The Lingerie Football League: Or, the homoerotic undertones of American football

Upon first hearing of the Lingerie Football League (LFL) it is hard not to feel like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into view. The LFL is a women’s American Football league consisting of ten teams of seven players competing over a 20-week season. These teams bear such names as the San Diego Seduction, the Philadelphia Passion, and the oddly meteorological, Seattle Mist. The players are young, pretty and uniformly thin. As with genuine American football teams their uniforms are strikingly distinctive: boy shorts are combined with colorful bra tops, chokers and leg garters, while helmets and shoulder pads give the players a top-heavy silhouette that suggests Bambi in armour.