TNGG

From October 2010 to February 2012, I was a contributing writing on TheNextGreatGeneration.com; these are my posts as published on their page.

Kicking Cancer to the Curb: What We Can Do

Posted on by LaMarGoti

So a little late, but this is my latest post from TNGG, originally published here.

Son, daughter, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, friend, or neighbor, we all know someone (or many someones) who has been diagnosed with cancer.

A cure to cancer will come one day because society as a whole wants it and supports it — and young people have taken action and will continue to do so. We are going out and trying to kick cancer’s butt. Millennials all over the world are going out running marathons, walking miles, writing letters on end and raising money for all forms of cancer.

Emily Jasper, a Forbes.com blogger, wants to “make a meaningful difference in the fight against cancer” and she’s not the only one putting up a fight and trying to help fund finding a cure.

Relay for Life is a team event that raises money for the American Cancer Society (ACS) and involves at least one member of a team walking the entire night, or longer, as some relays may be. These events are held all over America and beyond (even in Australia). Lately, due to the amount of interest, they are popping up at college campuses everywhere thanks to grassroots organizations like Colleges Against Cancer.

Another way Millennials are supporting ACS is through Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. In Boston, the MSABC walk is full of young participants and volunteers. Co-eds of both genders, though mostly females, wake up early in masses to participate in this event every fall. Last fall, Katelyn D’Eramo, 25, was just one of the many participants, walking for her Nana Barbara. According to D’Eramo, “the best part of doing the Making Stride for Breast Cancer this year was this feeling that all 40,000 walkers, all walking 5.7 miles, wearing pink, smiling, were working together for a cure.”

Perhaps part of the reason so many are supporting a cure for breast cancer specifically is because every three minutes, one more woman in the U.S. is diagnosed with breast cancer. It was this statistic that caused me to walk 39.3 miles in two days for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer a year and a half ago. I agreed to raise $1,800, which I thought would be hard in a tough economy, but it wasn’t. Support poured out from around the world, mostly from my friends, all Millennials.

Carrie Bishop, 25, has walked the Boston AWBC multiple times for her aunt, a two time breast cancer survivor. She says she is “lucky to be able to participate and help those who are less fortunate and raise money to find a cure.” She “was raised with the value of giving back, and will always keep that and pass along to [her] children” — this value, and Carrie’s personal reason for doing it, is one that is all too familiar to many.

We’re not only out there searching for a cure through purely physical means. Those who can still be found on a college campus generally like to stay up late. Though Up ‘til Dawn, you stay up all night writing letters to friends and family to support the patients at St. Jude’s Research Hospital.

College students sacrifice sleep for many things, but even those who need a solid 8-hours a night are willing to give up one night a year to help support this great event that so many campuses host. It’s easy — all you need to do is the addresses of all your extended family and you’re sure to have enough addresses for the bigletter writing party.

Whether our feet or hands are doing the walking, we’re all heading in the right direction. Cancer has already significantly affected our generation. We’re so determined to prove to the world that we can be better than they expect and that we have a social conscious, it’s only a matter of time before one of our own is the one to fine the cure.

Walking miles on end or writing letters all night not your calling? How do you help support the cause?

