Brittney Griner V.S. the Double Standard

Over the past few years the basketball comuntiy has had a young woman dominate the women’s college level. Brittney Griner  stands 6'8" tall, Griner wears a men's US size 17 or 18 shoe and has a wingspan of 86". She is the dominating center for Baylor, and has been the lighting rod of personal attacks from trollers on the internet. Claiming that she is a man because of the oubburst of emotion she displays when making an exceptional play, yet we celebrate when Lebron James glares down someone he dunks over,or how Kevin Durant has his own ad campaign, stating that he is “Not Nice”, in reference to his demeanor on the court in the wake of his lost in the finals. So why is it that people have a problem with Griner, when glorify Durant, and Lebron?

It’s a double standard how we expect female basketball players to play an aggressive game such as basketball, and not show off, or celebrate like the men do. Consider former NBA center Shaquille O'Neal, who burst onto the scene in the 1990s, a physical specimen the likes of which we had never seen on a basketball court. Shaq was different, and we celebrated him for it. Fans posed for pictures holding his size-23 sneakers, gawking at the oversized Reeboks as if the shoes had just arrived via time machine. He was 7-foot-1 and 325 pounds, and he was nearly unstoppable.

Shaq's presence in the low post forced defenders to take risks. Some opponents doubled him, daring his teammates to score. Other squads employed the "Let him beat us" philosophy, putting one defender on Shaq and locking down on everyone else. And when the game was on the line in the fourth quarter, most teams tried the Hack-A-Shaq strategy, rolling the dice by sending him to the foul line, where he shot just 52.7 percent for his career.
Like Shaq, Griner makes opponents uncomfortable because they can't do things the way they normally would in practice. She keeps coaches awake at night, worrying about how disruptive she is on both ends of the floor. She can turn and score over either shoulder -- sometimes by dunking the ball -- and on defense she eats up space with her 88-inch wingspan. She is the second-leading women's scorer in Division I women's history, with 3,203 points, and the all-time leader in blocks, with 736.
"Because of her skills and her unique abilities, Griner has added a dimension to the game that hasn't existed up to this point," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said during last year's Final Four.
But whereas Shaq was hailed for being big, bold, different, Griner is sometimes viewed in a harsher light, with skepticism bordering on suspicion. When people called Shaq a freak of nature, it was a compliment; when directed at Griner, the term often carries a cruel edge, punctuated with the refrain of "She's a dude!"
Such wary appraisals are not unique to Griner, of course. This is what Joe Fan does to any female athlete who doesn't fit neatly into one of two boxes: the cool, tough-talking guy's gal such as Ronda Rousey, or Lindsey Vonn or the unattainable beauty like Maria Sharapova, or Anna Kournikova