If there's one thing to take away from trend pieces regarding women and the Super Bowl, it is that women who don't typically watch football games are really, really stupid and mentally locked somewhere in 1958.
The Toronto Star is currently running a piece titled "As the pigskin turns: An off-the-field guide to Super Bowl," which, the author notes, is meant to be patronizing (uh, okay?) and centers around "the women folk whose attention is suspect and no wonder. When the Indianapolis Colts meet the New Orleans Saints on Sunday in Miami, they'll be slinging drinks and grub to the belching masses around the telly, gleaning snippets of the action between wind sprints to the kitchen and, thus, unfairly pegged a gridiron lightweight." Because life is a big episode of According to Jim right? Hold on one sec, ladies—my boyfriend needs nachos and can't assemble them himself, so I'll finish this post after I get into the kitchen and make a few sassy comments about men while he scratches his balls on the couch and burps loudly and discusses his lucky underwear, which he hasn't changed since the playoffs began. Oh wait! That never EVER happens, ever.
Look, I understand the need for Super Bowl guides: I am one of those people who doesn't watch football, and having a basic set of football terminology (which one could easily get by visiting Wikipedia, btw) is helpful at times, as is just sitting there watching the game and picking it up after 20 seconds or so.
My lack of football enthusiasm doesn't come from the fact that I have a vagina, it's because I grew up in a baseball household and football was just never interesting to me, as it was never something my family really made a big deal of or something I connected to personally. That said, I have several female friends who live and breathe football, and several male friends who are just as disinterested in it as I am: so why are all the idiot's guides to the Super Bowl aimed at the ladies? And why are they always so, so dumb? It's one thing to acknowledge that some women do, indeed watch football, as this Associated Content article does, and that your article is for the non-football watching crowd, but including lines like "a bowl is another name for a football game" make the entire endeavor seem like some thing that needs to be read aloud, slowly, in a very loud voice, to someone who makes Karen from Mean Girls look like a genius.
I know it may come as a shock to some: but WOMEN LIKE SPORTS! They watch them! They know them! They even—wait for it—play them! I know right? Wacky. So if you're going to write a guide for those of us who watch the Super Bowl mostly as a cultural event as opposed to a sporting event, it might be nice, for once, to write it as a guide that doesn't involve patronizing winks to the ladies about the bean dip they'll need to prepare for the bros or shout outs to what Kim Kardashian may be doing on the sidelines. Continuing to make women look stupid as means to "prepare" them to watch a football game just kind of makes us feel like this:
A Girl's Guide To The Super Bowl [Associated Content]
As The Pigskin Turns: An Off-The-Field Guide To The Super Bowl [Toronto Star]