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Women's Health

A ballet company's response to one football fan's sexist insult on Facebook was epic

Ballet and football are both tough sports.


When the Philadelphia Eagles' season came to an unceremonious end last weekend, many fans were, understandably, more than a little pissed.

Take the rest of the night off to sleep in your shame, boys. Photo by Elsa/Getty Images.

After the final game, one fan allegedly commented on Facebook that the team had "played like they were wearing tutus!!!"

Photo by David R. Tribble/Wikimedia Commons.

...according to the Pennsylvania Ballet, which reported encountering the post on the social media site.

The Pennsylvania Ballet, whose company members regularly wear tutus, had a few choice words for anyone who thinks their light, frequently pink costumes mean they're not "tough."

Commence epic reply...


(full text transcribed under the post).

A Facebook user recently commented that the Eagles had "played like they were wearing tutus!!!"

Our response:

"With all due respect to the Eagles, let's take a minute to look at what our tutu wearing women have done this month:

By tomorrow afternoon, the ballerinas that wear tutus at Pennsylvania Ballet will have performed The Nutcracker 27 times in 21 days. Some of those women have performed the Snow scene and the Waltz of the Flowers without an understudy or second cast. No 'second string' to come in and spell them when they needed a break. When they have been sick they have come to the theater, put on make up and costume, smiled and performed. When they have felt an injury in the middle of a show there have been no injury timeouts. They have kept smiling, finished their job, bowed, left the stage, and then dealt with what hurts. Some of these tutu wearers have been tossed into a new position with only a moments notice. That's like a cornerback being told at halftime that they're going to play wide receiver for the second half, but they need to make sure that no one can tell they've never played wide receiver before. They have done all of this with such artistry and grace that audience after audience has clapped and cheered (no Boo Birds at the Academy) and the Philadelphia Inquirer has said this production looks "better than ever".

So no, the Eagles have not played like they were wearing tutus. If they had, Chip Kelly would still be a head coach and we'd all be looking forward to the playoffs."

Happy New Year!

In case it wasn't obvious, toughness has nothing to do with your gender.

Gendered and homophobic insults in sports have been around basically forever — how many boys are called a "pansy" on the football field or told they "throw like a girl" in Little League?

"They played like they were wearing tutus" is the same deal. It's shorthand for "You're kinda ladylike, which means you're not tough enough."

Pure intimidation.

Photo by Ralph Daily/Flickr.

Toughness, however, has a funny way of not being pinned to one particular gender. It's not just ballerinas, either. NFL cheerleaders? They get paid next to nothing to dance in bikini tops and short-shorts in all kinds of weather — and wear only ever-so-slightly heavier outfits when the thermometer drops below freezing. And don't even get me started on how mind-bogglingly badass the Rockettes are.

Toughness also has nothing to do with what kind of clothes you wear.

As my colleague Parker Molloy astutely points out, the kinds of clothes assigned to people of different genders are, and have always been, basically completely arbitrary. Pink has been both a "boys color" and a "girls color" at different points throughout history. President Franklin D. Roosevelt — longtime survivor of polio, Depression vanquisher, wartime leader, and no one's idea of a wimp — was photographed in his childhood sporting a long blonde hairstyle and wearing a dress.

Many of us are conditioned to see a frilly pink dance costume and think "delicate," and to look at a football helmet and pads and think "big and strong." But scratch the surface a little bit, and you'll meet tutu-wearing ballerinas who that are among toughest people on the planet and cleat-and-helmet-wearing football players who are ... well. The 2015 Eagles.

You just can't tell from their outerwear.

Ballerinas wear tutus for the same reason football players wear uniforms and pads:

Photo by zaimoku_woodpile/Flickr.


To get the job done.


This article originally appeared on 01.05.16

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'You aren't listening': Philadelphia Eagles player greeted press with signs and silence.

