Instant Reaction …
To the Breeders’ Cup announcement that the event will feature an all-female day of racing on Friday, that the Breeders’ Cup Distaff will be renamed the Ladies’ Classic, and that the Breeders’ Cup will be partnering with organizations to host “cause-related programs focused on women’s health” the same day:
– An all-female day of great racing is a great idea (as suggested by Superfecta months ago). [2/28 Addendum: Or maybe not so wonderful. Over on Left at the Gate, Alan worries the Friday move “threatens to make the Ladies second class citizens.”]
– Renaming the Distaff the Ladies’ Classic is a silly and very bad idea. The name change tosses tradition and manages to sound both trivializing and unpleasantly old-fashioned.
– Please, don’t put the pink ribbon on the saddle cloths. I’m all for women’s health, but women are more than their bodies. If the Breeders’ Cup is going to promote an all-female day of racing, let’s see positive expressions of women in the sport as horseplayers and horsewomen, not marketing tie-ins about women’s health issues.
More: Reactions abound across the blogosphere, some positive, some negative. “It smacks of sexism,” writes John on Not to the Swift. I second the sentiment.
Columnist Maryjean Wall also protests the changes: “Every time I think that maybe, just maybe, we might hope to get past genderizing our culture, I am reminded how we really only stand on the brink of tottering backward.”
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