Binary Thinking and Gender Ideologies: ‘Silent’ Mechanisms of Enforcement in H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights
Sport and Ideology
Sport is a powerful arena within which society reflects, constructs, and reshapes what is deemed valuable, correct, and important (Carrington 2022; Guest 2021; Hartmann 2005). The ways in which these messages are conveyed are varied and diverse - for example, covert mechanisms of enforcement, like symbols or traditions, can be a means through which ideologies are expressed and enforced within sport and its institutions and cultures. In this essay, mechanisms of enforcement refer to the ways that power and ideology are enacted in non-verbal, subtle, and covert ways. How do the spaces, expectations, and traditions of Permian football, Permian High School, and the town of Odessa signal what and who is valued? And specifically through an analysis of gender, how do these subtle signals contribute to an internalized surveillance of players, Pepettes, and other students to perform specific kinds of (White, Southern American) femininity and masculinity?
While Friday Night Lights is set roughly in 1970s and 80s West Texas, where a much stricter gender ideology pervaded U.S. society, covert enforcements of binary femininity and masculinity still remain in contemporary sporting spaces, particularly in professional American football (i.e., the entertainment product of American football - including cheerleaders and dancers, mascots, brands, etc.). This essay will begin by providing examples of these subtle mechanisms of enforcement on the Permian football team, to illustrate how they contribute to a pressure for athletic excellence and promote values of competition and individuality - despite being a team sport. Then, the discussion will continue to the Pepettes and the ways in which the enforcement mechanisms they face are particularly gendered and lend to the internalized pressure the Pepettes face due to these expectations. Finally, examples from contemporary sporting spaces will demonstrate how, while the standards of femininity and masculinity have changed, the subtle enforcers of a binary gender ideology remain in sports today.
Surveillance in Friday Night Lights
There are several ‘silent’ mechanisms of enforcement within the space of the Permian football team that enhance the sense of competition, pride, and strength (particularly masculine values) associated with the game. However, these values often operate alongside heightened individuality and shame - internal battles seen in all players of the Permian team. Many of these enforcement mechanisms were designed to put a spotlight on images of success and failure surrounding Permian football which subtly signal to players what is right and wrong or good and bad. The use of white and black shirts to distinguish between starting and substitute players is one mechanism that enforces this ‘right and wrong’ binary. On Boobie Miles’ (A star running back and Black student at Permian who suffered a significant knee injury) return to practice, Bissinger says,
“The only thing to herald his return was the shame and ignominy of a white shirt… As part of a long-standing tradition, the Permian starters wore black shirts during practice and the subs wore white… few single moments were more humbling than to have that black shirt taken away and given to someone else.”
(Bissinger 2015:141)
What is striking here is the impact of this simple distinction on an athlete’s pride and confidence; this impact demonstrates the power of these subtle, non-verbal enforcers - despite how simple and painless they may seem. Another example of these covert enforcers is the Wall of Fame, found in the entrance to the Permian field house. Displaying the framed faces of players who had been to All-State, this wall is a symbol of what the expectations of success are. Bissinger says, “To have one’s picture hanging there in a little frame with black trim was a cherished honor” (Bissinger 2015:82). Despite football being a team sport, the expectations of individual success are illustrated through the portraits of players. This wall is so powerful that it even maintains a commanding presence among Permian football alumni who are (or are not) enshrined on the Wall of Fame. The black and white shirts and the Wall of Fame are two examples of non-verbal, subtle communications to the football team about what and who is valued and deemed important. In particular, the internal and emotional impact these signals have on players is powerful - and can be seen extending beyond the space of the football team, particularly with the Pepettes.
The Pepettes and Gendered Surveillance
The Pepettes are a “select group of senior girls” (Bissinger 2015:43) who supposedly support all sports teams at Permian but are dedicated firstly to football. Their Pepette numbers match the football player they are assigned to each season. They have several (shifting) responsibilities, including bringing sweets for their player each Friday and making elaborate signs that live on his front lawn. There was a particular emphasis on the competition and pressure surrounding the Pepette role: “indirect pressure…”, “had become quite competitive…”, “a notice to the community…”, “a rather serious game of can-you-top-this…”, “trying to keep up with the other Pepettes…”, and “I wanted to be a good Pepette” (Bissinger 2015:43). These were just some of the phrases that accompanied the description of the Pepettes’ role in Permian football. These responsibilities not only contribute to the same kind of ‘right and wrong’ standards described for the football team, they also enforce a kind of heteropatriarchal, binary gender ideology by emphasizing to all students that the Pepettes’ role and sense of pride comes from serving, supporting, and celebrating the football players.
