14. Brass in Pocket – The Pretenders 1979
Gonna use my arms
Gonna use my legs
Gonna use my style
Gonna use my sidestep
Gonna use my fingers
Gonna use my, my, my imagination
Why, as a sports mad nation, did Australia only in 2018 get
semi-professional female sports competitions?
While I had absolutely no
interest in playing it as a kid, I was none-the-less aware that just about
every other girl in my school was mad about netball. Now, while netball is
still not a professional or even semi-professional sport in this country, the
two largest football codes are falling over themselves to have ‘W’ leagues?
This is following only a few
years earlier (2012) when the AFL was patting itself on the back for allowing
Chelsea Roffey to be the first female goal umpire in a grand final. The media
made such a big deal about ‘Oh my God! A
woman!’ being able to wave her fingers around at the right time, as if they’d
never realised that we could do it before.
I’m not trying to take away from Chelsea’s
achievements. She has clearly been a trail blazer, but holy shit, did it really
take this long!
On the plus side, just a few
years later (2019) I noticed my first female field umpire at a GWS v Freo match.
Looks like we’re gaining momentum.
This leads us to Tayla Harris. What
a catalyst for social norms one simple photo has become.
The now famous photo is of an athlete
in their prime and doing both what they love and what they’re paid to do.
Photos like this earn photographers both a reputation and a living on a daily
basis as they grace the sports pages of newspapers and, as this photo has
demonstrated, they don’t even have to make it to print to cause a stir. They can
just appear on social media.
The only difference with this photo
and every other photo that is lucky enough to make it into the sports pages is
that this one is of a female athlete.
The same trolls that attacked
Tayla Harris from behind a keyboard are likely the same ones that applaud males
when they are captured in similar athletic feats. Similarly, these trolls are presumably
the fathers of daughters with aspirations, athletic or otherwise. Yet the troll’s
approach is signalling to their daughters to not bother following their
aspirations, as they’ll be cut down for bothering to try. This is happening on
the home-front – a place that is meant to be a sanctuary.
How pathetic.
Following this discourse, males can
aspire to achievement and financial rewards, while females shouldn’t bother. Sorry,
but sporting and other achievements are no longer the reserve of males.
The best thing to have come out
of the whole Tayla Harris affair is the media attention it received as people
called out the trolls. Despite a media outlet’s attempt to sweep it under the carpet,
the public demanded that the trolls be called out.
In 2019 we also witnessed Australia’s
Ash Barty being crowned the world number one tennis player and winning the richest
purse in the history of tennis – male or female. We’ve also had front row seats
to the Matildas and Socceroos negotiating equal pay across the male and female
competitions.
Back to the image of Tayla
getting airborne on the footy field. It has been immortalised in bronze. While
some took this as a blow to the many highly accomplished sportsmen – yes sports MEN
- that hadn’t had bronze statues made of them, it took a simple clarification
that Tayla’s image wasn’t now a 3.3 meter high statue because of her football
achievements, but because of what the image had come to represent.
Kick on Tayla!
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