Magnifique: My Interview with Bruce Constantineau

I was at a networking event recently and met Bruce Constantineau, the fellow who writes about the Whitecaps and other soccer news for the Vancouver Sun. Well, we didn’t meet exactly- I overheard someone I had met talking about soccer with him, and found out who he was just as I was leaving, so I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself. Instead, the next day I brazenly sent him a link to the blog I’d written about attending a Whitecaps game with my daughter and asked if we could talk. Naturally I expected nothing from this encounter, but he was very kind, and responded by saying he’d read the link and said he’d be happy to answer my questions. Nice!

It doesn’t take much encouragement for me to get excited about things related to soccer and writing. Here was someone with everything I didn’t have – a paying writing gig, connections, journalistic integrity – paying attention to my blog! As I waited for him to call, I began to treat this impending event the way some might plan for a visit with say, Nelson Mandela, or the Beatles. I checked to make sure my cellphone ringer was on approximately every twenty seconds. And during this time, I may have let my imagination get the better of me. Keeping in mind that I had never actually met this person and know almost nothing about him, I began to picture Bruce and me attending soccer games and writing about them over the years, eventually growing old together. What kind of last name was Constantineau anyway - French? Perhaps we’d move to Paris and get a little apartment there. Bruce would be well connected with the French soccer scene so, of course, we’d become friends with the famous former player Zinedine Zidane. On Saturdays, Zinedine would come over with a bottle of expensive red wine and I’d spend all day making Coq au Vin for us. I guess my husband Steve could come too – in my fantasy I’d sort of temporarily forgotten that I’d already planned to grow old with someone – but this was France! (As I understand it, you can get away with all sorts of things there.) The four of us would sit around an old rustic table in our little garret, drinking wine and looking out at a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower as the sun went down. Zinedine would promise to keep the head-butting to a minimum. Magnifique.

And then the phone rang and I had to actually talk to him.

Bruce was a consummate professional, dutifully answering all my dopey questions about the Whitecaps coaching changes, the players, the stadium, traveling with the team, his son's successes and how he got into writing about soccer. For about twenty minutes he generously spoke with me as though I were an equal, telling me I was a good writer and encouraging me to keep it up.

He did not offer to whisk me away to France though.

If I had to describe it now, I’d say my relationship with Bruce is in a holding pattern, in which I remain happily married to my husband and Bruce continues to do a great job of reporting on soccer in Vancouver and completely forgets about me.

I don’t mind, though, because we’ll always have Paris.

Twenty for Seven

I’m at the Whitecaps game with Lisa. We’ve got two 7 year old boys with us, her son Zane, and Zane’s friend Ty. They’re outfitted in Whitecaps shirts, scarves, and caps, and even though Ty blasphemously tells me that he thinks “soccer is boring”, it seems like they are having a good time while we stand and sing the national anthem and watch the fireworks go off at the beginning of the game.

It might help that they are loaded down with snacks: during the course of the game, they polish off blue slurpees, hot dogs, Sprite, popcorn, cotton candy and gum. They also flirt with three grade 1 girls who are sitting in the row behind them, seemingly parentless. Lisa finds a notepad in her purse and the boys keep themselves busy playing hangman and x’s and o’s. Once or twice their eyes might drift towards the soccer field but I’m not sure. (Of course, I am watching the game, myself, so I might not have caught it.)

In the car on the way out of the stadium parking lot it is pure gridlock. Lisa and I are chatting when we suddenly notice that the boys have their windows down all the way, elbows leaning out, and, perhaps emboldened by all the blue food dye and MSG in their systems, and their success with the grade 1 girls, they are talking to a girl in the car beside us. She’s got her hair in a low side ponytail with a flower fastened in it and probably hasn’t had her licence for long. She’s maybe 18 or 20 and in the car by herself. “Hey, were you at the Whitecaps game?” Ty asks, all cool.

She answers and they actually chat back and forth for a second.

Lisa and I clue in to what’s going on. “Ty!” I said, “That girl is, like 20! Are you flirting with her?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “Old girls are sexy.”

A Smidge of Sideboob

The Whitecaps FC is starting a new season tomorrow night in a bigger stadium, and they need to sell more tickets than ever before. They’re succeeding too, courtesy of some free publicity coming their way due to a picture of a nubile, naked young woman wearing a Whitecaps jersey rendered in bodypaint, featured in big posters, websites, and advertising all over the city. You know you want to see it. Here you go:


The image has been stirring up comment streams and a number of women are complaining about it: some have publicly threatened not to buy seasons tickets for their families because of the negative image this portrays for young women; others are former athletes who find the sexualizing of women’s bodies demeaning. The fact that the Whitecaps revealed it the day after International Women’s Day-- when everyone is in a pc frame of mind-- is a little boneheaded, to be sure, but I must admit-- this doesn’t bother me that much.

Look at the thing. Don’t bother gazing too closely though—I expect you’ll get lost if you’re looking for her ladygarden, since she’s wearing panties underneath all that paint. Plus, that’s a real scarf she’s wearing over her upper half, so what is there to see once you look past that? A smidge of sideboob? And it’s painted sideboob. Yawn. This is no different or more revealing than the cover of any modern fitness magazine or Cristiano Ronaldo underwear ad. In fact, the few people I directed towards this picture had to be told it was bodypaint. Like me, none had given it a second glance—we all thought it was just a skintight shirt.

The video of the painting being done which went along with this picture is also pretty tame. (I'll include it at the end.) When Steve watched it, at one point he turned his head sideways and squinted, saying, “Is that T or A?” Not a good sign. It’s just a fuzzy montage full of air-brushed close ups of the bodypainting being done, sans scarf, and at the end, she kind of inexplicably rolls a ball around on her neck (why? Who knows!), and then turns to the face the camera looking ......concussed. No big payoff. Sorry, everyone. No nips.

If you’re going to get all up in (unpainted) arms about unfairness with women and soccer, how about complaining, as the Vancouver Sun’s Daphne Bramham has done, that the 9th place Canadian Women’s National Team is having an internal crisis due to underfunding—the coach is threatening to quit, the team is boycotting games in support of her-- while the men’s team, ranked 84th—is ticking along just fine?

Besides, it’s the model’s loss. She has no jersey to exchange with anyone after the game.