Every female hockey fan has been mislabeled with this epithet at some point or another. Many find themselves wrestling with the term for the majority of their young lives. So why are some women regarded as puck bunnies while others are not? I have personally been on a mission to get to the bottom of this conundrum for the last eight years of my life. Finally, at eighteen, I produced a book which I had hoped would answer the question, but even now I feel that it has only begun to crack the surface of the puck bunny realm. In university, I went on to write linguistic and semiotic anthropology papers on the use of ‘puck bunny’ in language. This process shifted my focus from the what, the why, and the who, to the how. How are puck bunnies identified and perceived in the public sphere? Today I will try, once again, to shed new light on the subject.
One of the first problematic variables in deciphering this equation is the fact that a black and white definition of ‘puck bunny’ just doesn’t exist. To the vast majority of society, a puck bunny is simply a girl who is not interested in the game of hockey, but follows it, regardless, for less admirable reasons. The assumption is not necessarily that this puck bunny gets involved with the players, but that she does not have the capacity to understand sports and is, thus, at the arena because she either A)wants to look like she knows sports to be more appealing to men, or B) thinks the players are cute. It is a commonly held sexist viewpoint that women don’t know sports. “Don’t know” meaning “can’t know.” I don’t know how many times men have tried to talk over my head about sports to my male companions who were completely sports illiterate. It is infuriating! I’m also sure part of this misogyny is rooted in jealousy that women have the chance to experience hockey players on a more intimate level. Of course, then there are those that assume ‘puck bunny’ is the girl that “gets with” the players, or, in the very least, tries.
Self-proclaimed puck bunnies have different standards outlined in their definitions. While I was researching my book, I discovered that ‘puck bunny’ didn’t really exist as a singular entity. I uncovered nearly twenty different varieties of puck bunnies – some were guys! I now regard ‘puck bunny’ as a spectrum with two very definite extremes. The first extreme can only be described as (commonly) young girls that follow the game intensely because they have innocent crushes on the players. It is unfair to say that any puck bunny is not a sincere fan of the game. Chances are they spend more time, money and energy on the game than the average man-fan. Anyway, besides the odd attempt to get their pictures taken with the players of their choosing, these bunnies do not seriously seek a greater relationship with them.
The other extreme is home to the dirty puck bunnies. Once again, this is an EXTREME, not a set definition. These are the women that seek sexual relationships with any and every player. Although, you might be looking for these girls at the rink, truthfully they do the most damage away from the game. These are the “party girls” that go to the same bars and clubs as all the players with the hopes of getting free drinks and the chance to check another player off of their hit list. While this puck bunny claims that she is a wild child and that she can do the deed with no strings attached, she is quite often scorned when her physical relationships do not turn romantic. Essentially, these are the girls that daddy didn’t love.
Both extremes deny the authenticity of the other. The “nice” extreme claims that puck bunnies are girls that just admire the players from afar. They describe the other group as a “bunch of whores.” The “angry” extreme claims that one can’t be a real puck bunny without a track record to back it up. They often chastise the other end of the spectrum for being “little girls.”
So this is all well and good on an inner level, but on an external level all bets are off. Self-proclaimed puck bunnies and non-puck bunnies have the same difficulty with misrepresentation. Puck bunnyness has superficial tags associated with the title. These tags extend well beyond the simplistic, such as the presence or the absence of a hockey jersey or big floppy ears. ‘Puck bunny’ carries with it assumptions of age, gender, race, weight, and physical attractiveness. If I asked you to picture an NHL level puck bunny chances are you’ve immediately imagined a thin, attractive, woman in her early twenties. In your mental image, is the woman blonde? Chances are she is. Let me ask you another question, is she white? Part of this psychological association has to do with the use of ‘bunny.’ Immediately, one associates ‘bunny’ with the Playboy Corporation, and so, bleach blonde stripper-esque models are the poster children for the entirety of this group.
So unattractive puck bunnies are able to maneuver around the hockey rink without being detected, while attractive hockey fans are being ridiculed – doesn’t seem fair, does it? Often stupidity is associated with physical beauty, and so women, who already have a disadvantage at being taken seriously in sports, jobs, society in general, are burdened even more by being aesthetically appealing.
A friend of mine, who is also a hockey player, had joined a facebook hate group against women that didn’t wear hockey gear at hockey games. This group, which was run by a pair of overweight, glittery make up wearing teens, claimed that female hockey fans weren’t real fans if they wore a “nice shirt” and, essentially, if they weren’t ugly. Tell that to all the corporate clientele that pass through the Air Canada Centre. If women aren’t allowed to wear “nice shirts,” then certainly men should be forbidden to wear suits! Naturally, I had to ream my friend out for joining that group. I gave him the standard, “so I have to put a bag over my head, get fat, and spill mustard all over myself before I step foot in a hockey rink?” He left the group immediately.
Which brings me to the last question, “What do hockey players think of puck bunnies?” What I have come to understand is that hockey players generally regard puck bunnies as a bad thing. Even though, it takes two to tango, if you get my drift. Hockey players only reserve the term for women that have fallen out of favour with them. As long as he wants you, you’re not a puck bunny. Hockey players in general are idiots about women. They date women that “don’t like hockey” because they believe that women that do like it are just using them for their money – because hockey fans are the only people that know how much hockey players make, right? Too many pucks to the head.
