House of Mirrors

Tonight, I'll be at Storm-Mercury, a game I strongly urge you to watch. I devoted much of a recent Works to Lauren Jackson's brilliance; tonight, she'll be crowned the league's MVP. It will be her third such award. The Storm do some unreal things when they really get moving, and the Mercury, who are every bit the WNBA's answer to the Suns, will certainly encourage that. The Mercury may have lost Cappie Pondexter, but are greatly improved defensively -- albeit in a totally weird, kickstart-the-break way that Seth Pollack explained earlier in the season.

Bill Russell has once again shown up to grant the Storm his blessings, and on the off-chance that you've never seen Diana Taurasi play, this SI article from a while pretty much captures why you'll be pleasantly stunned.

Now then. In the wake of my recent flurry of WNBA posts, I've found out -- the hard way, mind you -- that appearance and the WNBA are touchy issues. This sentence: "Jackson is the league's most dominant player, a tough-as-nails, strong, athletic center whose garish make-up and terrible red dye-job are somewhere between war paint and a kabuki mask," was a faux pas, because it sounded like I was insulting LJ's appearance. Never mind that I was also saying Jackson was capable of things on the court that yours truly had never seen before; "garish" and "terrible" were just too harsh. I guess I could have toned it down, at the expense of what I was trying to build up writing-wise. And, as if it weren't readily apparent that "war paint" and lookin' good suggests a complicated dance of signifiers, I spelled it out in a later FD post. But then I suggested that Cappie's crazy 'do might be better for her image than a ponytail, and was accused of objectification or trying to limit CP's life-horizons.



Okay, now we're wandering into that murky realm where, depending on the situation, a double-standard can be either good or bad. Gendered bodies, and the work they do, are at the forefront of any discussion of women's athletics. I know this. I can't help but wonder, though -- hasn't anyone noticed how much the appearance of male athletes is discussed, almost as a matter of course? When are the Nuggets brought up without their tattoos sneaking in, usually as a punchline?

Iverson -- who, as I mentioned earlier, had his hair braided before every game to look his best -- was often discussed in terms of bodily attributes. While we rarely discuss how attractive NBA players, or any male athletes, are or aren't, sports are really, really homoerotic. Sorry. No one has ever bothered to explain how "man-crush" isn't totally gay. We ooh and ah over the bodies of LeBron James or Amar'e Stoudemire, as if this were the essence of their being; "stud" is a really weird word to throw about so casually, since it evokes both slavery and sexual performance. And yeah, some dudes get called ugly -- primarily white ones, but that might just be a coincidence. The point is, athletes are aestheticized, even objectified. Because of our very sexist outside world, bringing this into the WNBA sets out all sorts of alarms. At the same time, the way bodies -- especially the black ones -- is discussed in basketball should make us no less comfortable. And let's not even get into the peculiar role fashion has played in shaping the league's image over the last decade.

Here's the caveat: NBA players make millions upon millions of dollars. They can deal with it. They can take it. In the WNBA, pride and dignity are part of all they have. If you like that reasoning, walk away now, and revisit that entire William Rhoden-inspired debate that came out of a certain Comic Sans outburst.

I'm not trying to draw a false equivalency. Women and men have different attitudes about their appearances, and these will invariably manifest themselves in the way they present themselves as athletes -- both on and off the court. It's more complicated for them. However, to suppose that male athletes face none of these same issues, and in some cases (like Iverson) find themselves as physically scrutinized as any woman would be, is some serious tunnel vision. I don't want to say "it comes with the territory," nor do I want to deny WNBA players their woman-hood. At the same time, though, their situation doesn't stand in opposition to the coverage of male basketball players -- in fact, it's a chance for us to be a little more self-aware in the way we discuss all athletes.

Let's Get It On

When the NBA puts a stinker out there, at least there's always the chance of a blink-of-the-eye comeback, or at least some notable highlights. Sadly, when the WNBA's product is bad, it's just bad. Like college, but minus the screaming throngs who seem intent on erasing exactly this discussion. As long as everyone's looking intense.

