Tman sends us a link to an article out of Salt Lake City about a school who won’t let their students name their sports teams “Cougars” because it might offend middle-aged women who prey on younger men;
Still, the Canyons School Board refused to accept the Cougar as a mascot out of fear that it might offend older women. In the current edition of the Webster Dictionary, the second definition for cougar sights a slang terminology that refers to “a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man.”
To say that the board’s reaction to having a school play as the Cougars was a bit over the top is certainly an understatement, particularly when one considers the fact that BYU and a host of other high schools in Utah use the Cougar as their mascot.
Well, then the whole problem, as I see it, is Webster’s dictionary for defining the word as such. I’m pretty sure that there are younger female cougars, the animals, who are offended that they’re being lumped in older females of the human species. We shouldn’t be offending the animal world with our words. I’m sure they’d rather be compared to a winning football team than woman trolling bars for a cub to take home.
