Tiger Woods Incident: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
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posted by Women's Sports Blog An irreverent look at the news, issues, and personalities of women's sports from a feminist perspective. |
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There are not many who would want to be Elin Woods right now. God forbid you are a person of humble origins who marries someone rich, first of all, or indeed any woman who marries any man with money. You never live down the gold-digger image, as if your husband was busy seeking out Ph.D. candidates and CEOs for a wife until you jumped into his path and distracted him. Then God forbid you ever do something like model, because those photos will be slavered over by the same guys who will then say you deserve anything that happens to you later. That includes the potential that your husband is having affairs, which will be treated as logical and something you ought to expect (because the fact that he can means he should, you know). However you react you're considered a crazy bitch, which means your emotions are not taken seriously and everyone laughs at the idea that you might have inflicted violence on your husband. And that's just the court of sports fan public opinion.
Possibly Tiger Woods just wrecked his car, and that's all there is to it. But if that's so, why not just admit it? It's not a 'private matter' when you're the most famous athlete in the United States and you drive into objects right outside your own driveway with enough force to knock yourself out. You make it a public matter when you refuse to speak to the highway patrol (I understand it's your legal right but not entirely prudent in this case, especially since it smacks of serious privilege) and then release a statement in which you very carefully fail to address any specific questions raised about the incident. Elin's rescuing him doesn't have to preclude the fact that they'd had a fight beforehand. The Woods family absolutely deserves privacy in the event that neither drunk driving nor any kind of spousal abuse occurred. If these things did occur, they're crimes, and it's in the public interest that they be investigated. Being rich or famous brings a number of burdens, but the weight of those burdens doesn't mean you are allowed to hide from the world in all circumstances.
View Original Post at ftlouie.typepad.com/womensports
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- Filed Under:
- Golf, Sports, SportsPLUS, OpEd
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