The Lingerie Football League is one of the most controversial sports leagues in the United States. The women’s indoor/arena football league rebranded in 2012 as the Legends Football League (LFL), but is still widely known by its original name. Despite fierce criticism, the League grew quickly early on (2009-2012) and has affiliate Leagues in Australia and Canada. The LFL has faced criticism from feminists and sports enthusiasts alike for exploiting women and for being more sexual entertainment than serious sport. Since the beginning, the LFL has courted and capitalized on a primary audience of (presumably heterosexual) men ages 18-34 by actively highlighting players looks and physique in addition to their football skill. One cornerstone of LFL criticism has been an overt comparison to pornography, suggesting the LFL values women more for their sexy, feminine appearance than their athletic talents. In this paper I argue that all professional sports, not just the Lingerie Football League, and especially women’s sports function as desire industries (Brooks 2010) in mainstream U.S. culture. This positions women’s sport alongside pornography and other sex work as spaces where women’s bodies are evaluated on their attractiveness, (hetero)sexual availability, and femininity and, subsequently, valued based on their adherence to normative expectations in these areas. I contend that the overt connection between sport and porn in the LFL opens up the similar possibilities as feminist pornography to disrupt, complicate, and challenge notions of hegemonic femininity, even while the Lingerie Football League appears to reproduce these tropes. Ultimately, I argue here for a feminist reading of the Lingerie Football League and a re-evaluation of its potential as a space to expose an often difficult-to-reach audience to feminist ideals.
Works Cited Brooks, Siobhan. 2010. Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry. Albany: State University of New York Press.
About the presenterAndrew J Young
Andrew J. Young is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Temple University. His research centers on gender and sexuality in culture, specifically how queer and transgender identities are experienced, represented, and negotiated in popular culture, sports, and organizations. He is currently working on his dissertation on the Lambda Literary Awards and the development of transgender literature. Other areas of interest include queer theory, body and embodiment, masculinities, sexualization of culture, and the sociology of sport.