What I'm about to talk about will be regarded as blasphemy within the football lad community. However I'm quite happy to be the anti-lad, because it's a necessary antidote to a prevailing dumb male culture that many men foolishly believe is wholly natural, instead of being manufactured in the same way their Action Men were as young 'lads'. The culture demands adherence to a few simple laws; you worship beer like holy water and anything you say, or do, no matter how repulsive to humanity...normally women, is laughed off as a kind of post modern ironical banter. The guys that try and evolve beyond this normalized sexist prejudice are regarded as either 'weird' or 'have no banter'.
In keeping with this prevailing dumb male culture, Euro 2012 is giving such men what they want; close ups of pretty women in HD. I thought I was being paranoid at first when I saw several Truman showesque choreographed camera set-ups, zooming in 'randomly' on the crowd. Either the crowd at Euro 2012 are all given tickets on a strictly "tens only" admittance policy, or the horny teen director of Euro 2012 is deliberately picking out attractive women. My dad went as far as to suggest some of these women were planted in the crowd, conspiracy theorist!
I'm not some fossilized catholic priest moaning about the shameful displays of female flesh that defile women of their 'innocence'. Is it not true however, as the fine work in the documentary "Misrepresentation" has highlighted cogently, that our culture objectifies and depicts women in an over generalized artificial manor and devalues their worth to the superficial appeal of Christmas tree baubles? This in turn creates a false societal perception of female perfection that are unattainable and undesirable...at least if you don't want eating disorders, wide spread body consciousness and general depressive anxiety...
Anyway, I thought I might be alone in my suspicions and then I found these links that verified my worst fears, I particularly enjoyed a link by the website "BroBible"....enough said:
If the lad "webosphere" has picked up on this trend you can bet your bottom dollar they're responding to the dog whistle being blown by the Euro 2012 coordinators. If you listen carefully it says: "look predominantly male audience, here are some pretty women to please you while you watch your man sports".
These events are slick PR occasions and the messages they promote are rarely accidental. Like a dripping tap over time they permeate society in ways often underestimated, which in this instance infect our minds with depraved gender norms. It's telling of the complacently accepted sexism prevalent in our societies, that the constant concern throughout this tournament has been racism against male players by fans. Meanwhile female fans themselves are presented to male audiences like high definition Big Macs on silver platters for their visual consumpation; this is no less abhorrent or degrading. This is yet another indication of where the power lies in our world and it's with the male directors behind the cameras, not the smiling pearly-toothed women captured by their misogynist lenses.