SI Vault
Frank Deford
October 30, 1972
Pro football rules the land. While men gather to pledge devotion and play palace games, their women weep
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October 30, 1972

Keys To The Kingdom


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"Well, always before when the fall came and a bunch of designers in Paris said it was time to wear something else, we all went out and bought it. I know you don't believe this, Jerry, but all the young girls in New York are wearing these things, even shorter than mine. And it's crazy, because you really do freeze your tail off. But there's some innate sexual instinct telling women that the only chance they have to remain as competition for The Football is to get more and more daring and sexy. It's our only hope.

"You see, the mistake everybody is making is thinking that the miniskirt is some kind of fashion trend. That's where they go wrong. This isn't fashion. This is survival gear."

She took a long pull on her banana daiquiri and lit a cigarette. "I mean, suppose there was some other species, blue jays or ocelots or something, and all of a sudden the females were done up real strange. All the naturalists would say, hey, something's happening to the species because all the girl blue jays are green all of a sudden, and the girl ocelots are freezing to death without any fur."

"Oh, Rosalie, you're crazy," Jerry said.

"I am not. You just wait till the next time those fashion designers try to make us wear real long dresses—and it will happen soon. For the first time in history we'll rebel, because the big fashion line comes out in the fall, in football season. It's bad enough now, but we wouldn't even have a prayer in long dresses."

"O.K., Baby Cakes, then if you extend this theory you've got to say that pretty soon women will have to stop wearing clothes altogether, right?"

"No, Jerry, because this isn't theory, this is stark reality, and there are limits to reality, even to miniskirts. The miniskirts are like a last desperate semaphore. They say, hey, look at us, remember us, don't neglect us for The Football. But if you don't heed the signal, we'll have to go on the attack. There's this new thing called the women's equality movement."

Rosalie was about to go on, but stopped and shook her head. "Oh, it doesn't do any good to warn you anyhow, because men are just digging themselves into a deeper hole every year. The season gets longer. All of a sudden all you clowns have to start going to those exhibition games in the middle of the summer, and...."

"How many times do I have to tell you? They're not exhibition games. They're preseason games."

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