Awful

Lingerie Football League Lies To Us; Breaks Our Hearts

Earlier this month, the Lingerie Football League announced that it would be undergoing a rebranding: the self-professed “most successful women’s sports league” declared it was changing its name to the Legends Football League and that the official uniforms of bras, panties, and garter belts would be switched out in favor of more traditional football apparel. Mitchell Mortaza, founder and chairman of the LFL, called the change “the next step in the maturation of our global sport.” It was time, Mortaza said, for the league to gain “credibility.” All over the country, creepy step-uncles groaned in dismay.

When I first heard about the league’s announcement, I immediately thought, “Woah, lingerie football is still a thing?” Once I was informed that lingerie football was very much still a thing, I was glad the league was moving away from its “UNDERWEAR! GIRLS! TOUCHING!” gimmick. The LFL always seemed to me like a wet T-shirt contest masquerading as a sport, something borne out of the same part of the male brain that created slumber party pillow fight fantasies. The uniforms looked like they came out of a costume bag labeled “Sexy ‘Tight End’.” I was excited for the change; feminism had done its thing and now women were getting a serious professional football league.

Then the doubt and grief set in.

“O! Feminism,” I wailed. “What have we done?” The LFL was harmless, wasn’t it? It was “true fantasy football,” just as its tag line suggested. Now we would only see ladies’ cleavage in commercials, sitcoms, music videos, cheerleading performances, dance performances, reality shows, sports stands, movies, TV movies, late night HBO, late night Cinemax, Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, and the odd cameo from Katy Perry on Sesame Street. I couldn’t handle the guilt. I spent days searching for an appropriate Boys II Men song for the occasion. (I settled for K-Ci and JoJo’s “Crazy“.) I bore grass stains on my breasts in mourning. When I put on my underwear every day, I wept.

This morning, while penning my requiem to the LFL, I came across a clip of the league’s rebranding press conference in which the players’ new uniforms were revealed. As it turns out, the costumes are exactly the same!

“Wait,” I muttered. “The costumes are exactly the same?!” Oh, yes; it seems that in the LFL world, “more professional performance wear” means garter-less bikinis made out of moisture-wicking fabric. The franchise that claimed it wanted to “focus on the sport” and its “amazing athletes” is still putting those very same athletes in outfits that include cleavage holes and wedgie-tempting panties. I felt like a buffoon. Put a football in the hands of struggling models wearing tacky lingerie and call it a sport once, shame on you, LFL; send out press releases that announce your more tasteful and professional re-branding only to put your lady athletes in revealing and titillating uniforms once again, shame on EVERYONE.

TAGS: lingerie football league | Mitchell Mortaza

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