The Greatest Sex Scandals in (Our) History

Posted on by LaMarGoti

My contribution to TNGG’s sex week — as originally posted here.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Heck, we can all quote other presidents – “Four score and seven years ago…,” “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” “We will go to the moon. We will go to the moon and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.” These are the types of quotes that we should remember from our presidents, but instead, we have Bill Clinton’s blatant denial of sex. How patriotic? At least Bill’s sex snafu taught us a couple things. For one, never lie under oath (especially if you become POTUS, ’cause then you’ll get impeached). And two, don’t cheat.
President Clinton was just one of first celebrities who taught this generation this lesson. The following are some of the biggest sex scandals  we’ve “witnessed” thus far in our lives:
MONICA-GATE: Bill Clinton’s sex scandal actually began with a lesser-remembered one, when Paula Jonessued him for sexual harassment.Lewinsky was working as an intern in the White House when the affair began. First she signed an affidavit denying a relationship during the Jones’ court case, but then another coworker, Linda Tripp, leaked tapes of conversations with Lewinsky in which she spoke of the affair. Unfortunately for Clinton, his inability to keep it in his pants and stay faithful to a devoted wife who always stood by his side, led to his impeachment in 1998 after a highly publicized, 21-day Senate trial.
TEACHER-STUDENT: So if the President of the U.S. can’t be a good example, perhaps we should look closer to home, perhaps we should look up to our teachers? In Des Moines, WA, if your teacher was Mary Kay Letourneau, that would have been a worse idea than following Clinton’s lead. Letourneau was arrested in 1997 for sleeping with her 13-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, who was apparently her “soul mate.” Soul mate or not, she was cheating on her husband and committing statutory rape. Ms. Mary Kay also wound up pregnant with her student’s child (who was born when she was out on bail). While on parole, she was found sleeping with Fualaau again — since this violated her parole, she was sentenced to over seven years in jail. While back in jail, she gave birth to her second child with her student.  After being released from prison in 2004, she married her former student in 2005 and they claim to be living “happily ever-after.” (Although, now that she is a grandmother, she thinks that her kids shouldn’t be dating their teachers — talk about being a hypocrite.)
Father Cutiè: (No really, that is his name.) With the theory of separation of Church and State, if we can’t look to politicians or teachers as role models, let’s turn to the Church, right? Wrong. In the midst of the Catholic Church, which was dealing with residual backlash from a plethora of sex abuse scandals, Fr. Alberto Cutiè, a popular priest in Miami with famous Spanish TV and radio shows, was photographed being very close to a female friend. Keep in mind that the Roman Catholic Church believes that priests are celibate because being ordained a priest means marrying the Church and being the “bride of Christ.” So while Cutiè may not have been caught having sex, he was caught red handed with his hand down her swimsuit — both breaking his vow of celibacy and the seventh commandment – thou shalt not commit adultery.
HOLE IN 15: Sex addict Tiger Woods had not just one, but 15 affairs (at least that’s when I stopped counting…) that all came bubbling out of the wood work after he smashed his SUV into a tree outside his house in November 2009. After allegedly fighting with his wife, Woods hit a fire hydrant and the tree when leaving his mansion and was taken to the hospital. As rumors began speculating, one by one, mistress after mistress came out and publicly admitted to having affairs with Woods. Eventually Woods lost sponsors, his wife and decided to go to rehab for sex addicts. While SNL, Jay Leno and political cartoonists were having a field day, Woods learned (or maybe not) that while getting it the hole may be a good goal on the golf course, it does not apply universally to all aspects of life.

 

Opposites Attract

Posted on by LaMarGoti

In preparation for Valentine’s Day, my latest for TNGG, as originally posted here…

Girl: A business woman working her way up the corporate ladder who comes from a huge Irish-Catholic family. Loves art. Country music fiend. Passionate New York sports fan. Addicted to technology and social media. Wine connoisseur. Social butterfly who feels at home at the bar. Enjoys curling up with a good book by the fire.

Boy: Tradesman who comes from a small family. Enjoys rock music. Gets a thrill from outdoor extreme sports. Doesn’t watch or follow organized sports. Doesn’t believe in social media and dislikes that people put their whole lives on the web. Introvert who enjoys hanging out with only his few close friends. Enjoys PBR and sleeping outdoors.

Back in science class (yes, the same one that taught us Pluto was a planet), we were taught that opposite ends of magnets attract. Magnets aren’t the only opposites that attract — there is a truth to the age-old love adage that opposites attract. None of us want to date a mirror image of ourselves, that would be boring (not to mention creepy if you were dating your identical twin…). But seriously, when we are dating, we crave someone different than we are. We need someone to balance out with our craziness, someone to taking our minds off the stresses from work, someone to challenge us, someone to make us better — someone who complements us.

Granted while dating someone, you are learning about someone new, but at the same time, you are really learning about yourself. Dating someone different can open new doors — when you date someone who has different interests than you, you will inevitably try new things, and hopefully, you like these new things.

While dating someone who is your opposite can open doors to worlds we never knew much about, it can also open doors to “whatever quality or character trait you lack and wish you had”. MTV’s show Made depicts people who live a life they enjoy, but deep down, they are really in search of trying something new. Perhaps this is why “good girls” are attracted to “bad boys;” they see a thrill in living on the edge, but it’s not something they’d dare do on their own. By dating the “bad boy,” she is exposed to the world that always seemed to elude her, giving her a fresh breath of energy and a youthful feeling.

Dating your opposite can do more than just open doors to experiencing new things. It can give a fresh perspective on how to view the world and deal with problems. You may start looking at situations from a different perspective, which allows you to find better outcomes or faster ways to solve problems. Or perhaps in explaining your frustrations, you will be given new insights into how to overcome them.

