Although it's been a few days, there were some interesting things I noticed about the Super Bowl this year that are relevant to things we've discussed in class. My friends and I had a Super Bowl party on Sunday -- I've never even watched the Super Bowl before. While I could comment about many things regarding Beyonce's performance during half time, there were two other things in particular which stood out to me.
The first was the reaction the women in the room had to Beyonce's performance. I was in a room of 8 guys and 5 girls. The girls, however, were the ones speaking and commenting during the performance. What surprised me was what they were saying. They spent the entire ten minutes or so sticking up for Beyonce and supporting her even though no one in the room was criticizing her for her performance/attire/etc. I wasn't quite sure what it was about Beyonce, her performance, what she wore, the fact that she was woman that caused such a reaction from the women in the room.
The second thing I noticed was at the end of the game. Every single boy in the room had stopped watching and left the room the second after the winner was announced. All the girls stayed put, though. A few of them said they wanted to watch all the athletes/coaches/etc as they celebrated. I, personally, wanted to stay to see if the two coaches (the brothers) interacted at all after one of the teams had won and one had lost. It was interesting to notice the striking difference in who stayed to watch the celebration and who left. Was the reasoning behind this something socially constructed? Why did we care about the "emotional" side of the Super Bowl and the boys didn't?
I, too, noticed my friends' reactions to Beyonce's performance, but it was only women in my room. We weren't sticking up for her, but we definitely praised her every move. I think boys do find emotion in the game, but it's located in the game itself, in the sport, rather than the interpersonal relationships of the players/coaches.
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