The little things: Lindsey Jacobellis wins snowboard cross world championship...not the "women's event"

I was publishing news links from around the web for our homepage and came across a short article from ESPN.com about the snowboard cross world championship, which reads:

Australian rider Alex Pullin held off a strong American field to win the snowboard cross world championship Tuesday, while Lindsey Jacobellis cruised to a third title in the women's event.

I'm sorry, so did Lindsey not win the world championship? Just the "women's event." I know this may seem picky to some, but it's the little things. Something like this is done subconsciously by the writer and it doesn't mean he or she is a jerk, it just means this is how they've been conditioned to think. I, however, have been annoyed enough times in my life by patriarchal society-birthed comments (and have flipped off enough dudes hanging out their car window) that I notice them right away.

Imagine if it said "American rider Lindsey Jacobellis cruised to a dominating win in the snowboard cross world championship Tuesday, while Alex Pullin won the men's event." Would you be surprised if you saw it written that way? I would be.

It reminds me of something that put me in a bad mood last week: the guy who gave me a tour of the new gym we joined walked me through the basketball courts and said, "If your husband likes to play hoops, we have lots of leagues going on." Again - the guy isn't a jerk, it just didn't occur to him that I might play hoops or any other kind of organized sport and wasn't joining the gym just to use the elliptical and do a few crunches. Later, when he was signing me up for the membership, he did two more things to get on my nerves:

1) When I was deciding whether to go ahead and sign up or sleep on it for a night, he said, "Don't worry, there is a 14-day grace period, so if you go home and he's like, 'What were you thinking?' you can come get all your money back."....implying I need Jason's permission to sign up for a gym membership. I hadn't implied that I wanted to discuss it with him first. This was his assumption.

2) When he was putting in my information for my account, he asked why I didn't have the same last name as Jason. Well, first of all we're not married, but he assumed we were. But when I explained that I just like my name because it's my name, he smirked and said, "I bet that's a sore subject." 

I feel like there are two worlds within the world - a world that I live in, thank goodness, where women are just as strong and independent leaders as men, and they are respected as such; and the old world that is still out there, where people are surprised, amused and sometimes even offended by a woman who pays the bills, files the taxes, runs the business, does power cleans, jacks the treadmill up to 10 or 11, plays in the hoops league and yes, even dares to keep using her own name.

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jane says:

"The door of opportunity won't open unless you do some pushing.*

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 1:20pm EST