Play Like A Man, Look Like A Girl
History isn't written by Hollywood movies
If you saw the movie, A League of Their Own, you saw a heart-warming story of a woman’s baseball league during WWII, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The film played up the wholesomeness angle of the women’s game, but the reality was quite different.
Amazon has just released a series based on the movie, and it’s a bit more historically honest about the women who played in the AAPGBL. As might be imagined, “historical experts” on the Far-Right are anything but pleased that their wholesomeness bubbled has been burst by the fact that most of the girls were- “GASP!!!!”- lesbians.
Oh, and even more shocking to these keepers of the historical flame is that there are- wait for it- Black people in the cast.
Good Lord, y’all; will Amazon stop at NOTHING to offend good, God-fearing, White Conservative Christian heterosexuals???
Oh, the humanity….
"Lesbians? There's no lesbians in baseball!" cried the teeming masses of frustrated right-wing crybabies who overtook the Amazon reviews page for the new "A League Of Their Own" series this weekend, claiming they were expecting an entirely wholesome series about nice ladylike white ladies playing baseball and not swearing and definitely not being lesbians.
This seems a little difficult to believe given the source material, the actual history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and literally everything the show creators have been saying since it was first announced….
While most just said right out that they were "upset" by seeing two women kiss, others tried to be a little more highbrow by incorrectly claiming the inclusion of lesbians and Black people made the show "historically inaccurate."
Now I have to wonder where these MENSA candidates went to school, primarily since the woman upon whom Madonna’s character was based recently came out as gay…at age 95. (Wow; preconceived notions shattered, eh?)
Some of the comments posted about the series are moderately amusing. And some are just plain brain-dead. ‘Cuz as any honest student of history knows, the ‘40s were a wholesome, sexless time, when homosexuality was nonexistent, and women waited until marriage to get their freak on.
Or something like that. All I know is what I learned in the movies. ;-)
Can't get through any Amazon production without their rewrite of history to reflect their wishful fantasies and their insertion (which they love, intrusive mind insertion among other things) of deviant sexual indulgence into every character. I never finish the first episode of any multi-episode productions because of this. Immediately turn off. They are 100% committed to their agenda, it's impossible to create something sweet or historically accurate. That hotel concierge, never in the 40s would a man even let himself utter gay thoughts aloud in a work place, even if he thought he was alone; it's only today that happens. That satanist Madonna replacement character, gay and dragging another woman down with her. That personality hemorrhoid Rosie O'Donell (SIC!) character, gay. Hey MSM, we don't buy your historical inaccuracy, and we know you want us to believe you're the righteous majority. Your entertainment media defiles everything it touches. Can't just produce something sweet. Shamelessly arrogant.
“Shamelessly arrogant?” Sure, about as much as someone rewriting history when all he knows of history is what he’s seen on television. This argument is so far beyond stupid that this MENSA candidate is seriously lost in the weeds.
If this person knew anything at all, he’d know that the real story of the AAGPBL is, in fact, a story of LGBTQ women. One of the cardinal rules of the league was the rule that caused a lot of girls to get sent home: “Play like a man, look like a girl.”
Players had to attend charm school and wear lipstick on the field. Their uniforms had skirts instead of pants — not great for sliding, but deemed appropriately feminine by league owner Philip K. Wrigley. All of this was chronicled in “A League of Their Own.” But there was one thing the movie left out: the reason for these requirements.
Though it was never explicitly stated, historians and players alike say the rules were in place, in part, to prevent the women from being perceived as lesbians. Many of the women actually were gay, including D’Angelo, which is another part of the story the movie didn’t tell. By not including a gay character’s story in “A League of Their Own,” the film does to the history of the league what the owners tried to do its existence — erase lesbians from the narrative.
As was true in so much of society at the time, LGBTQ women had to be able to pass as straight. A League of Their Own whitewashed the truth of those players who played it straight because they had to.
For the players, camouflaging their sexuality was crucial to maintaining their baseball careers. If their hair was too short, or if their behavior was determined to be unfeminine, they could be- and were- summarily released.
So what the Homophobe Ph.D. candidates see as “historically inaccurate” is, in fact, much closer to the truth. The whitewashed version of history that A League of Their Own presented is what Hollywood felt America would tolerate.
