The Puck Bunny vs. The Cliche

Who are you? What have you become? Animal…

Somewhere on the Eastern shore of Japan I was asked the other day what my take was on the uprising of Twitter accounts authored by self-proclaimed “puck bunnies,” and since I can’t resist a candid chat about one of my favourite topics in the hockey sphere, I’ve decided to elucidate my stance for you here. Now you know I’m definitely NOT anti-puck bunny. I love those fluffy little devils, and Hell, the jury is still out on whether or not I actually fit that floppy eared mold myself. However, you probably also know by now that I am pretty much against sheepish conformity. So, I guess the flaw I find with the aforementioned (and multiplying) cyber bunnies is that they all seem to spew that same tired old cliche that certain puck bunnies try to adopt in an attempt to attract the average hockey stud.

What unites puck bunnies with one another is not as black and white and you may think it is. Puck bunnies don’t altogether “play” with hockey players. In fact it is usually those that don’t actually get said play that are likelier to refer to themselves as such. You may want to keep that in mind when you are subscribing to Twitter feeds for self-titled puck bunnies FYI! Some “puck bunnies” know absolutely nothing about hockey, while others love it and know more about it that your average super fan – the only difference is they have the she-balls to actually admit that they are attracted to some of the players, whereas other female fans think their biological urges somehow make them lose face in the “man’s world” that is the domain of hockey fandom. But enough about that, I’m not here to discuss the most correct definition of a puck bunny.

What really irritates me are the puck bunnies that try sooooo hard to act like what (they think) hockey players are like/will like. Granted, in my experience hockey players are pretty much one and the same. Even those rare gems that will raise my eyebrow for half a second after they drop some sort of unforeseeable bomb of uniqueness, all tend to end up like every other hockey player I’ve met with the same old hang ups, and the same old shallow insecurities that only silicone and a fake tan can alleviate. Anyway, I guess what I was trying to say before I went off on that tangent is that I would really love to see some more “original” puck bunnies out there, and these ladies may find that they are better off for it…

I remember researching my puck bunny book back when I was 18. At the time the hockey player language really fascinated me (I would declare a Linguistic Anthropology major a few weeks after I wrote it, by the way). It was just so intriguing that these guys, despite playing on different teams and in various leagues all over the world, had this whole lexicon that they alone could understand to its full extent. I wanted to include a small sample of this in the book, so I interviewed a lot of hockey players about it. Of course, I couldn’t resist asking the guys what they thought of girls/puck bunnies that attempted to incorporate the hockey lexicon into their own speech particularly when interacting with the boys. The answer was a passionate, “We think they sound like idiots,” across the entire board.

I guess the puck bunnies that talk like hockey players and try to walk like them, too, are similar to the women you see on those sad dating reality shows, that attempt to “wow” the bachelor with an overly rehearsed (and cringe inducing) speech about how they love beer, football, and sex, and are therefore the perfect “guys‘ girl.” I mean, if you came across a Twitter account of a “hockey player” who basically described himself with that classic Gongshow Geared cliche of one, “Uhh yeah… I bang the hottest broads, and I wheel this and that. Oh, and let’s not forget about my chewing and sniping,” you’d probably just think, “Yeah, OK, beer league” before NOT clicking the Follow button. Kinda makes you wonder if those cliched puckies running amuck in cyberspace these days are just a bunch of aggressive poseurs hoping they can seduce one of the more man-whorish pros with a deceitful notion that if the milkshake was good enough for the mysterious “others,” then it’s good enough for him, too…

Like I said I’m not really sure whether I fit the puck bunny mold or not. Hockey has been my love since I was a kid, and at times hockey seemed like the only thing I had in this world. That being said, more than half the men in my life have been hockey players, and some people would claim that this fact alone is all the evidence the court needs for a guilty verdict, even though I was never the one initiating the wooing or putting myself in their way, and for every one that got “through,” at least two were turned away. Anyway, whether I am a puck bunny or not I am proud to say the following about myself:

#1 I have a vicious hatred and aversion to smoking and all tobacco products. Therefore, I have not, nor will I ever “chew” or have any sort of tobacco product in my mouth. And any guy that’s recently had it in his will not be sticking his tongue in mine…

#5 All the hockey players I’ve met, I’ve met by chance, not by stalking them after their games (contrary to popular myth) or at some slutty party where I made a naked fool out of myself…

Anyway, I’m not trying to pick on anyone. I don’t follow these types of feeds, but not for any other reason than the fact that they simply bore me. I’ve seen that same old song and dance a million times especially in my junior hockey days. My point is that you can screw hockey players and be known as a puck bunny (if that’s what you want), but that you can do both of those things and still be yourself… if you still remember who that is, of course.

Top Photo: No reason for this, just felt like we could all use a little Milli Vanilli today...

Tags: puck bunnies

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2012 at 11:31 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.