Even through shifting responsibilities and small changes in the way girls in Odessa were viewed, this binary gender ideology prevailed. In a school newspaper article covering a new rule prohibiting the Pepettes from putting candy in players’ lockers each Friday, they say,
“Though losing a tradition, Pepettes have gained much respect. No longer will a member be the personal Geisha girl of a player. Instead, she can focus more on the organization’s original purpose, boosting morale. And in so doing she will carry the image of professionalism she deserves for her work bolstering the famous Mojo spirit.”
(Emphasis added) (Bissinger 2015:104)
Here, the newspaper emphasizes that, because the Pepettes no longer individually tend to players in this way (although sign-making and other forms of gift giving remained) that they can focus on their original purpose: to celebrate and support the football team. They even allude to a racialized femininity (“Geisha girl”) that is now deemed unacceptable. In order to be a Pepette the ‘right’ way, she must maintain an “image of professionalism” while she “bolsters Mojo spirit.” She is still determined to perform the kind of femininity appropriate for celebrating Permian football.
In many ways, binary ideologies at Permian and in Odessa go beyond gender. These binary notions of success/failure and right/wrong are present in and shape how gender ideology is expressed and enforced in these spaces. Those binaries also pervade into ideologies of race, class, education, and more. Beyond Odessa and in our contemporary context, binary ideologies are continuously constructed, maintained, and reshaped - similar to the subtle mechanisms described in Friday Night Lights. In the same way that the changing responsibilities of the Pepettes continued to maintain the group’s heteronormative, gendered role in the larger tapestry of Permian football, shifting gender ideologies seen in contemporary sporting spaces and cultures can ultimately continue enforcing heteronormativity and binary ideologies.
Professional American football, particularly the NFL, still maintains and expresses a distinct heteronormative, binary gender ideology through the ways cheerleaders and dancers are organized and function in the league (other leagues include cheerleaders and dancers in their entertainment product, but this essay will focus on American football). In the last several years, the activity of cheerleading has gone through major evolutions, from the sport of elite cheerleading having a popular global emergence to NFL cheer and dance squads accepting men to their programs. Despite these significant changes, NFL cheerleaders and dancers remain a distinct gendered role within the ecosystem of American football.
NFL cheerleaders and dancers, like the Pepettes, must maintain an “image of professionalism” and respectability in order to represent and celebrate their respective teams. These notions of professionalism and respectability modeled after hegemonic ideas of femininity - put-together and poised, confident and graceful, expressive and sexy - are expected of all cheerleaders, regardless of gender identity. Strict expectations around revealing uniforms (for practice and game days) and appropriate hair, face, and body (e.g., slim, heavy makeup, etc.) (Schreiberg 2006) are reminiscent of the kinds of expectations put on Pepettes throughout Friday Night Lights, a subtle reminder of what is deemed correct, valuable, and ultimately, profitable.
However, because sport is a contested terrain (Carrington 2022) that enables participants to resist and dispute the status quo, changes and evolutions continue to develop around these systems of binary thinking - especially around gender. The recent developments of cheerleading or even the prohibition of the Pepettes’ candy ritual, for instance, would not have been possible had sport not been a contested terrain within which athletes, fans, and other sportspeople can challenge dominant ideologies and make new meanings out of long-standing and important traditions, ceremonies, and practices. Perhaps if gender ideology continues to be challenged and resisted in sporting spaces, binary thinking will continue to fade away along with it.
This essay was written for SOC 4451: Sport, Culture, and Society taught by Dr. Doug Hartmann at the University of Minnesota in Fall 2024.
References:
Bissinger, H. 2015. Friday Night Lights, 25th anniversary edition: A town, a team, and a dream. Da Capo Press.
Carrington, Ben. 2022. “Sport, Ideology, and Power.” in The Oxford handbook of sport and society, Oxford handbooks series, edited by L. A. Wenner. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Guest, Andrew M. 2021. “3. CULTURES: Soccer Is Familiar, Soccer Is Strange.” Pp. 41–64 in Soccer in Mind: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to the Global Game. Rutgers University Press.
Hartmann, Douglas. 2005. “Community.” Pp. 359–65 in Berkshire Encyclopedia of World Sport, edited by D. Levinson and K. Christensen. Great Barrington: Berkshire Publishing.
Schreiberg, Stu et al. 2006. Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team. Triage Entertainment.