Opposites pose challenges, but overcoming challenges only make us grow and become stronger. A type-A person can learn to let go and be more laid back or someone lacking drive can learn to set goals and start working on achieving them. It is from those who pose challenges to us that we will learn the most valuable life lessons, and hopefully even find love.

One thing I’ve learned from dating someone different is that as much as I’m addicted to updating my Facebook status and checking in on Foursquare to let the “twitterverse” know where I am, there’s something to be said about spending a weekend disconnected from that world, enjoying nature and the boy that I’m falling head over heels for.

T.G.I.F!? No, T.G.F.R.

Posted on by LaMarGoti

As seen on TNGG as a part of 90’s week — T.G.F.R.? Thank God For Reruns…

While the days of waking up and checking the news to see if the superintendent or chancellor declared a snow day seem as ancient as the Y2K scare, thanks to Mother Nature, I’ve found that snow days, while rare, still do exist in the real world! Granted, snow days are now filled with compulsively checking my work e-mail, digging out my car and shoveling the driveway instead of building igloos, having snow ball fights and sledding. One thing has stayed the same, though, thanks to good ol’ TBS: my snow days still start with an hour of Saved by the Bell.

Back when Zack Morris’s cell hone wasn’t considered enormous, we used to have some pretty rad TV shows to watch. My recent snow days have left me reminiscing about “simpler” days when Nickelodeon rocked and everyone’s Friday plans were the same week after week, because, of course, we were all home, tuned in to ABC’s T.G.I.F. (which for anyone who spent the 90s living under a rock, means Thank God It’s Friday). Before the days of boy geniuses and pop stars with their own shows, we had a dancing tattoo named “Petunia” and a teenage boy madly in love with his next door teacher-turned-principal.

As we embark on a journey full of car and mortgage payments, insurance, investing in 401ks and repayment of our student loans, it can be easy to wish we were back in the less stressful times when we could turn on Nickelodeon to be amused by the different faces of Face. Nickelodeon’s line-up of shows in the 90’s may have been their best line-up of all time — it was home to many of our favorites, including:

– The Adventures of Pete & Pete, wherein though brothers shared a name, they were extremely opposite people

– All That, where some of the most hilarious things we saw on TV occurred and we saw some comical actors begin their careers. It was SNL for kids and Kenan Thompson even made it to the big leagues after getting his start on All That.

– Are You Afraid of the Dark? We all got spooked sometimes, even though no one wanted to admit it.

– Clarissa Explains it All. Melissa Joan Hart’s beginnings. We all saw parts of us in Clarissa Darling and we loved the annotations that she offered directly to her audience as well as her awesome bedroom.

– Doug. The kid made being not cool cool and everyone’s heart tugged at his obsessive love over Patti Mayonnaise.

– Guts. An ever-evolving game show which kept getting bigger with each season, it was completely based on skill and mastering the Aggro Crag was the dream of kids everywhere.

– Hey Dude. For all of us who didn’t live in a desert or near a farm, we all had a glimpse of what life out on the range would look like.

– Kenan and Kel. The reason orange soda holds a special place in all our hearts and the show that birthed the phrase “Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?”

– Legends of the Hidden Temple. The Red Jaguars, Blue Barracudas, Green Monkeys, Orange Iguanas, Purple Parrots and Silver Snakes battled to advance each round to get to the final round in hopes of making it to the temple and feeling a little bit like Indiana Jones.

– Rugrats. Where babies talked and screwdrivers were stored in diapers, yet were never found when it was time for a diaper change.

– Salute Your Shorts. So many of us wished we had spent a summer at Camp Anawanna tormenting Kevin “Ug” Lee.

– The Secret World of Alex Mack. Alex could do the one thing we all wanted to be able to do: turn into a silver puddle so we could sneak out of our rooms without being seen when we were grounded.

Fortunately, we had more than one outlet for awesome TV. In addition to Nickelodeon, ABC nailed it home with T.G.I.F. The twins, Mary Kate & Ashley, doubled up to play Michelle on one of T.G.I.F.’s original hits, Full House, (which sadly was pulled off the air without a proper good bye). In case one non-conventional family wasn’t enough, we had another that lived in Wisconsin; Step-by-Step was our very own version of the Brady Bunch. Sticking with the family theme, who could forget the Winslows’ and their obnoxious neighbor who wore his pants above his waist with suspenders (don’t lie, you loved Urkel and thought Stefan was smoking HOT) from Family Matters? And then we had my personal favorite, Boy Meets World, where Cory and Topanga were hopelessly in love, Mr. Feeny was the teacher we always wanted, Eric was hopeless, and I was madly in love with bad boy Shawn.

