So Danica Patrick won the pole for the Daytona 500 yesterday,
and since I’m a woman who likes NASCAR I’m contractually obligated to have an
opinion on this…
You don’t have to be a NASCAR aficionado to know who
Patrick is, or that she’s a polarizing figure. I go back and forth myself.
While my personal brand of feminism has never been the “woman = automatically
good and true and right” kind, I really do feel some pressure to be in Patrick’s
corner, fan-wise.
I hear the same thing from other female racing fans. It
usually comes from people who aren’t NASCAR fans themselves, and the only thing
they know about it comes from 10-second blurbs on Sportscenter. Hey, you’re a lady fan! How ‘bout that Danica
Patrick? And when the response that person gets is something along the lines of
“SHE’S ONLY EVER WON ONE RACE EVER! AND THOSE GODADDY COMMERCIALS SUCK!!!” –
the takeaway isn’t that that being a female racing fan, or a feminist in
general, involves a great deal more nuance and personal experience than simply
lining up behind the latest “first woman to do X.” Instead, we’re just bad
women. When we had the chance to practice all that stuff we’ve been saying
about how women are just as capable of succeeding in motorsports as men are, we
sold out.
Yeah, well. I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either.
Let’s think of Danica Patrick like any other driver. I’ve
never been called on to explain why I’m not a huge fan of, say, Greg Biffle, or
Jeff Gordon. I once heard someone say that becoming a fan of a particular
sports team or athlete is somewhere between buying a car and falling in love.
Fans may claim that they like this team or this driver because of their stats,
but there’s always something intangible there. Maybe this driver grew up in the
same place you’re from, or pulled a move on the track you’d like to think you’d
have done yourself. Something makes you identify with that driver on a personal
level… or not. You might respect the skills of everyone else on the track, but
you still have your driver.
I guess that’s the best way to describe how I feel about
Patrick. I respect her, but she’s not my driver.
If the ultimate goal is for a female driver to be thought
of simply as a driver, then what I think of Patrick’s pole win is just what I’d
think of any other driver’s: while following a line around an empty track is an
accomplishment (certainly not something most of us could do), it’s not terribly
predictive of how a driver or car will do during the actual race. Let’s see how
we do in dirty air with 42 other cars bumping into one another for a few hours.
And please stop telling me how I should feel. (At least
the LA Times didn’t write “panties in a bunch.”)