After the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles were uninvited from their scheduled visit to the White House in early June 2018, star safety Malcolm Jenkins decided to try something different when asked by the media about player protests.

He greeted them with silence — instead answering questions with a series of signs.

"YOU AREN'T LISTENING," he wrote in all caps. And to be fair, there's good reason to believe they aren't.

Nearly two years after Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest police brutality, some people still don't get the message, wrongly believing that the gesture was intended as a show of disrespect toward the national anthem, the flag, the military, the police, or some combination thereof.

For almost a year now, President Donald Trump has been railing against the league and players who have dared to participate in protests under this false pretense.

It's no wonder that Jenkins — who devotes his free time to visiting prisons, working to improve police-community engagement, and speaking with lawmakers about racial injustice — is sick of having to answer basic questions of what these protests are all about.

Rodney McLeod, Malcolm Jenkins, and Chris Long stand during the national anthem at an October 2017 game. No member of the team kneeled in protest during the 2017 season. Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images.

With poster board and a marker, Jenkins got his message out, focusing on the issues.

"More than 60% of people in prison are people of color," read one of his signs. "Nearly 200,000 juveniles enter the adult criminal system each year, most for non-violent crimes. #StopSchoolPipelineToPrison," read another.

Image from Malcolm Jenkins/Twitter.

On other cards, he played up the off-field work he, his teammates, and friends do to support their causes: the million dollars Kaepernick has given to charity, Chris Long's massive donation to education, and Ben Watson's and Demario Davis' work for voting rights with Louisiana House Bill 265.

Image from Malcolm Jenkins/Twitter.

There's a lot of injustice in the world, and Jenkins is using his platform to try to help. His attitude should be one to emulate, not scorn.

The day of the scheduled White House visit, Jenkins outlined some of his frustrations with the media's tendency to frame NFL players as "anti-America, anti-flag and anti-military."

"It takes empathy and time to listen to others' experiences that may be different than your own,"he wrote. "It takes courage to stand up for the TRUTH even if it's not a popular one."

He's putting in the work to try to help people who don't have it so easy. He's using his voice (or, in this case, his marker) to lift up the concerns of people society often ignores. He's doing the work we'd all be proud to see our family, neighbors, and elected officials doing.

So why is Jenkins being slammed as ungrateful and spoiled?

Maybe he's right: People aren't listening. It's time they started. We could all learn a lot from his example.

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Bernice King calls out a scary double standard in America in one strongly worded tweet.

What does it mean to look "suspicious"?

It's a question a lot of Twitter users are asking on what would've been Trayvon Martin's 23rd birthday.

In case you need a refresher: Six years ago, Florida resident George Zimmerman — who was on local neighborhood watch duty after a string of local robberies — called the Sanford Police Department to report Martin for being "suspicious."

Martin, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, was walking home to his father's fiancee's house after buying a bag of Skittles and Arizona iced tea from a local convenience store. Minutes later, Zimmerman fatally shot him.

He was 17 years old.

Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images.

Unfortunately, Martin's is just one name in a long list of young black men shot and killed after being labeled "suspicious."

As some Twitter users pointed out, it's a racial double standard that doesn't apply to his white counterparts:

But perhaps the most poignant remark in tribute to Martin's legacy came from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s daughter, Bernice.

On Feb. 5, the day after the Super Bowl, King took to Twitter to point out a troubling double standard in our reactions to mayhem erupting on the streets.

Philadelphia Eagles fans celebrated their Super Bowl victory by flipping over cars, toppling light poles, stealing trees, looting gas stations, and burning property — but despite all that violence, many media outlets brushed off these violent acts as being merely "rowdy."

Meanwhile, when civil unrest broke out in Baltimore after Gray's death in 2015, public officials, political commentators, and members of the U.S. public decried "rioting" protesters.

According to reports, cars and buildings were set on fire. The windows of local businesses were smashed and some were looted. But as King pointed out, those riots erupted out of a continuing trend of young black people being punished by extrajudicial killings and a system that fails to provide their family and communities with any justice.