As shows of this caliber are not likely to be repeated again, there is not much left to say other than, “class dismissed.”

High Culture Needs to Play Catch Up

Posted on by LaMarGoti

My first post for TNGG of the new year, as originally posted here…

To be cliche, “we are the future.” We are going to run the world some day. We are most likely going to take care of the older generations some day, or at least pay your social security checks. We may even solve world hunger and find peace. But today, it is about us ensuring a future for high culture. It’s simple marketing, really. We are the generation that is going to support the industry as our parents get older and we are the ones with the means to support the industry now.

It is time for high culture to cultivate a relationship with Millennials, because as the calendar turns each day, their collectors and long-time supporters are aging (and becoming closer to death — not a pretty thought, but it’s true). High culture needs us and our rising discretionary income to become their next great generation of collectors, patrons and art buyers.

By hooking into us now, high culture is able to ensure a demand for their products for years to come — it makes for good business to market to us. Under the high culture umbrella, the wine industry has welcomed us with wide-open arms. By attending wine tastings, you learn what goes into making certain types of wine, and you are able to learn what you like and don’t like about particular wines. This allows you to walk into a store and buy a wine you know you will enjoy, not one that you will suffer through. Teaching us and helping shape our pallet will benefit the entire industry now and for years to come — especially as some think this generation will have the next greatest number of wine aficionados. According to the Wine Market council, we make up 21% of core wine drinkers, and not all Millennials are even of legal drinking age yet.

The art industry has also caught on and realized that they need to change up the way art is displayed and how we experience exhibits and gallery spaces — we want to feel involved. Artspace in New Haven, Conn. seems to understand that. And the MoMA has listened too. We say we want to be praised when we do good, well how about throwing a party for us when we support the arts?

The wine and art industries seem to have figured it out. The issue at hand is it’s time for high culture to catch up with the times and re-brand itself in order to not become extinct. We are a great resource, as we don’t have families to support (yet), and we’re not starting families as early as our grandparents did, nor our parents. We have the discretionary income to buy artwork, tickets to shows and donate to their endowments.

Now it’s time for the ballet, symphony and other high culture industries to learn how to get us there. By hooking into us now, high culture industries are just investing in their own future.

What are Your Guilty Plea$ure$

Posted on by LaMarGoti

As originally posted here on TNGG…

Unfortunately, our party lifestyle, coupled with a bad economy, has given more than just the New York Times the idea that our generation has yet to “grow up.” One undisputed Gen Y talent is spending money; turns out a few of us actually have some! Even after rent and college loan payments, we still have a couple pennies to scrape together for ‘disposable income’ and we’re just dying to go out and spend it. So without further ado, I give you the coveted guilty pleasures Gen Y just can’t live without:

Booze — All of us are either still in college, or recent grads who aren’t quite ready to give up the college lifestyle. Whether you’re a wine snob or a beer geek, you spend your money on booze. When an old friend is in town on a business trip, we don’t offer to take them on a tour of our home city, we suggest drinks. It’s a work night? Who cares? There’s a happy hour special at the bar around the corner. You’ll be here for the weekend? Well then, obviously we’ll need to go hit up the best new club in town and then it’s off to the karaoke bar before we head home (or to breakfast!).

Coffee — Whether you’re a Dunkin Devotee, Starbucks Siren or Tim Hortons is your morning kickstart, we love our coffee and we need the caffeine to get us through the work day after we were out the night before — caffeine is our legal drug of choice. (Have you seen the answers to the “10 Questions for…” series on TNGG? Almost everyone lists coffee as something they can’t live without.) We rely on coffee. Our bosses better not ask us to start a project before our first latte (better make it a double!).

Drugs — Hello, have you met a Millennial lately? Our mantra is, “It’s my life; I can do what I want!” This holds true for the drugs that we do, and when we’re stressed out because that cup of coffee didn’t come soon enough, they help calm us down. Prescription drugs are readily accessible, we know this and we take advantage of it.

