As part of the renovation of Kinnick Stadium at the University of Iowa, both sets of locker rooms were restored. When Hayden Fry became head football coach at Iowa in the late 70s, one of the first things he did was to have the walls in the visiting teams locker room painted pink. He was a psychology major in college…he claimed that the color scheme could be used to mellow out the opposing team because pink was a passive/soothing color.
Did it work? Who knows. We DO know that Coach Bo Schembechler had his graduate assistants use butcher paper to cover the walls when the Michigan Wolverines visited.
The pink walls have become part of the tradition of Iowa football, and so when the stadium was renovated, the walls were painted pink and pink fixtures (showers, sinks and toilets/urinals) were also placed in the locker room
“Law professor, Erin Buzuvis says the paint on the walls demeans women.”
{snip}
"She said, “Using that color as an insult to the opposing team is a way of conveying a message that women and effeminate men are weak.”
I didn’t see this in the original forum that I found the story in…but Ms. Buzuvis, like all the other cool kids, has a blog where she can share her wisdom on this important matter.
I found the color scheme there very sooooothing. I think I’ll take a nap.
She needs to get the fuck over it. It’s not unusual at all for teams to use the visitor’s locker room as the spearhead of their psychological game. As long as the room is sanitary they don’t have to make it comfortable at all.
By this woman’s logic, a locker room that has uncomfortable, cheap furniture; shoddy, thin towels and possibly a missing toilet seat or two is totally degrading to those who can’t afford furniture, nice towels or toilet seats.
Oh, c’mon. She’s being a dumbass, sure, but of COURSE the football team painted the locker room pink to imply that the visiting team was a bunch of ladies. Who’s seriously denying that?
Can anyone deny that pink is stereotypically associated with females? Blue for boys, pink for girls?
Has any man posting to this thread ever played a team sport and not had at least one coach deride the team by calling them “girls” or “ladies”?
Does anyone really think that the idea of painting the locker room pink had nothing at all to do with the sterotype?
Of course there’s an element of challenging the masculinity of the opposing team in the color scheme.
Is this really something that needs to be addressed in a faculty meeting? No. Is this professor over-reacting? Absolutely. But it’s not like her objection is so completely lacking in foundation as some here would like to believe.
Come on people, it’s Iowa City. People just wander around that place looking under rocks and in mailboxes hoping to find a reason to get offended. :rolleyes: This is no big deal.
I agree with Otto. It’s not that this woman’s complaint is groundless, it’s just that it’s incredibly petty. It’s also a dumb interpretation of the situation. This little bit of psychological warfare only works on misogynists. A guy on the other team who has no issues with sex or sexuality isn’t going to give a shit if the lockers are pink. It’s only the most insecure of homophobes and woman-haters who are going to get freaked out by a “girly” color. What this locker room does is attack people through their prejudices, manipulating and exploiting their character flaws. This has got to be the most pro-Feminist locker room in college football history.
[sub]I’ve always sworn to use my powers of post-modernism for good.[/sub]
But haven’t there been serious studies on the effects of color that have shown that pink does suppress aggression? And that they use it in prisons for that reason? Personally, I think the pink urinals are just darling, but Dr. Schauss (in his Conclusion) says they’ve not been proven necessary to the effect.
Hey she gives mad props to the Dope and HawkeyeReport (where I obviously found the initial story) on her blog now.
It IS a shame, in reading comments there, that the usual predictable gang of idiots would use this kind of knee jerk notion of “offended-ness” to respond with their OWN knee jerk notion of misogyny and death wishes in comments to her blog.
You must be kidding. Why the fuck do you think the locker rooms were painted pink, then? I know Otto already said it, but please spend two minutes thinking about this. It’s just silly.
Since Professor Buzuvis has linked this, I do hope she’ll come in and participate. She’ll find we are quite an intelligent and civil lot here on the SDMB, but I also think she’d get her clock cleaned.
Do you want to argue that women or effeminate men (keeping in mind that effeminate != gay) are not, in fact, less likely to win a football game?
Perhaps the professor is opposed to anything that suggests that one gender is better or more disposed to certain skills or traits than the other. Leaving aside the biological ignorance that that would reveal, it would be interesting to ask whether the professor is also vigorously opposed to anything that encourages men to “get in touch with their feminine side” by being more emotionally sensitive, artistic or nurturing; after all, the idea implies that females are better or more disposed to those things.
I strongly doubt that’s the point. The point is that telling a football player “you = women and gay men” is an insult to the women and gay men because it says “a comparison to you is an insult.” Elements of a tautology there, I know.
