Every so often, I crave good television. After hours of back-to-back viewings of TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress” and marathons of Freeform’s interchangeable teen dramas, I find myself longing for a meaningful television show that actually has a message to share with its viewers.
On Thursday night, Fox brought us just that.
The series premiere of the hour-long drama “The Pitch” introduced the world to a talented young baseball star who shatters more than just pitching records — she shatters gender stereotypes.
That’s right. She.
“The Pitch” follows an African American woman named Ginny Baker as she makes her Major League Baseball debut. Ginny, an undeniably talented athlete, faces much more opposition than any competing team could pose; as the first female major league pitcher, she must deal with unsupportive teammates, a skeptical coach and a nation full of baseball fans who are unsure how to regard Ginny’s challenging of the status quo.
Ginny’s struggle to belong on her sport’s greatest stage, despite the fact that athletically she is more than qualified to be there, illuminates a major issue facing women today.
Western women face perhaps the most severe gender discrimination when it comes to sports. Female athletes are treated far differently from their male counterparts. The distinction appears at a young age — more than half of all girls who have played sports at any point in their lives quit by the time they reach puberty, and more than two thirds of all girls feel that they do not belong in sports, according to a recent survey conducted by Always. Promoted during the summer of 2016 on social media with the tag “Keep Playing #LikeAGirl,” the campaign promoted equal athletic opportunities for girls as well as boys. There is evidently some fundamental difference between how we treat our male and female athletes that is causing young girls to hang up their respective hats, cleats, rackets, bats or sticks at a much higher rate than boys.
One possible solution is establishing a better representation of diverse female athletes in the media. Studies have indicated how media representation can strongly influence the mentality of consumers of such media, and much of the African American representation in television plays into harmful racial stereotypes. More successful female African American female characters need primetime representation, and Ginny from “The Pitch” can provide that. Furthermore, while there is a surplus of successful male athlete portrayals in television and literature, there is a shortage of shows, movies and books that feature athletically talented women.
And if we discriminate against our fictional athletes, our real-world female athletes don’t stand much of a chance. In no place was discrimination more prevalent than the 2016 Rio Olympics. The accomplishments of many women who competed this summer on their sport’s greatest stage were routinely belittled. Seconds after Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszú destroyed a world record in the 400-meter individual medley, a male broadcaster credited the victory to her husband, pointing out to the crowd “the man responsible” for the swimmer’s success. The day after swimmer Katie Ledecky set a new world record in the 800-meter freestyle, headlines focused on Michael Phelps tying for a silver medal in the 100-meter butterfly. A broadcaster likened the women’s gymnastics team, arguably the greatest women’s gymnastics team of all time, to a bunch of teens who “might as well be standing in the middle of a mall.”
Sexism in sports doesn’t just come around every four years with the Olympic cycle. Women endure a systemic inequality each time they step into an arena. The number of male sportswriters greatly exceeds the number of female. Sports announcing is an industry dominated entirely by males. As a whole, there is simply not enough female representation.
A show like “The Pitch” is a step in the right direction for both women and minority representation. One is reminded of Simone Manuel, the first African American woman to earn an Olympic gold medal in an individual swimming event. Little girls watching Ginny Baker on the mound throwing a Major League pitch are not just watching a woman doing exceptionally well in a male dominated sport, they are witnessing stereotypes crumble. They are seeing a door open. They are thinking, “I look like her; that could be me.” And more than just one third of them are believing that they do belong in sports. “The Pitch” tackles gender and racial discrimination and is exactly the type of show we need if we ever hope for the word “athlete” to be more significant than “female” when using the term “female athlete.”
One thing is certain: I’ll be turning off “Say Yes to the Dress” and cheering on Ginny Baker this season.