Technology — A force that has always been a part of our live. We have netbooks, laptops, iPods and e-readers in addition to our BBFL smartphones. We depend on technology to give us immediate answers to everything. We are addicted and we don’t even care. If they’re not in our hands, they are attached to our hips (literally!) or securely tucked in a back pocket. They accompany us every time we stand up from our desk because we can’t delay in replying to the latest person who tweeted at us. My biggest fear of losing my purse in the city is not my wallet (it’s not like we carry cash on us anymore — debit cards and my work ID are easily replaceable), it’s that I will lose so many things I don’t know how I could live without (iPod/iPhone). Like everyone else, I don’t have the patience to sit still for that long with nothing to do. And how could I possibly last a week without social media these days?

Vacations/Getaways — many of us still live at home and no one wants to be home in their house with their parents all the time. We went away to college and then our friends who used to live within walking distance dispersed all over the world. We value our leisure time and we’re traveling more than the older generations. We are still grasping at our dreams — when we were little, our parents told us when we got bigger, we’d have the whole world at our hands. Now that we’re all grown up, we want to travel the world. Maybe we can’t all go backpack through Europe because we’ve got those pesky student loans and rent payments on our shoulders every month, but one thing full-time jobs come with is paid vacation time and we take advantage of every single day available to us.

Spending money on our guilty pleasures helps keep us sane and appeases our addictions — because face it, that’s what most of our guilty pleasures are… or turn into. So long as we’re smart (hopefully?) there’s nothing wrong with indulging every now and again, right?

What about you? Any other guilty pleasures I left off the list?

Photo by BruceTurner

The Root of Who you Root For: New York’s Classic Sports Rivalries

Posted on by LaMarGoti

This is my second installment for the blog I write for, The Next Great Generation — as originally posted here.

Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Devils and Islanders. The New York area has nine professional teams in four professional sports. (Eleven, if you count the Buffalo Bills and Sabres.) As a New Yorker (yes, it is where my birth certificate was issued), how am I supposed to root for three hockey teams, and two football, baseball and basketball (if I followed the NBA) teams? Given our plethora of options, we don’t just root for the home team, we root for our team. Personally, I bleed blue (Giants, Rangers, Yankees — and I would have to pick the Knicks, even though I’m not a big NBA fan).

While some of the rivalries are rather civil, like the Knicks and Nets, the rivalries between the Yankees and Mets (aka the Subway Series rivalry) and the Giants and Jets (they do share the same home stadium) can become much more heated — these rivalries even extend beyond the fans, into the players on the teams.

But even with the hometown rivalries, New Yorkers have greater rivals to the north — that’s right, up in Beantown. Since New York’s teams are not in the same divisions (the Yankees in the AL and Mets in the NL, the Giants in the NFL and the Jets in the AFL), we have bigger rivals in neighboring cities with our divisional rivals. AskMen.com rates the Yankee-Sox rivalry in the Top Five Sports Rivalries.

In 1918, the Red Sox won the World Series and in 1920, Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees  — the Sox didn’t win another World Series until 2004. This “trade” became the root of the most intense, most publicized and longest-standing rivalries in the MLB. “1918” and “Yankees suck” chants are only the tip of the iceberg here — just check out YouTube and you will see the fights and brawls that have been caught on tape. Just think of the infamous time Pedro threw Zimmer to the ground. A word to the wise: if you are a Boston fan, don’t come to Yankee Stadium in Sox gear just for kicks.

Just as baseball rivalries exist in NY, so do football rivalries. Giants and Jets fans battle constantly for bragging rights — the rivalry is like that of a little kid trying to step into some rather big shoes (until this year, Jets home games were played at Giants Stadium). With only 16 regular season games, the two see most of their field time against each other in the pre-season — and this year brought along extra rivalry-fueled decisions, most of which were solved by the flip of a coin. Yet again, New York has a battle between the underdog and the well established team. And our underdog here has their divisional rival to the northeast as well, the New England Patriots.

Regardless of if it’s a New York-New York rivalry or a New York-Boston rivalry, it really all boils down to fans rooting for their home team. Whether it’s for bragging rights or a battle of the best city in the northeast, die-hard fans will always root for the home team (if you’re smart you root for the better, “all-American” team). At least with our intra-NY rivalries, the joking and teasing between fans tends to stay superficial and less people get harmed.
For a true, die-hard fan, who you root for defines who you are. It’s not just a game. It’s a lifestyle.

