Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 89

All American Red Heads
Professional Basketball:
Femininity As Adaptation To
Marginality
This paper analyzes the reasons for the financial success of
the AH American Red Heads, a professional women's basketball
team that barnstormed throughout the United States, Canada,
Mexico and the Philippines from 1936 to 1986. The Red Heads
competed only against men's teams and averaged over 200 games a
season. The regular season ran from. October through May. They
usually played a game a night and often two on Sunday. At the
height of their popularity, the Red Heads were not just one team, but
three separate barnstorming teams.^
Over the years the All American Red Heads received
national and international publicity. Feature articles on the Red
Heads appeared in magazines such as Life, Look, Collier’s, Sporting
News, Sporting Life and Sports Illustrated. Various Red Head teams
appeared on TV programs such as Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town, To
Tell the Truth, I ’ve Got a Secret, Art Linkletter's House Party, and
on an NBC 60 Minutes Special. In 1974, the Red Heads were featured
in an National Basketball Association (NBA) play-off half-time
show.
For fifty years, 1936 -1986, the All American Red Heads were
a popular and financially successful operation. And they were
popular at a time when sports were considered a male domain and the
female role epitomized the antithesis of masculinity and
athleticism. Women who competed in masculine sports such as
basketball were not only seen as unfeminine, but often stigmatized as
being masculine or lesbian. Even as late as 1980, prominent sport
sociologists Don Sabo and Ross Runfola stated that "sport and
masculinity are virtually synonymous in American culture" and that
"a primary function of sport is the dissemination and reinforcement of
such traditional American values as male superiority, competition,
work, and success."^