welcome to 'HATERADE': your rant(s) for the weekend
featuring the PWHL for the second weekend in a row!
The weekend rant and link round-up format has gone so well that I have decided to make it a regular feature. Welcome to the first official installment of “Haterade!”1 I am choosing to embrace the fact that I am a chronic hater and just go for it. I have two rants for you this week, one to open the newsletter and a second below my sports-related reading.
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Girlboss feminism will not save women’s sports
Investment in women’s sports is booming, which is being heralded as unquestionably a Good Thing. Along with this investment comes an increase in sponsorships and partnerships as brands jump to get on the bandwagon so they can cash in.
As I wrote for Eater2 earlier this week, “[one] fan survey shows that 77 percent of sports fans think brands should invest in women’s sports and 83 percent of brands plan to increase their investment in women’s sports in 2024.” Deloitte predicts revenue generated by women’s elite sports will surpass $1 billion for the first time in 2024, a total that is projected to be at least 300% higher than their 2021 prediction.
That’s capitalism, baby.
But there’s a difference between women’s pro leagues and men’s pro leagues, in my opinion. Most pro women’s leagues claim to stand for something, even if that “something” is just Women’s Empowerment3 (which, barf, but that’s a newsletter for another day). Every athlete who plays in a women’s league is marginalized by gender, in a field that has been built by and for men. The investment gap is real, and they know it. So every time they tell you to “invest in women” or “bet on women” or “the future is female,” they are taking a stand against patriarchy, even if it’s in the most basic, least intersectional way possible. But some leagues go even further—the WNBA, for instance, has positioned itself as being on the forefront of a variety of social justice issues, including racial justice.
What I’m saying is I expect more from women’s leagues than I do from men’s leagues and not because I’m being hypocritical and holding men and women to different standards. I expect more from them because they have positioned themselves—by nature of calling out the sexism in the sports industry—as advocates for equity in some way.
This starts to get really tricky when marketing comes into play. Because for leagues who are welcoming new investors and who are happy to see some of the financial support that men’s leagues have long enjoyed, it’s easy to see the big names attached to the deals being presented and feel like they are nothing but positive. Money and visibility are powerful carrots to dangle.
The issue, for me, becomes who these leagues choose to take money from and the way those brand partnerships begin to expose how hollow their advocacy truly is. While the rest of the world moves away from “girlboss feminism,” the world of women’s sports is still firmly in its grasp.4 And unfortunately, capitalism and feminism will never be compatible.
Enter Kim Kardashian. Last fall, Kardashian’s underwear and shapewear brand, Skims, was announced as “the official underwear partner of the WNBA” (this partnership also extends to the NBA). In the press release promoting the new partnership, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert (former CEO of Deloitte) said that the W and Skims would “elevate each other’s brands and celebrate female athletes and their impact in society.” You know, women supporting women! But just as important is which woman’s brand the WNBA putting their platform (and, by extension, their approval) behind.
“I don't want to support all women,”
, a beauty journalist who writes newsletter, told me. “Some women are doing pretty horrible things, and I would say Kim Kardashian is among them.” (DeFino used to work for the Kardashian apps.)DeFino points to the Kardashian brands’ impact on beauty standards, citing the Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL)—the popularity of which is largely attributed to Kardashian. It’s literally called “the Kardashian effect:” the two plastic surgery procedures that the clan is best known for—lip fillers and BBLs— have increased exponentially in recent years. Lip fillers are up 312% since 2000, and BBLs have surged 78% since 2015. Meanwhile, BBLs have one of the highest mortality rates of any surgery out there.
But the issue with Skims goes even further than that if we apply an environmental justice lens to this (and lest you think that climate change and sports are unrelated subjects, think again). Last year, the company was accused of greenwashing. “Skims is pretty much all polyester plastic,” DeFino says. “It’s never going to degrade, it’s always going to be leaching chemicals into the soil.”
The non-profit Remake released its 2024 Fashion Accountability Report earlier this month, which assesses how transparent and ethical a company’s manufacturing is. Skims scored a zero. A zero! That’s worse even than Shein, the fast-fashion manufacturer that’s dragged up and down Al Gore’s internet about their business practices and working conditions.
“A zero is indicative that this is not high on the company's list of priorities, human rights or environmental sustainability,” Remake Senior Manager of Advocacy Becca Coughlan told
at .
“Is this the brand—the woman—that we want to elevate, a brand that is really having a negative impact on the environment and has historically had a really negative impact on women's psychological health and physical health?” DeFino asked.
I felt similarly earlier this week when the National Women’s Soccer League announced a shiny new partnership with… Amazon. Prime Video has had media deals with several leagues to broadcast games which has been heralded as a positive for accessibility and viewership, including the WNBA, MLB, and NFL. But the NWSL announced an expanded partnership for its 2024 season (which started yesterday) that makes Amazon “the exclusive retail partner of the NWSL.”
