Dear New York Jets:
I hope every single one of you got a call from your mother this week where she said that she’s ashamed of you and that she didn’t raise you to act like that.
You know what I’m talking about. Ines Sainz, pretty reporter from a Mexican tv station came to stand on the sidelines, look pretty for the tv cameras, and interview a player. That’s her job. Including the part where she looks pretty. Including the part where she wears tight jeans. But instead of treating her like professional, like a human being, you were rude, demeaning, and generally gross.
You job is to throw a ball. And you wear tight pants too. So, shut your damn yaps about how she dresses or what her job description is. You’re not helping yourself out by speculating about what her looks or her clothes mean.
There was absolutely no excuse for you all to hoot and holler or make comments or catcalls or whatever adolescent garbage you started when she walked into your locker room with her press credential to do a scheduled interview with Mark Sanchez. That shit is just that: shit. You can bet your whole over-inflated salary that the guys in the White House wouldn’t have catcalled at her if she’d walked into a briefing there, even in tight jeans. She wouldn’t have heard it from the geeks at Apple if she’d shown up at one of their events to cover the latest iPad. None of the traders on Wall Street would have broken away form their busy schedule of flapping their hands and barking orders into cell phones to be rude to her. And if all the assholes in politics, corporate America, and Wall Street can keep their thoughts to themselves, you sure as hell can too.
Listen New York Jets, just because you play a game for a living, doesn’t mean you’re actually special. The rules still apply. You need to treat people with respect. And if you don’t, you’re a douche-nozzle. Plain and simple. I wish like crazy that your bosses would dock your ridiculous paychecks for shit like this because no one should get to strut out of the locker room with a money busting out of their pockets after behaving so poorly.
Because you know what? In any other workplace in America? Sexual harassment has consequences. And it should in your workplace too. But since it doesn’t, since the owners and the league care more about selling tickets and moving branded merchandise than about making sure their employees adhere to the most basic levels of civility, all I can do is dream about the tongue lashings I hope you all got from your mothers after this story broke. And rest assured, that my son will NEVER think he’s entitled to treat another person the way you all treated that Ines Sainz. NEVER.
Grow up, New York Jets. Just…grow the hell up.
Contemptuously,
Mom-in-a-Million
Amen.
Agreed. But the part I still don’t get is why ANY reporters are allowed in ANY locker room. Isn’t that where people go to be, you know, NAKED? If a reporter and camera crew came into my locker room at the YMCA, I would not be cool with it at ALL. I love sports but I’m willing to wait ’til the athletes have had a chance to shower and freshly apply deodorant before I hear their thoughts on the game.
Can I just say something, unless I’m really wrong here, Inez is not the one raising a stink about the Jets’ behavior, someone else is.
Now, having said that, it doesn’t matter who is raising the stink about their behavior, there is no excuse for their childish jr high behavior. You are right, they should treat her with the same respect they would any guy on the field or in the locker room. But if they are going to treat her like any guy, then they are going to crack the same childish jokes b/c they would do that with any guy in there. It’s really a catch-22 for both sides. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Excellent.
It stuns me that anyone would be an apologist for this type of behavior, but those people exist, too. And they should be tarred with the same brush.
Becky, it is likely she is not herself raising issues because she is being a professional and maintaining good grace. Let the behavior speak for itself.
Though I think the NFL really ought to consider sexual harassment penalties for players involved- show some morals and set an example for young people who look to these players as role models!
I beg to differ. That totally would have happened on a slow day in the pit. Wall Street is pretty much the same as a locker room. They even hire short pretty girls so they have to jump up and down to be noticed in all the hub bub. I wish I were joking.
While the players behavior is completely unacceptable, especially considering that she is not the only woman reporter that has ever gone into a locker room, she is not 100% either. When you female reporters at the games, they are all dressed in attire that does not look it was painted on thier bodies. They dress professionally and becuase of that I think that the men tend to treat them differently.
You send a very pretty woman, who is wearing skin tight jeans into a locker room full of men and you can pretty much guarantee thier bad behavior. Now that being said it doesn’t make it ok, but remember they are not the only ones at fault here. Google her and see how she dresses. Maybe she should consider dressing more appropriately instead of like she’s “going to da club.” She dresses that way to garner attention like she recieved that day.
I agree with Hope C. The behavior of the Jets was completely out of line. However, you have a bunch of guys whose testosterone levels are soaring, pumped up playing ball. Insert beautiful woman, skin tight pants, very low cut blouse. Gee, what do we get? Guys acting like idiots. And frankly, her attire was anything but professional. She didn’t deserve what happened but I don’t think her clothes were the best choice.
I don’t think someone else’s attire should dictate another person’s behavior. I don’t care WHAT she was wearing. Once we are adults, we are responsible for our own behavior and how we treat others. Period.
PS. This problem isn’t isolated to football. Wall Street. Surgery ORs. I hear it everywhere.
@Alex THANK YOU.
Totally agree with Alex. We can’t start treating people poorly based on what they’re wearing. This is how we get asshole judges telling young rape victims they were “asking for it”. The woman was there to do a professional job, they should have let her do it and kept their own professional composure. Unreal.
I agree with Alex that the behavior of the athletes is unacceptable, not matter what the reporter was wearing (and her outfit looks perfectly fine to me.) These athletes are paid enormous salaries for their jobs. And part of their jobs is to be professional and do press.