Diamond’s Are A Girl’s Best Friend

Posted on by LaMarGoti

So, I know it’s been a while, but that’s because I have been working on my first post for a kick-ass blog, The Next Great Generation. It’s a blog for millennials, written for and by us. My first post was published this morning and is about female sports fans — as originally published here — or you can read it below:

How many times have you been to a game where the girl sitting two rows ahead of you keeps asking the guy to her right to explain what’s happening because she can’t follow? After filing her nails, reading Spencer Pratt’s tweets and checking perezhilton.com on her bejeweled, pink iPhone for the duration of the hockey game, Whitney fluffs her bleach-blond hair and asks Johnny how the game ended with a score of 1-1.

Obviously, she doesn’t know that if neither team scores in OT and the shootout ends in a draw, NHL regulation games can end in a tie. In July, she thinks a grand slam is a meal at Denny’s. Come November, she doesn’t get why the football score is increasing in increments of 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8. Sadly, the majority of males seem to be under the impression that all the ladies at the game are like Whitney.

“If you ask me, Jimmy Fallon, his knuckler hasn’t been the same since the All-Star Break.”

I am not a Whitney. I bleed blue for the Giants, Rangers and Yankees (a true New York fan). I learned to throw a football before I could ride a bike.  I was born on a Thursday evening — week four of the 1986 football season.  Three days later, my dad held me on his lap while watching the NY Giants game in the hospital.  I watched the rest of that season in my father’s arms, and at four months old, I saw my team winSuperbowl XXI. Ever since, dad has deemed me the G-men’s, “Lucky Charm.” Over the past 24 years, I have watched more sporting events than I can count. I grew up destined to be a die-hard.

Female sports fans are becoming more vocal and abundant worldwide. Female fans can sit on the couch and drink some beers while watching Monday Night Football, or catch the Yankees game on one of the TVs at the local sports bar.

The best part is, we don’t need the boys around to have fun or know what’s going on. All we want to do is watch the game. We want to see our team wipe the floor with our rival. Seeing the other team’s starting pitcher dislocate his shoulder wouldn’t upset us in the least. We want to see our fantasy team’s defense have five sacks and twice as many interceptions. Come January, we don’t know what to do with ourselves on Mondays, because all we’ve been watching is the MNF games for the past four months. And when our team loses by one in the last game of the season, and just barely misses out on the playoff run, we need to be left alone to wallow in our misery.

It’s easy in our culture to assume that die-hard fans are men, because that’s how it’s always been. History is not the only thing we have going against us. The stereotypical female fan is the one who’s jumping on the bandwagon and doesn’t fully understand the game — or is simply rooting for her boyfriend’s favorite team. For the ladies who happen to be true die-hard fans, our motives as to why we watch are questioned.

Bandwagon Babes (ladies who jump on bandwagons) bring a bad name to all female fans. A perfect example would be the Boston sports dynasty of the past decade. The number of Boston female sports fans has skyrocketed since 2001. Why? The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2002, 2004 and 2005. Meanwhile, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007, followed by the Celtics championship run in 2008. As a New York fan living in Boston at the time, what bothered me most wasn’t that Boston was winning; what was frustrating was seeing ladies become Sox fans simply because they thought it was “cool.” These are the same women who asked “What curse?” in an attempt to find answers, rather than to voice their skepticism. Boston is not the only city that has seen the rise of females jumping on bandwagons, which is why many men don’t see females as real fans.

In cities across America, many of the female “fans” couldn’t name more than their hometown team’s starting QB. There are an increasing number of pink jerseys seen in the stands at football games these days. And,while the pink jersey may be a cute look, other fans discredit them immediately upon seeing the feminine hue.

Being a fan is not about you and your favorite color; it’s about team camaraderie and the spirit and morale of fans as a whole. Otherwise, as a Giants fan with the favorite color green, I’d be wearing a jersey looking like an Eagles or Jets fan while cheering for my big, blue wrecking crew.

To the lady readers, which type of fan are you? Are you a pink-jersey-wearing-bandwagoner? Or are you a real fan who actually “gets it”? Perhaps you are like my friend Megan and I — we refuse to buy a Manning or Sanchez jersey because we don’t want people to think it’s the only player we know.

To the guys who are still having doubts that a female can be a die-hard fan just like you, I ask you to ponder the following: One of my most prized possessions is a game ball from when the Giants beat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. One of my most cherished memories is stepping onto the diamond at the original Yankee Stadium. Before I left for college, the most important thing I did was add my name to what was at the time, a 40-year waiting list for Giants’ season tickets. So I ask you — why can’t I be a die-hard fan, too?

Photo by hotrodhomepage.