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Popular Culture Review
how stupid men are. They all want the forbidden fruit. . . The
little wifey lives her little happy life in the limelight as a
ballplayer’s wife. If she doesn’t know he fucks around on the
road, though, she’s an idiot. I think that they’re pretty damn
stupid! [Laughs] These guys get away with so much and the
stupid women just let them do it, or pretend they don’t know,
or whatever.
Bad girls direct open hostility toward players’ wives, in part because
they find them to be partners in what Ortiz (1997) calls institutional adultery.
The ballpark becomes a place where infidelity is status quo, which magnifies its
atmosphere of glorifying players at the expense of women with whom they share
long-term relationships. Bad girls understand that they may also be partners in
the process, but see themselves as much less naive than wives (and the good
girls who aspire to be players’ wives), because they at the very least recognize
the relative place of women in the ballpark community. In the extreme, bad girls
perceive their sexual adventures as rebellion against “bogus” and “repressive”
institutions like marriage, as well as the wives, the good girls, and the ballpark
community who perpetuate them.
Not Good or Bad: Just Groupie
Good girls and bad girls work hard to distinguish themselves from one
another, but these efforts may be wasted on the people who are ultimately their
exchange partners. All of our participants stated that men in general, and
baseball players in particular, view them as sexual objects before viewing them
as people. Collectively, the implication is startling, as the name “groupie” itself
implies an object possessed in unison by the group, in this case the team. Audrey
says that once a woman has the label “groupie” she is viewed as prey by all the
men who know of her groupie title.
One guy asked me out early in the season and we went out to a
nice dinner. After that, he came back to my apartment for a
drink and to talk, I thought. While I was making margaritas in
the kitchen he said that he was going out to his truck for
something. I didn’t think anything of it cause he seemed like a
pretty nice guy. Well, when I came back into the living room,
he had a baseball bat in his hand. I thought it was kinda odd
and asked him what that v2f