Throughout the history female sports have been either completely banned or strictly controlled. Only few sport events were allowed for women before the 1950s. The sport journalism had also kept the female sports side-lined, presenting only the rare champions of allowed sports, and depicting great female gymnastics events. The female figure in sport was also explicitly defined on feminine features.

In the 1970s the social transformation and emancipation of women paved the way for new sporting events to be allowed for females to compete. More variation was also introduced into how to define female figure in sports. One of the relieved sports for women was football. Multiple female football clubs were established in Finland in the 1970s. One of them was Seinäjoen Mimmiliiga (SeMi).

The article examines the reactions of local newspapers on the newly established club SeMi. At first the media coverage was bipartite: The reactions mainly included comical features due to the alleged lack of skill and fitness of players, and sexist language describing female footballer body parts and baring apparel of players. There were, however, some positive reactions too which can be described as excited reception of new female sporting event. The excitement and usage of condescending language were short-lived. In less than a year the female football became normalized, and the media coverage of SeMi reverted into mainly repeating the results of the previous games and short reports on the game events.