First
of all, I am not even a soccer fan.
When
Aaron and I walked into the pub, I realized I was the fourth “supportive
girlfriend”. As Nelson Mandela said, ”sport has the power to inspire, sport has the
power to unite people that little else does,” here sport did show the power to unite
people – at least this soccer world cup united two Chileans, three Italians, one
Irish, one Romanian, and one Chinese in this small pub.
Similar to others, as one
part of the
“supportive girlfriends” group, I have read “rules for women during the World Cup” of
various version more than 3 times and know what would be my role clearly.
It
seems that the relationship between the soccer World Cup and women has been bad
for a long period. It is said that a great number of females consider world cup
as their rival in love and people even coined the term "football
widows" to describe those women when their men park themselves in front of
the TV or are off to the stadium.
A
British survey shows that the divorce rate would increase by around 20% during
the World Cup time. The internet is flooded with articles like “women, please
go away” , “women, prepare to lose your men”, etc. This year, things seem to be
different. No matter true or pseudo fans, there are an increasing number of
female fans appearing over night. For example, when my aunt talked about Messi,
I could not be more shocked than hearing that China won the Wold Cup.
However,
as a lazy non-fan, I would rather to stay in the first stage - be an ignorant female, and keep asking silly
questions like “who scored the goal this time?” with a bewildered expression when
everybody else is yelling or shouting, or tell my man how much I appreciate
this hot and sexy player and think another one’s hairstyle is funny. This time
my silly level did not disappoint him, and it took Aaron nearly 5 minutes to
explain the offside rule. Unfortunately, after 5 minutes, I still could not
understand, then he had to google “how to explain offside rule”, and “to women”
jumped out spontaneously. That’s humiliating. How does google know that rules
are just not women’s thing?
Actually, one reason of the
popularity of the soccer World Cup probably lies in its rules, or
standardization. No matter it is a certain industry, a lifestyle, or a game,
the key is to set standards, or make rules, and thus can spread it globally.
Modern soccer, and ping-pong, for example, were both standardized by the Britishes
in the 19th century, and then transfered to each corner of the world
with the development of industrial civilization. Why there is a huge difference
between the destiny of ping-pong and soccer? Except for reasons like field
limitation, teamwork and different styles of exercise, there is another reason.
Even though Chinese people are very good at playing ping-pong, and too good to
meet comparable opponents, Chinese people are bad at setting rules. On the
contrary, British people are not only experts at making rules, but also good at
encouraging others to follow the rules, and maintain the rules working
smoothly.
And, probably this can explain why
many females are not that into the World Cup.
Firstly, we don’t understand those
rules. Why this player got a yellow card and why that team could take a penalty
kick? According to our boyfriends, fathers, or husbands, referees always make wrong
judgements, and only their comments are correct.
Most of all, we don’t like rules.
Compared with men, women tend to set up rules or break rules rather than follow
rules. If we are allowed to make rules, each of those 11 players can get a
ball, and who shoot more win the game. Cause Fight? Good, it would be more fun.
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