With the NCAA men's tourney presently between rounds and the Ohio State women taking it on the chin, I'm left with watching the NFL Network while I work. It turns out that Paul Tagliabue is a great man, and that the NFL is a totally bitchin' league. Who knew?
When it comes to offseason programming, they're clearly reaching. Yesterday, a documentary about—I am not making this up—the Dolphins' cheerleader tryouts aired. I was only tangentially aware of the show, so I can't give a whole review, but I managed to catch this moment on tape so that I could transcribe it. The scene: Ashley is summoned before two grotesquely artificial-looking Barbie dolls, who would look quite natural spritzing wrists in the Nordstrom perfume department, or perhaps working the front desk at a disreputable car dealership, or simply shilling peroxide. Ashley is a veteran cheerleader, and the narrator gravely tells us that no one—no one!—is above the lofty standards to which those who simulate masturbation for drunks are held. Or words to that effect.
Ashley sits down. Dorie Grogan, the Dolphins' Director of Event Entertainment and Ashley's pimp, immediately begins chiding:
"We're going to have to let you go. I mean, your weight is just too big of a problem. Um, I honestly was extremely upset when you came back, with the weight like that, um, it's not only, it's a disappointment to your teammates, it's a disappointment to the Dolphins"—at this point, Grogan's disgust and outrage are swelling, and she can't chide fast enough without stuttering—"i-it's-it's-it's it's disrespectful of the organization, everything that we stand for, that you would come back and not want to respect it enough to come back at your best you know, you know it's just gonna have to end here."
I pause now to show you a photo of the morbidly obese cheerleader getting up to leave after having been fired, probably the least flattering pose imaginable. Note the telltale folds of waist fat.
Ashley leaves. The other Barbie grins.
"Poor thing, she was about to...she was tearing up! Did you notice?" The grin widens to beaming proportions. "She was trying to hold it back."
That the NFL pimps and denigrates the women in its employ is hardly a surprise. That vacuous, heinous women like Dorie Grogan exist is hardly a surprise, either. Nor it it surprising that the Dorie Grogans of the world utter unintentionally hilarious things like a young woman's alleged weight gain being against "everything we stand for." Great stuff, that, and no doubt honest, although a better verb choice might have been "gyrate" or "kneel." What does surprise me is that this aired. The NFL isn't even pretending not to objectify these young women, anymore. The girls' evisceration along the shallowest and unhealthiest of lines is now good reality TV fodder. I'm surprised the cameras didn't follow Ashley to the bathroom to show her sticking her finger down her throat.
Where's your self-awareness, NFL? Where's your shame?