Lingerie Football Season Kicks Off

The first games of the inaugural season of the Lingerie Football League were last week. Dallas’ team, the Desire, bested the Denver Dream in a match that was anything but a French-manicured-nail-biter, 20-6. The Desire is tied with the Seattle Mist and the Los Angeles Temptation at 1-0 atop the Western Conference. There’s also an Eastern Conference; 10 teams in total.

Now, I’m a regular guy. I like looking at attractive, barely dressed women as much as the next schmo. But lingerie football seems pretty silly. The 7-on-7 sport is “full contact,” meaning that players must cover their bikini-clad bods with a modicum of equipment. The shoulder pads don’t cover the chest area, naturally, and only barely cover the shoulders. The question raised and promptly answered by the pads is: What good is lingerie football if the lingerie isn’t visible? By not interrupting the spectacle of the wearer’s breasts, the shoulder pads also serve as a metaphor for the entire sport, saying effectively that, “No one really cares about the spirit of athletic competition here. Just show us the ta-tas!”

Has the male gaze become so all-encompassing that lingerie hockey isn’t far behind? Have modeling jobs become so scarce that attractive women have reduced themselves to risking serious injury while scantily clad just for publicity and a little dough? Not to sound rude, but have any of the ladies considered, I dunno, keeping their clothes on and using their other, less physical, less obvious talents? I know that selling, writing, or teaching –– in general, doing something that doesn’t involve colliding with other people and throwing and catching balls –– isn’t nearly as fun as, well, colliding with other people and throwing and catching balls, but at least non-full-contact jobs don’t turn back the clock to 1955. And they’re relatively safe.

The Desire’s home games are at QuikTrip Park in Grand Prairie and, like all LFL games, are on Friday nights. One of the LFL’s main selling points is that players are required to make themselves available for photographs and autographs before and after games. However, the Desire’s next home game, on Fri., Oct. 23, versus the Temptation, will –– fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective –– be the last of 2009.

But definitely not the last for good.

P.S. Via the web, super-pervs can buy uniforms worn by specific players. Angie Everhart’s, Nikki Ziering’s, and Trishelle Cannatella’s are going for $250 apiece. Sad? Funny? A little of both? I can’t say.

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