What Is Masculinity In Football

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 greatest impact on me was during my junior year of high school, during the fall of 2012, when I was seventeen years old. Overall, football made my fellow teammates and myself as dominantly masculine as an individual could be due to the game of football and all of the things that surrounds your participation throughout the entire football season. Beginning with locker room talks before and after practices and also during football games, made me realize how gendered relations and masculinity is shaped by football. As Messner mentions, “gender identity [is] not a ‘thing’ that people ‘have’

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.” Jessica Valenti defines it well as she mentions, “The idea [is] that masculinity is strong, tough, and natural while femininity is weak and vulnerable. (Valenti 64)” Football forces you to interpret an image of masculinity, a dominant lesson in learning how expressing emotions is a sign of weakness, not being masculine, and most of all appearing feminine. The greater conflict is trying to adhere to societal expectations of masculinity. “This kind of experience teaches boys that it is not “just being out there with the guys – being friends” that ensures the kind of attention and connection that they crave: it is being better than the other guys – beating them – that is the key to acceptance. (Messner 128)” Various things are often done as a football player to fit in, get along with, and also helps you relate with one another about different situations you might be involved in because they also play football but the key to be accepted is being better than the

You tend to catch yourself trying to be the manly one in conversation, and in everyday activities. It enforced you to look down on girls that were not as good looking as other girls. It made me more or less embarrassed to talk about a girl that might not have been as good looking compared to girl’s teammates hung out with. So you’ll often shy away from talking about those girls with friends and much rather talk about the good looking girls that we either saw or want to get to know, whether we talked to them or not. That forces an individual that is not as masculine to become more masculine knowing that good looking girls are hanging out with teammates compared to you. So everyone, especially on the football team is in a constant battle to get the best looking girl in