From Lingerie to Legends

The Lingerie Football League, for those that don’t know, is/was a professional football league for women. The catch however was that the women would be playing half-naked in lingerie, hence the name.

Mitch Mortaza started the ten team, seven on seven league in 2009 after two Lingerie Bowls during the halftime shows of the 2005 and 2006 Superbowl. The Bowls were distributed on PayPerView and aired during half time of the Superbowl. Because of the popularity and draw away from the most watched event of the year, the league was made into a regular thing.

Games are played at many stadiums around North America and each team dawned the colors of the NFL or CFL team their respective city. Coaches are NFL veterans or men with football experience.

The LFL expanded to have leagues in Australia in 2013 and is looking to create leagues in Europe, Latin America and Asia. The goal of the league is to have five leagues total around the world that come together every four years to play the LFL World Bowl.

Clearly, the creators and marketers of the LFL are playing off the notion “sex sells”. Instead of promoting athleticism and well played football, the women who played were used as sexual objects. This can be proven by the tagline of the league: “True Fantasy Football” as well as looking at various teams’ logos. The logos depict provocative women.

The league began to pick up coverage and received negative opinions regarding using women as objects.

In 2013, in order to avoid the scrutiny, the league switched its name to Legends Football League. The logos using women were changed. Uniforms were altered from the lingerie to “performance apparel”; the women are still half naked but are now wearing synthetic, spandex-like garments that resemble bras and underwear instead of lingerie. Changing the uniform has nothing to do with treating the players better but rather runs with the current trends that athletic females are attractive and changing the uniforms to resemble this furthers that notion.

What clearly made the intentions of the changes evident was the change of the tagline: “Women of the Gridiron”.

The changes were made, according to the LFL, because the league has gained popularity from the lingerie and seeks to change to more of a respected sport, rather than a gimmick.

This “new” league doesn’t change anything in the sense of objectifying women. If the league wanted to take a true feminist approach to the re-branding, it would have dressed the women in proper uniforms and padding; similar to what the men are given in the NFL.

The question is raised is whether or not the league would be profitable without sexually objectifying the players. One might not hesitate to say that they can’t. However, I would argue that it is possible. Take the WNBA for example. The WNBA hasn’t used sexually advertising nor seductive uniforms to fill the seat in arenas or to boost ratings and the league has been successful for many years.

It will be interesting to see if the Legends Football League will remain in the current form as the feminist movement grows ever popular.