It's called SYMBOLISM, bro

Wellll, look at that! You decided to read more! Good on ya!

In today's Ted Talk, we discuss why I decided to go with this title: "Pardon Melissa's Take". You may not particularly care for it. You may not get it. That's fine.

This blog is named after "Pardon My Take", one of my favorite sports podcasts from the friendly fellow Massholes over at the sports media company, Barstool Sports. I listened to their podcast a lot in college, and found myself feeling pretty conflicted about it.

See, the two hosts who are known as PFT Commenter and Big Cat, are pretty misogynistic, chauvinist dudes. Think of the stereotypical dudes who live for sports, beer, talking trash, making sex jokes, growing mustaches (but like, in a serious kind of way), eating mountains of wings, that sort of thing. That's pretty much the show.

It's one of the most popular sports podcasts, though, and I get that they're funny. They have a natural rapport with one another and they make a lot of jokes throughout their podcasts and interviews with athletes/coaches/sports commentators. That's why I tuned in, too. That, and they have some pretty interesting takes on moves, trades, and trends in the wonderful world of sports that are helpful to know.

BUT. I wanted to reference their namesake in my own blog for symbolic purposes: putting my own name in there is pretty symbolic of my whole situation as me, Melissa Zhang, an Asian woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

Sports are played by both men and women, but when it comes to those who work in the actual industry, you'd have to be delusional to argue that there aren't vastly more men than women. Women are minorities in sports. So are Asians. And guess what? I'm BOTH! Isn't that fantastic!

As a matter of fact, that's actually a huge motivating factor that gives me a lot more conviction in what I'm choosing to pursue for a profession. I think there's a lot I have to be fortunate about, in the sense that I grew up experiencing two very different cultures between my American and Chinese roots. Growing up in a pretty WASP-y, Irish Catholic town in Massachusetts made me more "white-washed", if you will, compared to other Asian girls. I got to look a certain way as an Asian, but internally, I really am two-parts, Chinese and American.

And a lot of the time, the American part heavily dominates the Chinese part, which can be incredibly frustrating when a lot of society writes you off automatically and assumes you're someone who stays in her room all day eating noodles and seaweed snacks, watching anime shows, practicing the violin, and worshipping skinny little boys who apparently rack in millions of dollars as K-Pop stars.

I can't tell you how many times I've told a guy that I work in sports and they give me an expression of surprise or disbelief. It happens allllll the time. And that sort of pattern just compels me further to work harder, to become successful in sports, so that younger generations can live in a world where something like that isn't the most shocking fucking thing ever.

I'm passionate about sports, I will work as hard as anyone else, and if you ask me, I have just as much right to fight for a job in the sports industry as my white male peers.

That's where the conviction lies. I want to prove to others that someone who looks like me can be prominent in a field where there are barely any faces that look like mine.

So there ya go. Because of these reasons that I just ranted about, I went with this title. TL,DR: I have a lot of takes on breaking into the sports world as an Asian woman. Please pardon me as I go ahead and voice them.

I may or may not be incorporating some of their podcast bits, like Mount Rushmores and Guys on Chicks (well in this case, Chicks on Guys) in my later ramblings. I'll explain later.

Stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by again.