Saturday, September 06, 2008

Request for information

Could someone please explain to me exactly what a 'hockey mom' actually is? Has it got anything to do with that Holly Hunter Texas chainsaw cheerleader mom thingy?

15 comments:

genevieve said...

You've just reminded me I need to see that film, if only to see HH actually play a Texan. Actually ten minutes of it would probably suffice.

Tim said...

I assume it's the Alaskan version of a soccer mom. Too cold for soccer up there.

Anonymous said...

+1 @ Tim.

Cindy McCain also described herself as a hockey mom in her speech at the Convention. In her case I think that means she owns the Detroit Red Wings.

tigtog said...

Another vote for Tim's explanation. No doubt there is some chest-beating in Alaska about their rugged frontier superiority to the effete soccer crowd as well.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

I like Zoe's explanation too. But I have to confess that I don't really know what a soccer mom is either. Are they like stage mothers, except with sport?

tigtog said...

Generally a soccer mum is not as pushy as a stage mum - stage mums are only about their own precious flower, soccer/hockey mums are about the team (as it relates to the glory of their own precious flower, usually). Soccer mums do the taxi run, the canteen roster, and the fundraising work in committee and around the neighborhood.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Oh, right. You mean, like, community organisation.

See, the lipstuck pit-bull thing confused me.

tigtog said...

I vividly recall the mother of a boy on my brother's soccer team (a boy who was later my own first boyfriend, as it happened) who spent her whole time on the sidelines yelling "Well done! Now pass it to B, quick!" (alternatively "why didn't you pass it to B, you fool?").

B was definitely our most effective striker, but still.

I suspect that's the sort of pit-bull attitude which Palin endorses. Definitely not the only way to be a hockey mom, but I suspect it's very much her style.

Anonymous said...

Zoe!!! can we have that on a T-shirt?

Anonymous said...

I think in political terms "soccer/hockey mom" really just means "ordinary suburban wife and mother" type demographic, not particularly party political but able to be swayed either way with focus on "their issues." (bread and butter stuff of education, the economy, health chiefly) Remember when we had the "doctors' wives" who might not have been actual doctors' actual wives but the phrase conjured a supposed certain group of attitudes and experiences. I don't think you actually have to have a kid in the soccer team to be a soccer mom.

The above is my summary of what I understand when talking heads use those terms not an endorsement of the highly questionable, if not downright sexist, assumptions contained therein!

genevieve said...

Does that elegant argument work in reverse, Amanda, especially if you go to watch your child play soccer but hate barracking? (Guilty.)

Anonymous said...

What Amanda said. I, for example, am a soccer mum. With the added advantage that my children play soccer.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

It grieves my (part-time Edwardian) soul that hockey has been recast as the stuff of wholesome conservative nukular-family Americana. Back in my day (yes, 1910), hockey was all about gels with muddy knees and tweed upholstered boarding mistresses.

M-H said...

I always have the impression it means a middle-class woman (soccer being a 'private school' kind of thing in the US) who doesn't work for money and doesn't really have a life outside her maternal and wifely duties - she is defined in terms of her kids.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Sure as hell ain't Sarah Palin then!