Sunday, November 9, 2014

Equal Options for both Men and Women?

           With basketball beginning tomorrow, I have been on the lookout lately for a new pair of basketball shoes. As I scour the numerous sportswear websites, I’ve come to a glaring conclusion: men are offered more variety in style than women. I’ll prove it to you, go look at the Nike website and click on Men's Basketball Shoes and then go to Women's Basketball Shoes, just numbers wise you can see a vast difference between the two.
          As a girl I can attest to this unfairness. I mean how would boys feel if they always had to get their shoes based on women’s sizes? How would they feel if they only had the small selection of styles that are given to women? They wouldn’t be too happy with the small number of choices they have and would start to look somewhere else for their shoes, where a wider variety is offered.
          My biggest issue with this problem is that I feel like these sportswear companies stereotype women and assume that we just want basic plain colored shoes including pink. No, just because I am a girl doesn’t mean I always want to wear pink nor do I just want solid colored shoes. I like to spice it up, and get crazy patterned shoes just like the men wear, so why can’t they make those types of shoes in women’s sizes as well?
        I highly doubt that this will be an issue that will be changed in the near future, or even just the future in general. Women will always have to defer to men when it comes to sports, because that is how the stereotype of our generation is set. I just wish that women were given the creative ability that men were, because we do care and do have an opinion on what we like to wear and it would be great if those creative options were given in our sizes as well.