Beacon Broadside

Today’s post is from Michelle McAteer, an Assistant Coach for the defending National Champion Women’s Ice Hockey team at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She’s a proud Canadian who desperately wishes she could vote in the U.S.

In case you haven’t heard, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is an “average Alaskan hockey mom.” For anyone who didn’t grow up on skates, like I did, it’s a relatively new colloquial term that plays off of the term “soccer moms,” a moniker used extensively in the 1996 election season to neatly describe the type of white suburban woman who voted for Clinton (Bill, that is).

Lately, I can’t seem to watch the news, read a paper, or browse the internet without coming across the effusive lingo of hockey moms. As a member of the hockey world, this is extremely odd to me. I’m used to my sport being largely ignored, but suddenly it’s the newest political catch phrase. Bowling gets more television airtime than hockey (so does cheerleading), but suddenly the word “hockey” is coming out of the mouths of Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly, Larry King, and is at the heart of the political dialogue. Will this newfound fame propel my sport? Will hockey become this country’s sporting darling?

No, it won’t. After its 15 minutes, hockey will continue to be a
marginalized sport. Partially, because it’s played regionally in the
United States—along the east coast in New England, in the mid-west with
Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan being hot-spots, and in pockets
elsewhere. The NHL, the highest level for hockey players in the world,
is like the red-headed step-child (or Cindy McCain’s half sister)
compared to the NFL, NBA, and MLB in terms of marketability, money,
fans, and viewers. Hockey is also a more expensive sport to play due to
higher startup costs, pricey equipment, ice rental, and travel
expenses, making it less attractive than more affordable recreational sports for kids
like basketball or soccer. Hockey is a sport that thrives in roots but
often is unable to grow in unfamiliar markets. So if Sarah Palin’s use
of the term hockey mom isn’t going to help the sport, then how does the
sport help her?

I always imagined NASCAR as the official sport of the
Republican party, appealing to flag-waving, country music loving-fans
who are mostly white, straight, blue-collar, Christian, and
middle-class. But, in this piece in the Guardian,
columnist Steven Wells suggests hockey is more fitting for conservative
rhetoric because it “represents an idealized form of American
masculinity – unthinking, brutish, willfully ignorant, easy to
manipulate, unquestioningly patriotic, proudly reactionary, quick to
respond to any perceived threat with overwhelming violence.” Perhaps
Palin figured she already locked up the NASCAR voters after naming two
of her children Track and Bristol (as in the Bristol Motor Speedway and
not the port in southwestern England).

Palin presents herself as the anti-thesis to Clinton’s soccer
mom, whom Wells points out “has mutated out of her political pigeonhole
. . . [becoming] an SUV-driving, road-hogging, sweatpants-wearing,
latte-sipping, brat-spewing, strip mall-shopping, suburban folk devil.”
But Palin’s “hockey world” resembles nothing like the one that I
know—that is, the world of women’s hockey. Palin claims that the only
difference between a hockey mom and a pit-bull is lipstick, suggesting
her own connotation of the term is a one-size-fits-all. I’ve played and
coached and have happily resided in the hockey world my entire life,
and we are not all white, Christian, “pro-life,” gun-touting, gas
guzzling, and certainly not all Republican. Women’s hockey struggles
for support and respect, and while men’s hockey is marginalized on a
national scale, women’s hockey fights even harder for a piece of the
pie. In addition to inadequate financial support and respect, women’s
hockey players battle stereotypes that force them to defend their
“feminity” as they play a “masculine game.”

Time magazine wrote last week
that at the moment, women identify with Palin’s complex life as a
working mom and raising a child with special needs. But pit-bull Palin
doesn’t seem to understand the complexities of women in the women’s
hockey world. It’s safe to say she wasn’t trying to associate herself
with me, my community, or my experiences. I’d also wager that the large
subset of gay women in the hockey world never crossed Palin’s mind as
she branded herself part of the hockey minority. At the collegiate
level, though, lesbians are a visible part of game. In some cases, we
are even the majority. Do I know the statistical breakdown? No, but I’d
say that the subset “lesbians in hockey” is comparable to “gay men in
dance.” And, yes, some of us are lipstick lesbians.

Palin’s claim to authority as a “hockey mom” is useful to her
because this paradoxical phrase symbolizes the essence of Palin’s
brand. The unflinchingly patriotic masculinity associated with hockey
allows Palin to take on a powerful position, but by fusing it with
motherhood politics, she’s kept within her God-given role as a
submissive wife, mother, running mate, and perhaps even as a sort of
First Lady. So, if I could chose between having my sport plugged
nationally through Sarah Palin’s frame of reference, or return to the
status quo of being overlooked, let’s just say that I’d watch bowling
any day without complaint.