Of course, the riots in Philadelphia weren't met with the same level of nationwide condemnation as the ones that took place in the aftermath of Gray's death or the verdict that set Zimmerman free.

Martin's death — and Zimmerman's eventual acquittal — helped give birth to the Black Lives Matter movement to fight against the trend of young black lives being systemically targeted and killed.

After hearing reports of the riots after the Super Bowl, Hank Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter New York, lambasted the hypocrisy in statements made to Newsweek on Jan. 5.

"Somehow, it seems there's a line drawn in the sand where destruction of property because of a sports victory is OK and acceptable in America," Newsome said. "However, if you have people who are fighting for their most basic human right, the right to live, they will be condemned."

As Twitter user @StarrburyMike suggested on Sunday evening, it's time to hold all Americans — especially those in positions of power — accountable for this racial double standard.

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NFL star Chris Long is donating his entire year's salary to a great cause.

His $1 million salary will go to help fund education.

One of the NFL's top players won't be taking home a paycheck this season. He's doing something much better.

Now playing in his 10th season in the league, Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long decided to up his charity game. At the beginning of the season, just weeks after white supremacists marched through his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, Long committed to donating his first six game checks of the season to funding scholarships for local students.

Long during the Eagles' Sept. 10, 2017, game. Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images.

"In August, we watched people fill our hometown streets with hatred and bigotry," Long said in a press release. "Megan and I decided to try to combat those actions with our own positive investment in our community."

That same day, he teased a larger undertaking, promising to share more in coming weeks. Today, he unveiled that new project, committing his final 10 game checks to funding educational programs in the three communities he's played for during his career (Philadelphia, St. Louis, and New England), saying that he hopes it'll "inspire others to invest time, money or passion into our communities and into our kids." Long's base salary for the 2017 season is $1 million.

Long's career has been marked by the good he's done off the field as much as what he's done on it.

In 2015, Long launched the Waterboys initiative, an off-shoot of his charity, the Chris Long Foundation. Waterboys was created to bring clean drinking water to communities in rural East Africa. To date, the group has funded the creation of 26 wells. Long's foundation has also done some great work addressing homelessness, helping returning veterans get back on their feet, and providing support for youth programs.

He's also been a thoughtful, supportive voice during the controversy surrounding NFL players kneeling during the anthem. Asked what he thought about Colin Kaepernick's protests in 2016, he told ESPN that while he wasn't comfortable kneeling, he supported Kaepernick and other players who did.

"I play in a league that's 70 percent black and my peers, guys I come to work with, guys I respect who are very socially aware and are intellectual guys, if they identify something that they think is worth putting their reputations on the line, creating controversy, I'm going to listen to those guys," he said.

This season, he's shown solidarity with teammates Rodney McLeod and Malcolm Jenkins, who both decided to hold a raised fist during the anthem, by putting his arm around Jenkins's shoulder.

Long stands beside teammates McLeod and Jenkins during the national anthem on Oct. 8, 2017. Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images.

While Long's history of charity work and allyship is hard to match, it's not entirely out of the ordinary.

"What good does kneeling do?" asked some observers of the recent protests. "If these spoiled millionaires REALLY wanted [to] 'improve' these communities, shouldn't they use their money [to] support and move into these communities?" asked another.

The truth is that professional athletes have been doing all the things that people suggest could be done instead of kneeling — which league officials have been trying to pressure them to abandon. Even though he's not on anyone's roster this season, Kaepernick has continued to make good on his million-dollar charity pledge, outlining his actions on his website. Deshaun Watson of the Houston Texans gave his first paycheck to stadium workers affected by Hurricane Harvey. The list of thoughtful, charitable acts goes on and on.

Long's bold act of giving back to his community is more than a publicity stunt; it's a way of life that he and many of his NFL colleagues share.

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