Real men dont watch figure skating

By Emmeline Moore, in Vancouver for AFP Published: 10:32AM GMT twenty-three February 2010

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Yevgeny Pluschenko of Russia competes in the men"s free movement at the World Figure Skating Championships in Vancouver in 2001. Photo: AP/Jack Smith

"It"s not the sort of thing you"d say: "Hey guys come on over and watch the figure skating and we"ll have a couple of beers"," pronounced Andre Sander, a Vancouver proprietor and one of the couple of men examination ice dancing in the Pacific Coliseum on Sunday.

"It"s deliberate effeminate," combined Sander, 46, who was examination the eventuality with his mother Dena.

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Some experts hold that the reason figure skating has such a disproportionate fan bottom is that men feel in jeopardy by the delicate poise of skaters, such as the decorated American Johnny Weir.

"The steer of a man in sequins and bare-chested with makeup and adorned hair and hair and nylon and all that, that creates a little men nervous since it unequivocally threatens manly heterosexuality," Helen Lenskyj, highbrow emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, told the Globe and Mail.

Guys only don"t wish to confess that they suffer the spectacle.

"The assembly is unequivocally gendered," combined Mary Louise Adams, join forces with highbrow in the propagandize of health studies at Queen"s University in Kingston, who researches the story of figure skating.

"I think there"s a lot of men who watch figure skating at home and don"t essentially plead it with their friends at work or out in the world," Adams said.

"I think there"s a lot of broom closet figure skating fans who we don"t listen to about."

Sander, a 46-year-old carpenter, believes men are in actuality some-more associating about the competition than they wish to let on.

"We were in the beer hall the alternative night and there were all sorts of sports on the screens and all the guys couldn"t take their eyes off the men"s figure skating," he said.

"It was "wow see at that" and "he"s only landed a quad"!"

He believes the unconstrained debate turns men off.

"It"s regularly inextricable in judging controversies. You"d similar to it to be some-more cut and dry. It"s a bit subjective. It"s additionally prolonged and you don"t unequivocally get down to it and the most appropriate skaters until the end."

Most of the men in the 11,000-plus throng at the Pacific Coliseum were with their wives.

"It keeps me happy," pronounced Diane Andrews of her father fasten her.

Hugh Andrews, 56, admitted: "If I"d well known that there was a Canada v USA diversion in ice hockey I wouldn"t have come.

"I can see that I"m really outnumbered here. It"s dual thirds women."

But he added: "I do suffer examination figure skating, but it"s really a chick-flick, dick-flick kind of thing."