Is Travis Kelce dumb? Or are you just sexist?

I thought we didn't speak about groups of people like this anymore.

I’ve been collecting quotes in a note on my phone entitled “casual sexism.”

From a New York Times piece entitled, The Trouble with Wanting Men:

I haven’t been dating long (just the other day my ex-husband and I received our Judgment of Divorce as an email attachment), but long enough to discover that I have a type. He is gentle, goofy, self-deprecating, rather deferential, a passionate humanist, a sweet guy, a “good guy.” He tends to signal, in various ways, his exemption from the tainted category of “men,”¹ and it is perfectly understandable that he would wish to do so. It must be mildly embarrassing to be a straight man, and it is incumbent upon each of them to mitigate this embarrassment in a way that feels authentic to him.

From a New York Times piece entitled, How the Women of ‘Too Much’ Made the Rom-Com Just Right

“Now I’m like, He’s straight? I don’t know,” Dunham joked.

“It takes up a lot of time if you engage with it,” Ratajkowski added.

The whole male gender,” Bravo said.

“If you are being generous, it takes a lot of time,” Ratajkowski said.

This type of casual "men are assholes" rhetoric is ever-present not only in the New York Times but in my everyday conversations. Over the past decade, I've noticed a subtle shift from "this man is an asshole" to "all (straight) men are fundamentally broken, flawed, and less fully evolved than women." For many obvious reasons, including my loving husband and three beautiful sons, I have become increasingly sensitive to this narrative.

Of course, this is the point at which I must give in to an overwhelming need to present my feminist bona fides.

• I am an only child and grew up in a primarily female household. I adore women and have six very close female friends with whom I talk almost every day.

• I graduated from college with a minor in women's studies.

• I wrote my law school note on pregnancy discrimination.

• I have run for office as a woman.

• I have worked at a race crisis center, the National Organization for Women, and Planned Parenthood.

• I have been discriminated against, street harassed, and threatened - all by men and all because I am a woman.

I am not a male rights advocate arguing that men are inherently victims in our society. Men still hold disproportionate power and commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime.

I am merely arguing that - despite all that - they are also still human and do not deserve to be dehumanized. And speaking about all men or even individual men as if they are basically broken is deeply dehumanizing. I understand that one man and his sexist cronies are working very hard to dismantle the idea that we are all equals deserving of individual dignity.

However, I still fundamentally believe, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie so eloquently put it, that "The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story."

And what I see is that we are succumbing to one story about men - straight, white men in particular - and that is that they are worthless. 

Look no further than some of our discourse about Travis Kelce. 

From the beginning of their courtship, there have been clearly articulated concerns that Travis is not only not smart enough for Taylor but also that he is flat-out dumb. People have dug up his old tweets, which are rife with misspellings. People have conducted in-depth analyses of his podcast appearances and celebrity profiles. Writers (and many of my friends) have lamented that this intelligent, childless cat lady is falling for such a dumb jock.

I want to suggest that Travis Kelce has found (chosen?) the only allowable lane for straight white men whose societal guilt is presumed - a himbo obsessed with his woman. We are all undoubtedly familiar with this choice, having witnessed women make it for decades. You can't be beautiful, much less sexy and intelligent, so you'd best dumb it down so you're not threatening. Jayne Mansfield was a famous bombshell, whose most notable contribution to pop culture was the infamous photo of Sophia Loren side-eying her cleavage; then, the internet unearthed video of her expertly performing Vivaldi. Hedy Lamarr was remembered as another beautiful face from Hollywood’s golden era until it was discovered that she was also a genius inventor who contributed to GPS technology. These ladies sold what the market demanded of them as women and tucked the rest away from public view.

Travis Kelce is an incredibly wealthy, incredibly driven man who has found success in one of the most hypermasculine, hyper-aggressive sports in the world. How much room does he have within his public image to also be super smart before he crosses over into the unlikable territory of Tom Brady? Men we want to fail, especially once they’re partnered with beautiful, successful women.

I do see some people praise the version of positive masculinity presented by Travis and his brother, Jason Kelce, on their podcast. A version of masculinity that allows space for feeling and emotion. Jason and Travis are praised—and rightly so—for expressing sincere gratitude and vulnerability. I just wonder if the praise would be as forthcoming if Jason and Travis were expressing unapologetic expertise where they have earned it or unabashed ambition when they have exercised it. Jason and Travis clearly have a plan for their post-NFL careers and have orchestrated that plan with incredible skill. Would we be as interested in hearing about that as we are about their undying devotion to the women in their lives? And if we were, would we call it positive masculinity?

I know the second Travis exhibited physical aggression towards his Coach, Andy Reid, on the field, the resounding reaction I heard both online and in my real life was “I knew it.” All the positive masculinity in the world couldn’t make up for what so many saw as his fundamentally flawed nature as a man, finally revealing itself.

I’ve walked on that knife’s edge of acceptable behavior as a woman my entire life, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy - including the “enemy” that put me there in the first place. That is the path to mutually assured destruction - or unavoidable separation and loneliness - and I don’t want that.

I don’t know what Travis Kelce’s IQ is, and I don’t care. I do think he is very smartly presenting (or at least not combating) one of the few acceptable versions of masculinity on offer - the sexy idiot.

But I want better for him. I want better for my boys. I want better for all of us.

Further Reading: The New Dream Guy Is Beefy, Placid and … Politically Ambiguous (New York Times Magazine)

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Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class² (The New York Times)

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1. Emphasis mine.

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