The Many Benefits of Section Nine :: Sports Athletes Essays

The Many Benefits of Section Nine Section Nine affects all women, not just athletes or children young enough to benefit from equalized funding. Women of all ages, all traditions, and cultures, even/especially the older generations who are being confronted with the changing image of the woman as projected through their grandchildren and children who are benefiting and changing in correlation to section nine. This is seen in all the movies we've watched this semester, and I assume is experienced in most homes and families with young woman. The value system held by the older generation is being met full on by new values, and as Jessie mentions in Bend it Like Beckam, the closer she gets to being who she is now allowed to be, the further she gets from who her family expects and knows her to be. It's not just sports or the new generation benefiting from section nine that is changing; everything is required to change to adopt this modern woman into the family structure. The first group most affected by the new young woman of today would be the older woman of yesterday. Family conflict concerning mothers and daughters in relation to sports was a theme throughout the films. In Love and Basketball, Monica and her mother finally have a confrontation, and her mother admits she gave up her dreams for her husband, children, and their house, but she also declares she would do again, that her family and their happiness became her purpose, and she wouldn't give that up. This notion of the family as the female sphere repeats especially in Bend it Like Beckham. The woman of the family seem to have a spy network of gossiping older women who actually make it their duty in life to learn about and derail inappropriate female behavior. Unfortunately for Jessie, this includes sports (or anything with her legs showing). Her mother teaches her to make a meal, and insists she learn other "wife" activities involving the home, but as with Monica, this casting of the old o n the new never quite takes because of a complete difference in cultural upbringing and its significance for women. At the end of both these movies, all the women essentially compromise. Monica's mother admired the "fight" in Monica, and she tells her to try for Q. Jessie learns to cook and play soccer, and the older women of the neighborhood become more lenient (although it does take the father, symbol of the patriarchy, to get the women to accept Jessie and her goals).