On a totally separate issue, I do find some of the attire Ms. Sainez has worn for her job unprofessional. All jobs have an expectation of a certain level of professionalism and her clothes are unprofessional. By wearing them, she is making things harder for her fellow female reporters. I realize that she works for a Mexican TV station and the attire on air is different but my personal attention is that she should dress more modestly.
Totally agree with Hope C here. Ms. Sainz puts her assets on display, *knowing* her appearance will elicit a response from men. Since she chooses to dress in a provocative manner, she WILL be treated a certain way. I believe SHE was the unprofessional one in all this – the men were just behaving as men do. Shame on her for going into that situation looking like a harlot. Women shouldn’t be in the locker rooms anyway. Pfffft.
I absolutely agree that the men should have known better and I too hope they get a major tongue lashing from someone with authority, even if it’s just their moms… or better yet, their wives. That said, I think some common sense could be used on both sides. Men should act like professional gentlemen in their place of work, whether they are tossing a ball, or trading stock, or selling hot dogs at the corner stand. A woman should conduct her self as a lady and dress like a professional and not a “professional” when she is doing her job. Most places of employment would frown upon pants that look like they were tattooed on. Still, the Jet’s behavior was wrong, wrong, wrong and should never be tolerated. Maybe someday the pharmaceutical companies will develop common sense in a fun flavored easy to chew tablet!
@staci “men were just behaving as men do” makes me sick to my stomach. excusing how they CHOSE to act makes you just as foul as they are. shame on you for taking the women’s movement back 60 + years.
Since when did “you can pretty much guarantee bad behavior” become acceptance that it’s okay to behave that way.
Just because it’s always been so doesn’t mean that it’s the proper way to behave! I can guarantee you that if my son behaved that way I would kick his ass. And so would his father. Even if he was a 6’6″ Jet.
(figurative ass kicking, not literal obviously)
Amen sister! Why do they feel the need to nasty comments, like they own this woman. Shame on them!
Oh, and I agree with Nic on this. A woman is entitled to dress however she likes! That doesn’t justify men objectifying her.
@nic I’m certainly not going to excuse how Ms. Sainz chooses to dress. Why should I be upset because a woman was treated less-than-professionally while gussied up like a tart? Yes, the players were unprofessional, but we’re talking about football players here – the evolutionary and societal equivalent of 13-year-old boys. Ms. Sainz dresses provocatively to PROVOKE A RESPONSE. She got it. Besides, from all reports, SHE is not the one who complained. I’m supposed to jump on my moral soapbox for someone who wasn’t even bothered enough by the players’ reactions to file a complaint of her own?
@staci the post is titled “letter to the new york jets.” if you want to address the issue of her clothing, it is a separate one in my book. whoever complained is not the issue being discussed here either. yet you have taken both of those issues and chosen to make them the focus of your response… thus continuing to make excuses for the poor behavior made by the “societal equivalent of 13 year old boys.”
No excuses are being made. She dressed like a trollop and was treated as such. No excuses. Am I not entitled to my opinion? And Ms. Sainz’s choice of clothing IS the issue. If she’d dressed like a respectable and reputable member of the media, no letter-writing would have been required!
I’m going to have to chime in here and take exception to the idea that football players are the “societal equivalent of 13-year-olds” as one commenter suggested. This incident involved a small number players who are grown men. I’m certain that not all NFL players would have acted the same way. However, I think it’s very dangerous to start throwing around that kind of “boys will be boys” attitude and say that a woman had it coming to her because of the way she dresses. Would I choose to dress that way? No. But I probably wouldn’t have gotten her job, then.
Even if she was in her bra and panties, it shouldn’t matter. These are grown men, they should have acted like it. Real men treat women with respect.
*She dressed like a trollop and was treated as such. No excuses.*
So by these standards, had they bent her over the lockers and sodomized her, she’d have been asking for that too?
Can’t have it both ways. Just sayin’
Ohhh the gettin’ is GOOD over here y’all!
I have to say I see both sides. It was not ok to treat her that way. I don’t think there should be locker room interviews where men are pretty much naked. I think that there is no excuse for male behavior like that. I think she wasn’t dressed professionally.
I think a whole lot went wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
Well. This has been exciting! I have to say, that I am deeply troubled by the resurrection of the “She dressed provocatively so she should expect it” line of thinking that I thought went extinct in the 1970s. How she dressed, is immaterial. The only item on her person that mattered was her press pass. That entitled her to professional courtesy. The end. (The question of whether or not reporters of either gender belong in locker rooms is another question altogether).
To suggest that men behave like louts and that it’s expected, is troubling because it’s a short step from “boys will be boys so don’t provoke them” to “men cannot control themselves in the face of lascivious women so put on a burqua and shut up lady”. And the idea that it’s ever ok to speak to a persona certain way because of how they choose to appear is only a short step from saying its ok to treat a persona certain way because of the parts of their appearance they cannot control such as skin pigment, eye shape, or body size; in others words “get to the back of the bus thinking.
There is no excuse for not acting with common decency. The men on the team who failed to do so were in the wrong.
I’m pretty sure that if a male reporter bearing his 6 pack abs and cut biceps walked into a locker room full off women and they acted the same ways the NY Jets did, the media would crucify those women. To say that “men will men” is a horrible excuse. Shame on the women who tolerate such behavior, and shame on the Jets, too.