Empyreal Environs

LEFTY: Shortly after I became a full-fledged mascot, just days from being less than mote of lint on the knitting needle of my maker, I felt pressure from society to be a boy or a girl. “You have such pretty smile,” they’d say. “That must mean you’re a girl.” Or, “What a masculine chin you have; you’ll make a strapping young man.”

Things just aren’t so cut and dry these days. Mascots the world over are exerting their right to express or renounce the gender roles ascribed to them. The equipment you’re given should not determine if you entertain in a masculine or feminine manner. Really, what constitutes what is manly or womanly anyway? These characteristics originate in societal norms and perceptions and are not essential aspects of nature.

I think the best mascots traverse gender roles with a blink of their ostrich feather eyelashes. One second you’ll see the Phillie Phanatic flirting with an umpire and the next it’s ogling a female fan in the stands. (Hmm, notice how it is just assumed that an umpire would be male? Anyway, that’s another topic for another week.) Would anyone question the fitness of the Hall of Famer Philadelphia Phillies mascot as a role model for children?

On behalf of the Phanatic and other gender-oppressed mascots, I proclaim: “Philadelphia freedom!” From restrictive gender stereotyping, that is.

RIGHTY: God made men and women separate and different for a reason. Now people make a mockery of this symmetry with these polymorphously perverse mascots. In Cincinnati, this Gapper character traipses about the field. But what is it? Man, woman, something in between? It’s very undefined nature will rend asunder society as we know it.

If you go up to Milwaukee, you’ll see a real man’s man, Bernie Brewer. Down in San Diego, they have the Swinging Friar, another perfect paradigm of the properly demarcated and different positions men and women should have in today’s world.

We’re role models for children. It’s confusing enough to be a child in such perilous times. Predators lurk everywhere, from the dark corners of suburbia to the weekend getaway beaches. Have you seen the increasing rates of bear and shark attacks?

Indeed, it’s dangerous to be a child these days. Which is why we shouldn’t be distracting them by filling their heads with willy-nilly notions of it not being important if you’re a boy or a girl. Of course it’s crucial; how else will children know whether to seriously pursue a career like a man or learn the intricacies of housekeeping and raising children as a woman? Let’s save them a lot of needless stress and worry. Show them what they should be, not what they can be.

“Lefty & Righty” is a blatant rip-off of the Onion’s Point/Counterpoint feature, but new and improved with the inclusion of Red Sox mascots. Love it, like it, hate it? Let me know if you think this should be a regular.