In the ’40s and ’50s, homosexuality was not discussed much; it wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association removed it from the list of mental illnesses. The players could have lost more than just their baseball careers if they had been open about their queerness. They could have lost their families, occupations, and reputations, too.
“Historical accuracy” isn’t always what you think it is. And if you’re basing your understanding of “historical accuracy” or “historical truth” on Hollywood movies, boy, do I have a few surprises for you, Cowboy.
You may have slept through American History in high school. Or you may have only heard the things you found acceptable or meshed with your Puritanical version of reality. The problem is that morality and history seldom march arm in arm. Instead, they tend to take alternate paths and end up at very different destinations.
No matter how much you want to believe in something, mere belief doesn’t make it true. Nor can your version of morality be applied to history because those who made history were almost certainly operating by a set of rules that have no relation to yours.
How do we know that the story of the AAGPBL is a story of LGBTQ women? First, Netflix released a documentary on the topic a few years ago. Second, many of the women who played in the league were aware of it and most no problem with the sexuality of their teammates.
When Maybelle Blair joined the women’s baseball league that inspired the film and TV series “A League of Their Own,” she wondered if she’d be the only gay woman there. It didn’t take long for her to learn she’d truly found a league of her own.
“Out of 650, I bet you 400 was gay” in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Blair said at a recent screening of the Amazon Studios series at the Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival. Blair, who was a pitcher for the league’s Peoria Redwings in 1948 and later played pro softball, came out publicly when the series premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival days before the Frameline screening….
While the women still had to be careful, being in the league was like a party, Blair said. “On our days off, we found the gay bars, and we danced, and we had one heck of a party that wouldn’t end,” she said.
When Penny Marshall filmed A League of Their Own in 1992, it was, as Blair says, “way too early for anybody to accept anything” about the sexuality of women in the AAGPBL. Even now, it’s a flash point for the Far-Right homophobe Ph.D. contingent to accept LGBTQ women as “historically accurate.” To them, it’s Amazon pushing “a disgusting liberal attempt to interject racism, lesbianism, bullying, condescending and belittling behavior,” using baseball as a vehicle.
How cowardly! How DARE they tarnish America’s game!! Them damned Libs ruin everything!!
The show may have potential to be great, however evil LGBQ+ and other immoral values such as adultery, lying and crude behavior are not among the teachings I want to support or pass to future generations.
So, is this supposed to be “historically accurate?” Or do you see it as a vehicle for pushing Conservative values? Because you’re not going to be able to have it both ways.
We’re not living in 1957, after all, except perhaps in the minds of those commenters who believe they know proper morality and “historical accuracy” when they see it.
A League of Their Own may be a story about women playing baseball. But, more than that, it’s a story about the people who played baseball because the game was only part of their lives and their dreams. The 600 women who played in the AAGPBL had dreams, aspirations, plans, hopes, and desires. They were adults with sexual desires and mores of their own. Many were lesbian, and some weren’t. Some slept around, and some didn’t- but they all tried to play the role they were expected to- “Play like a man, look like a girl.”
If the Amazon series is to be considered historically truthful (“accurate” is something I’ll leave to minds more nimble than my own), it needs to portray adults as they were in the ‘40s. With a league of 600 women, you’ll have bad decisions, tragedy, joy, disappointment- the normal range of emotions and experiences you’d find in the human experience. You can’t whitewash history into a statement on Conservative values.
I’ve said many times in this space that people are people, and love is love. No one has the right to pass judgment on how another lives their life. Or whom or how one chooses to love. You may disapprove of a choice for your own life, and that’s fine, but that’s as far as your right to pass judgment goes. What someone else does with their life or body is none of your god****d business.
I have seen the Amazon series, and I’m not sure if I will, but that’s not important. What’s important is that those who portray history are responsible for showing it as it was, warts and all. When you leave out aspects of history to please specific constituencies, it’s no longer history; it’s fiction.
Conservative values are too often based on a fictional view of America and human nature. It’s time we began to accept human nature, behavior, and sexuality for what they are.
People are people. Love is love. What’s so difficult about that?