“The expanded partnership allows it to flex its tech and business operations — a trifecta of content, cloud, and retail — to showcase the NWSL’s product,” the press release read. “While [other leagues’] deals utilized Amazon Prime media coverage and [Amazon Web Services] tech, none leveraged Amazon’s cash cow: its e-commerce platform.”
So the NWSL, a league which is in the process of a re-brand following their harrowing sexual abuse scandal, chose to partner with… Amazon. “[Commissioner] Jessica Berman was charged with reforming the NWSL’s culture,” a new report from SportsPro explains. “Under Berman’s leadership… the NWSL has become a sporting beacon of social and political activism.”
Meanwhile, new data from Luscid, a platform that tracks sport and entertainment data, measured “the league’s key marketing strengths”—which included “community impact” and cite Amazon as one of the blue-chip companies the league has signed ahead of the 2024 season. These new partnerships have pushed the total annual value of the NWSL’s portfolio to over $24.5 million—a four-fold increase from 2021.
So a league that is being heralded as “a beacon of social and political activism” and celebrated for its “community impact,” thought that partnering with Amazon would align with its values? Amazon, which exploits workers, puts them in unsafe working conditions, helps fund ICE, has a terrible environmental record, and is single-handedly responsible for killing bookstores?
Wow, what feminism! May I recommend
’s Anti-Capitalist Feminism syllabus?Sports links I’m reading
Basket Pour Toutes (Basketball for All), a group formed by Muslim female players, coaches, and allies, put out an open letter calling on the French Basketball Federation (FFBB) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) to lift their ban on hijabs. It was co-signed by Amnesty International and Athlete Ally, among other organizations (and signed by many WNBA players).
The Guardian spoke with University of California, Irvine basketball player Diaba Konaté, a Muslim woman who cannot play in her native country of France because of the ban on hijabs: “I hope the French ban gets lifted. I want to play basketball in front of my family. I want to play for France. And I want to fight for other women like me to have access to sports.”
16 college athletes are suing the NCAA for allowing Lia Thomas to swim
The End of Sport podcast breaks down the history of Barstool Sports and where the sportsmedia company fits in the rise of MAGA politics5
Austria’s football coach dropped three players ahead of several upcoming friendly games for taking part in homophobic chants
Australian footballer Josh Cavallo announced his engagement to his partner Leighton Morrell
WNBA player Natasha Cloud chose the Palestinian Youth Movement as her grassroots organization beneficiary this season at Athletes Unlimited
France’s 2024 Olympic uniforms are dope as hell
Anti-trans rights activist and former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines will be giving Adrian College’s commencement address, which seems fine
The Kansas City Current played opening day at CPKC Stadium, the first soccer stadium purpose-built for a women’s professional soccer team. They won 5-4 against the Portland Thorns
Lily Rose Depp and her girlfriend, 070 Shake, attended a Lakers game and were very gay while doing so
I love this feature by Emily Leibert at The Cut about the Knicks City Dancers
Author Nicholas Blincoe joins the
podcast to discuss his book More Noble than War: A Football History of Israel-PalestineAn advocacy group wants the Canadian government to ban all sports gambling advertising, citing reasons that include the fact that athletes are being targeted by racist online abuse
USWNT member Kelley O’Hara has executive produced a sapphic soccer short film
Obsessed with Reductress’s “Gay for women’s basketball” sweatshirt
State Champs, the new sports coffeeshop in Kent, Ohio, is officially open for business! I interviewed one of their founders back in January.
All NWSL teams are officially (and finally) ditching white shorts with their kits after years of player complaints
PWHL Minnesota captain Kendall Coyne Schofield will be voicing a character in Pixar’s Inside Out 2
Trans woman and influencer Cambell Kenneford told the Gay Times, “I now do nothing sporty because I have a genuine fear of being discriminated against when it comes to playing sports and getting involved.”
Harrison Browne, the first pro hockey player to transition, is crowdfunding for a short film called Pink Light, about a trans man who travels back to his past as his pre-transitioned self and explores an unexpectedly pivotal moment6
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A bonus rant
This week, the Instagram account for the Professional Women’s Hockey League Players’ Association (PWHLPA)—which is essentially the PWHL’s union—posted a video of the gender reveal for two players who are having a baby. As a trans person, I really hate gender reveals for fairly obvious reasons. And I expect this kind of fuckery from cishet people but I’m always slightly disappointed when queer people participate in these cissexist traditions. But my frustration here isn’t about two hockey players choosing to have a gender reveal; it’s bigger than that.
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