So, it’s time to root, root, root for the girls’ team!

 But what even is a girls’ team anymore? 

Frito-Lay gave the famed baseball snack, Cracker Jack, a make-over.  The snack, most commonly associated with baseball games, is standing up to empower women, so they know how valued they are in sports.  

Yup, move over Cracker Jack because Cracker Jill is entering the scene.  According to Cracker Jill, it’s time we celebrate women in sports. 

Even the old Take Me Out to the Ball Game ditty has a new twist: 

“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jill/ 

No one can stop you if you have the will/ 

So let’s root, root, root for a girl’s dream”

But, unfortunately, this attempt at female empowerment begs a few questions.  

First, what do we even mean by “women” let alone “women sports”?  Today, if you wake up feeling like a woman, regardless of your biological makeup, you can compete against women. The term woman is about as changeable and meaningless as a passing whim. 

If there is any doubt on that matter all you have to do is look at how the term “woman” has become too complicated for many to even define (especially if you’re not a biologist). 

This woman-homage attempt by Cracker-Jill, to praise women who work hard, train, and become athletes, feels more like a mockery than a source of empowerment. Are women really treated well and even protected in sports today when we allow biological men to compete and silence the voices of so many females?  

Don’t you think the feminists foundresses back at Seneca Falls would be horrified if they realized that their pro-woman movement culminates in the basic question of what even is a woman?  If there is any question that’s anti-woman, it’s questioning the objective value and uniqueness of womanhood at it’s very core. 

Nevertheless, Frito-Lay’s Cracker Jill is supposed to assure us that, despite the rise of an androgeneous anti-culture, women matter.  We get a snack rebranded to prove it.  

This is degrading and complete hypocrisy. 

If we want to celebrate women, we need to first know what a woman is and that means, we must acknowledge that women and men are not interchangeable. 

So, thanks, but I’ll pass on Cracker Jill.