This Week In Sexist History: Girls, Girls, Girls Edition

Amanda Hess — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:00:59 +0000

Newspaper stories from the good old days say the darndest things. So every week on the Sexist, let’s take a ride on journalism’s way-back machine, to a time when descriptors like the following—"big girls and little girls, blonde girls and brunettes, dark-haired blondes, sunset blondes, Rhinegold blonde—blondes of all kind save the prescription pattern"—qualified as college baseball commentary.

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol' Day: June 23, 1909

Dateline: New York, NY

Subject: Reporter at Yale-Harvard rivalry baseball game fluffs up his flowery play-by-play with a rhapsodic account of the glorious array of girls in attendance. Collect one in every ethnicity!

First, let us immerse ourself in the peculiar style of turn-of-the-century Ivy League baseball reporting:

The "real old Jamake," guy? Whatever—this man has clearly got column inches to fill. And then:

Who has a baseball game to report on when there are girls to scrupulously detail?

At this point, you might be thinking that this guy should get back to the game at hand instead of ranking the glorious blossoms of the rose garden that is female college baseball enthusiasts. No? Okay. What were they wearing?

That explains it: He fancies himself a novelist. Say what you will about this reporter's choice to obscure the whole ballgame with testimony on gowns "such as made Paris a memory" and excuses for his own lechery—it beats his baseball reporting:

Yeah, where are the girls again?

The Sexist » ivy league

This Week In Sexist History: Girls, Girls, Girls Edition