Shouldn't women's soccer be about ... soccer?
Today's the final in the women's world cup for soccer, and the U.S. team will be squaring off against the Netherlands.
Google's done several memes around this earlier, with memes of decidedly unglamorous big-thighed women from various countries making frontal power kicks, and that's O.K., soccer actually does give anyone playing it big thighs, and not every woman ought to be all-in on the Beyonce pop princess standard of Hollywood anyway. As my sister says, it's a different kind of beauty.
But the messages they have out today are actually redolent of Soviet propaganda. They've gotten political correctness woven in in every image they're flashing today regarding the U.S. vs. Netherlands match and none of these messages are about the sport.
Take this one, depicting the U.S. team:
Start with the mountain range, which hardly describes the U.S. topography in toto, as might with Switzerland. It can only be a reference to 'purple mountains majesty' which is the alternative anthem proposed by lefties who hate the Star Spangled Banner, that song that Colin Kaepernik takes a knee to to show his disrespect. Not their worst transgression, since everyone likes "Oh, Beautiful" as a U.S. song but clearly a whiff of political.
Now take a look at the right half of the picture. We see a group of women (I guess women's soccer isn't enjoyable for men to watch) drawn in a sort of Norman Rockwell exaggerated style, watching by the blue light of a television screen, obviously proud of the female-ness players because they are all women. As if the excellence of the athletes isn't the big reason to watch the game but ... because women. Identity politics now personified as sport. Hmmm.
It gets worse when you look at the calculated identity-politics composition of the women watching. One old white lady. One fragmented image of a middle-aged lady (she has pointy facial features so she is probably white). One dark haired younger woman in the middle, indeterminately Latina or Asian. One black girl in braids. One Muslim in a veil. One of each, perfect box of chocolates. Everybody represents. That's not exactly how soccer audiences look as they watch television. But who cares, the message being stomped in is diversity. Counting heads for skin color and age ratios. That's the Google argument. Race uber alles, never mind the sport thing. What it looks like is Soviet or Chinese propaganda, where images come in perfect affirmative action measurements. Such as these images from EuroMaidan Press:
That squarish lettering of Google, in its dull one-choice monocolor, comrade, looks suspiciously Soviet, too.
But it wasn't just the U.S. that got a Google doodle sending a propaganda message about diversity, and the importance of having the state manage that to Soviet standards, it's also Google's Netherlands doodle.
Here we have the racial diversity within the images of the soccer players and that might be all right because the Dutch team probably is a near-professional one and that would mean many African immigrant players as is common on all European soccer teams. No objection to that, the team should look the way the team looks.
The Soviet-ish propaganda actually extended in a different direction - toward Going Green. We see a couple of images commonly associated with the Netherlands - tulips, canal houses, but there are a couple of images that suggest the Netherlands, one of those countries that still hasn't fulfilled its Paris climate accord emissions standards, still hasn't done. We see wind turbines. We see bikes. Ride the bike, it's so much greener than driving those awful SUVs. Bike lanes, anyone? The meme is less about soccer than Going Green.
Soccer, in other words, is a useful vehicle for advocating favorite leftist political causes, whether of the left's idea of diversity by color shade or the left's ideas on global warming. The U.S. women's team yells a lot about equal pay and equal exposure on the networks for women's soccer. But right now, it's being subsumed in other politics rather than appreciated as a sport of its own. I doubt we'd see the same kinds of social justice warrioring messaging on a men's sport as we do on women's. It goes to show what pawns women's sports are in the hands of leftist propagandists, who find them so very useful for other causes.
Image credits: EuroMaidan Press, with its stated permission at bottom of site, Google, fair use.