Such was the case with last night's Liberty-Fever match-up, which was abysmal. The Liberty's first principle is Cappie Pondexter (pictured above), as deadly a guard as you'll find at any level, and Leon Smith's high school girlfriend. Putting her and Diana Taurasi on the same Phoenix Mercury team didn't just win titles two of the last three seasons. It made for a team so exultant that, yes, you got that familiar ol' REVOLUTION feeling in your blood. Then, because of money, a desire to get her own spotlight, and a lifelong interest in fashion, Pondexter headed to the New York Liberty.

Pondexter has gotten even more economical -- more Deron-esque, maybe -- this season, and spearheaded a massive improvement on the part of the Liberty. But if her shot's not falling, a Liberty game drags. Except unlike Kobe or LeBron, she can't make up a double-digit deficit in under a minute. That's one noticeable difference that remains; the WNBA is fast, but that's not the same as NBA-explosive. Yesterday, the Fever made sure Cappie got stuck. The Fever are led by Tamika Catchings, an impossibly strong, agile 1-2-3 who just won the league's Defensive Player of the Year for the fourth time. I like their flighty young PG Briann January, but the team wins when it follows Catchings's example.

Fever won, Pondexter was foiled even if her line says otherwise.

What I was most struck by, though, was the announcing crew's completely chipper explanation of Cappie's move. She wants to get into fashion. She wants to be #1. Forget, for a second, that we've spent all summer bashing LeBron for not wanting to be THE MAN -- if any NBA player expressed these sentiments (say, play for the Knicks to work on his rappin'), he would be crushed for them. Media would bring it up as a way of questioning his worth as a human being. Does this mean that the WNBA is kinder, softer and more understanding? Are women different from men? What do you think? Can the league simply not afford to not put a brave face on whatever its best players decide to do? Does it even pay enough to wield moral authority?

I hope that got you thinking, since what I really want to talk about is Cappie's hair. This is her during last year's playoffs:



Here's her babysitter-ish profile from this season, which is, admittedly, a return to the way she looked during most of her time in the pros:



I am more than willing to roll over and play dead if this turns into a discussion of black women's hair. But -- correct me if you think otherwise -- the spiky Cappie, however recent a development this was, seemed far more appropriate for a scoring machine who might well be the WNBA's most ruthless one-on-one player ever. Now, she's a nice, cute lady. This relates back to my discussion of Lauren Jackson's appearance -- performance art on the court, sex symbol off of it. Cappie dropped her edgy look -- one that, it should be said, was certainly stylish in its own way -- in favor of something more traditionally feminine. Good for her, I guess, except she doesn't seems like the same player to me.

I know, she's actually a better player. But from a style and presentation standpoint, it would be like if Allen Iverson cut of his braids ten years earlier. Because he wanted to be a guest on Good Morning America. Throw in a trade away from Philly, and into the waiting arms of some place that doesn't routinely audition for the title of most gully city in America, and you've got something like Cappie Pondexter's transformation.

Cappie Pondexter was never a threat to destroy America, so the cultural politics here aren't quite the same. But maybe this gives us a new perspective on Iverson's infamous look. As an athlete -- and yes, the WNBA does always come back to basketball -- Pondexter was far more striking, and apt, with last season's look. A brash scorer should look like a space-aged street urchin, not the girl next door. Am I equating being a bad-ass with a lack of femininity? Quite possibly. Did Cynthia Cooper never happen? Regardless, Cappie had her finest season, and got her widest exposure, with a certain image taking hold. I get it, she's pretty now, and I have no right to see her any different on the court -- especially when I know this is part of a larger life-goal. But just as most reasonable people prefer to remember Dr. J with his afro, or still see Brandon Jennings as "the kid with the high-top fade", Pondexter shouldn't underestimate what her on-court look means for her game.

Perhaps Cappie could take a cue from Lauren Jackson, who has insisted on a separation between church and state almost to the point of absurdity. At the same time, though, it's perfectly reasonable to think that an WNBA player could be at once stylish and intimidating. And, perhaps, more likely to click with the world of fashion.