves Boobies

My girlfriend is a Football fan, so this Sunday morning, she was surfing the television for games to watch, and noticed something weird. All the players on the channel she stopped to watch either had pink wristbands, pink chinguards, pink socks, pink shoes, or a combination of several of these things. Then, she changed the channel, and there were two totally different teams, with scattered patches of pink on their persons. She changed the channel, and there were more pink-speckled Football players from yet two more teams. This was such an astounding and strange thing that she had to call me over to be an eyewitness, or to at least let her know that she wasn't hallucinating. It was like suddenly, the most manly sport on TV had gone all metro-sexual. I didn't notice that the cheerleaders were using pink pom-poms, probably because that's normal for women.

My reaction was "WTF?!"

"It's breast cancer awareness month," she said. Now something made sense. But this was still a ridiculous event to watch. In my liberal anti-corporate mind, I thought of the scene from Office Space, where a chain-restaurant manager chews out a female employee for not wearing enough flair on her uniform (Flair is decorations, usually on pin-on buttons, which are worn on work uniforms to advertise or put slogans into customers' heads). I pictured the corporate owners of the NFL standing their players and coaches and other workers in line, and saying something like "Now Mr. Jones, who writes a lot of our paychecks, has made a lot of donations to various funds for breast-cancer research, and wants you all to show him that we're all behind his favorite cause..."

Then I realized that this was football. I then considered how the pitch was most likely made. "You all like boobies... at least most men do. Boobies are great. But boobies are in danger from cancer, and Well, we all need to help save the boobies so that we can continue to enjoy them, and so your sons can enjoy them when they grow up." Following that, players began to discuss how they were going to show support. "I like squeezing boobies with my hands, so I'm gonna wear pink gloves!" "I like putting them in my mouth, so I'm wearing a pink chinstrap and mouth-guard!" Nobody understood the guy who decided to wear pink shoes, though...

I wouldn't be making fun of this if it wasn't made so painfully obvious that it's breast cancer awareness month, and that the NFL was supporting it. It's like the whole NFL decided that a freak show was the way to show support for Breast cancer. They somehow need to make their support look as visible as possible. Someone must have convinced them that merely donating money and holding a press conference to announce their donation was not enough, and that pink shoes and gloves were a much better way to do it. It's just such a totally American thing to do, too -- make a painfully-obvious, overly-overt, visual demonstration of your stance -- Wave a flag, paint your face, shout a slogan, be a walking, talking advertisement, so that nobody could possibly misunderstand you... or take you seriously.