Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 94

90 Popular Culture Review basketball was exciting and status conferring. Most of the Red Heads players planned on playing a few years and then getting married. Products of their socio-cultural times, these were traditional women who were socially conditioned to accept the feminine roles of housewife and mother. Publicity Images The Red Heads' owners believed that to get bookings, it was more important for publicity to focus on the women's appearance than on their athleticism. Consequently, past basketball experience and current game statistics were largely ignored in press releases and game programs. The owner's instead focused on four publicity images (beautiful women, exciting games, patriotism, dollar signs). These images were carefully constructed and integrated. Beautiful Women and Excitement The following quotes from the 1970-1971 program illustrate how the owners carefully merged beauty and athleticism to project an image of beautiful women playing exciting basketball. "The RED HEADS will prove basketball can be beautiful, as well as exciting." "The All American Red Heads are not only champion athletes, but each girl is a Superlative in her own right." Feminine beauty rather than athleticism is used as the major drawing card to attract fans. In a whole page of photos of team captain, Pat Overman, there is not one game action shot or statistic. Instead there are four pictures that highlight her good looks, charm and femininity. The first picture shows Overman in her red, white and blue uniform with a beauty crown on her head and a cape wrapped around her shoulders. The caption reads, "Crown Princess of Girls Professional Basketball." The impression left is that the game is more of a beauty pageant than an athletic event The second picture shows her talking on the telephone while looking in a mirror applying her lipstick. The caption reads, "Miss Basketball —Fone'n and Fixin." This plays into the stereotype that women are more concerned with appearance and chatting on the phone with their "girl friends" than with being serious athletes and reinforces the belief that women are basically frivolous creatures. The third picture is a portrait shot of Overman's head framed in a basketball net. The last photo shows Overman in a Ziegfeld Follies or Radio