Gendered institutions are an integral part of everyone’s daily life. For myself, playing on a football team shaped me into the individual I have become. The locker room talks before and after practices or football games made me realize how gendered relations and masculinity is influenced by football. As Messner mentions, “gender identity [is] not a ‘thing’ that people ‘have’ but [is] a process of construction that develops, and changes as a person interacts with the social world.” Football has always been perceived as being a male dominated sport due to the aggressive and physical nature of the game. This leads to the majority of those initially involved with football constantly trying to prove their dominance through acts of masculinity. While …show more content…
When other teammates were not as crazy or prepared as we were perceived to be they would get called out as “not being ready,” told to “step their game up,” reminded “we have a game to play,” and the like to pose how masculine they were compared to the other. You often see yourself trying to create the appearance of dominance over your opponent by being dominant in every little thing you do from pre-game stretching, warming up; and anytime throughout the entire game. You are constantly trying to hit harder, block better, and look better than your team and the opposing team; continually trying to stick out whether you're on the bench or in the game; to prove to others you’re deserving of a higher rank; and most importantly, how masculine you are. Due to your conscious, you always have the feeling that someone may be looking over your shoulder or have already been watching you. From personal experience, either being in the stands or on the sideline of a football field, you get a better understanding of what people tend to look at in the game which leads to always getting the feeling that someone or everyone is looking at you. With this in the back of our minds, we’re always trying to do something better or different compared to everyone else, an obsession to look as good as possible whether we’re on the field or the sideline. This adds to how masculine football is and how it’s socially gendered as a male dominated