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.

Paul Revere Was A Rapper

Earlier today, I offered what is to date the most comprehensive, and honest, interpretation of DeShawn Stevenson's facial area tattoos. No one is anywhere near on my level. However, one important bit of information didn't make it through the editing process, perhaps because it was too dangerous. This being a free country, and this site mine and mine, I will use this space to reveal unto thee the true meaning of the two numbers five.

My bosses at SN decreed it obvious that these connected to Lincoln in that our greatest President appears on the five-dollar note. Then why two of them? That the font is identical serves doesn't make them an afterthought; had Stevenson wanted simply to ornament his Lincoln, he could've used something less cryptic or potentially fraught, like a log cabin or the Memorial. No, it's a clue, a signpost toward the life of The Man From Hope that we would be foolish to dismiss.

Scholars in the field of Great American Presidents know that 1855 was a pivotal year for Honest Abe, in which he overcame his personal troubles, rallied the Republican Party, and started himself down the road to immortality (and, as it were, premature mortality). I can only guess that Stevenson is trying to tell us something about his plans for 2009-10—it will be his 1855, or maybe that for the Wizards, who have not won a championship since sometime in the seventies.

Or, since Lincoln ruled the Republican, it could be a commentary on the Republican Party's recent spasms of joyous growth. I speak of the Tea Parties; maybe Stevenson is warning us of just how potent they are, or is himself a supporter reveling in their might. Only time knows all the answers.