How do you know for sure, though? You can assume, based on Big Slash Fandom, but football fandom is decidedly NOT Big Slash Fandom. Throwing around accusations like that, and promoting it as your greater enlightenment, is patronizing at the very best.
Kickette is insanely popular, but you have to go three pages back right now to find a WAG. Even the bits of famous WAGdom we do see don't present much of a character for them- they're wearing clothes or buying things or saying stupid stuff. Not exactly inspiring, at least for me. While you might see them in the tabloids, I'm a) not sure how popular reading tabloids actually is in the fandom and b) they're not actually in them all that much. I picked up a few British tabloids last time I was there and it's really much more reality stars and actresses. It's certainly not as it was in 2006. And they're certainly never in sites like the Guardian or the BBC, which is what people at least claim to read.
Do we see interviews with those "cult" figures though? Do we see them as their own characters? Who is Eva Carneiro (who I assume you're referring to, Eva Gonzalez is someone else entirely, and that says something about her profile right there) besides "pretty physio woman on the sideline"? The problem is that they're not actually characters or personalities to build on, which is why your reaction to Eva/Juan Mata is "oh obviously self-insert Mary Sue." We don't know anything about her or who she is, so when writing about her, that's likely what's going to happen. (Not that this is her fault. She's a doctor, not a pop star. She doesn't have to be a media figure just for the sake of someone's fanfic.) Hell, does Sharon even have a last name?
The issue is that the women in football, except for maybe some female footballers and the bigger-name WAGs, are personality-less adjuncts. Additionally, women aren't seen as having "a place" in serious discussions of men's sport. That's a serious problem, and the lack of het outside of self-insert Tumblrfic is a symptom, I think. That's the issue, even more than "ew girl parts."
(But see, even there you're unable to separate Ulrike from Per. I was interested in discussing Ulrike- Per is related to that, of course, but he wasn't at all the point of the prompt or what I was interested in. I wanted to talk about her and her sport/career. But she had to be attached to someone you were interested in for you to be interested.)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-05-18 04:44 pm (UTC)Kickette is insanely popular, but you have to go three pages back right now to find a WAG. Even the bits of famous WAGdom we do see don't present much of a character for them- they're wearing clothes or buying things or saying stupid stuff. Not exactly inspiring, at least for me. While you might see them in the tabloids, I'm a) not sure how popular reading tabloids actually is in the fandom and b) they're not actually in them all that much. I picked up a few British tabloids last time I was there and it's really much more reality stars and actresses. It's certainly not as it was in 2006. And they're certainly never in sites like the Guardian or the BBC, which is what people at least claim to read.
Do we see interviews with those "cult" figures though? Do we see them as their own characters? Who is Eva Carneiro (who I assume you're referring to, Eva Gonzalez is someone else entirely, and that says something about her profile right there) besides "pretty physio woman on the sideline"? The problem is that they're not actually characters or personalities to build on, which is why your reaction to Eva/Juan Mata is "oh obviously self-insert Mary Sue." We don't know anything about her or who she is, so when writing about her, that's likely what's going to happen. (Not that this is her fault. She's a doctor, not a pop star. She doesn't have to be a media figure just for the sake of someone's fanfic.) Hell, does Sharon even have a last name?
The issue is that the women in football, except for maybe some female footballers and the bigger-name WAGs, are personality-less adjuncts. Additionally, women aren't seen as having "a place" in serious discussions of men's sport. That's a serious problem, and the lack of het outside of self-insert Tumblrfic is a symptom, I think. That's the issue, even more than "ew girl parts."
(But see, even there you're unable to separate Ulrike from Per. I was interested in discussing Ulrike- Per is related to that, of course, but he wasn't at all the point of the prompt or what I was interested in. I wanted to talk about her and her sport/career. But she had to be attached to someone you were interested in for you to be interested.)