The iWoman Report: WNBA Tickets Sell Fast, Trump Tries Natalism, and Women Speak Out About Plastic Surgery Pressure

Check out this week's top stories: WBNA ticket sales show interest in women's sports is on the rise, Trump's "baby bonus," & Jamie Lee Curtis embraces vulnerability.

Women’s Sports Are Taking Over — And It’s Long Overdue

For years, fans of women’s sports have shown up, spoken out, and supported their teams, even when mainstream coverage and commercial investment lagged behind. But in 2025, the numbers are impossible to ignore: women’s sports are booming, and this year’s WNBA season is leading the charge.

According to StubHub’s 2025 WNBA Season Preview, ticket sales have skyrocketed 145% compared to last season, a surge that not only shatters previous records but obliterates the tired narrative that women’s sports aren’t commercially viable. Every single one of the league’s 12 teams is experiencing growth, and first-time WNBA ticket buyers have jumped 28%. International interest is rising, too. WNBA tickets have been sold in 29 countries, more than doubling last year’s reach.

And nowhere is that momentum more electric than with the Indiana Fever. With rookie sensation Caitlin Clark joining forces with Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston, demand for Fever tickets has exploded exponentially, increasing by 497%. Their road games now make up nine of StubHub’s top ten most in-demand games. It’s gotten so intense that opposing teams are moving matchups to larger venues just to accommodate the crowds.

This cultural shift isn't isolated to the WNBA. Last year’s NCAA women’s basketball championship between South Carolina and Iowa drew 18.9 million viewers, making it the most-watched basketball game in the U.S. — college or pro, men’s or women’s — since 2019. Volleyball? 92,000 fans filled Memorial Stadium in Nebraska to see the Cornhuskers play. Soccer? The NWSL signed a $240 million TV deal. Hockey? The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) racked up 40 million YouTube views in its first season. Even boxing hit a historic milestone when a Netflix-streamed rematch between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano drew 74 million global viewers, the most ever for a women’s sporting event.

And, the revolution isn’t just happening inside arenas either, it's coming to a barstool near you. At the start of 2025, there were only six bars in the U.S. dedicated to women’s sports. By year’s end, that number is expected to quadruple, with nearly two dozen women's sports-focused bars operating nationwide. From Phoenix to Pittsburgh, New York to Omaha, women’s sports bars are popping up in cities large and small, led by passionate fans and entrepreneurs who are building more inclusive, vibrant sports-viewing spaces. New openings like Title 9 Sports Grill in Phoenix, 1972 Women’s Sports Pub in Austin, and Set the Bar in Omaha are part of a wave inspired by Portland’s trailblazing bar, The Sports Bra, which opened in 2022.

Women’s sports bars are more than just places to watch games — they’re community hubs. These bar owners are creating spaces that center inclusion, belonging, and joy. As the season begins, it's clear that we’re witnessing more than just a sports trend. We’re experiencing a cultural shift. Women’s sports are no longer a niche. They’re center stage, backed by fans, bars, media, and growing investment.

StubHub’s list of top in-demand teams:

1. Indiana Fever

2. Chicago Sky

3. Connecticut Sun

4. New York Liberty

5. Dallas Wings

   
   

Women Push Back on Trump’s Pronatalism Push

Frustrations of student loan debt, a terrible job market, and over-priced groceries captures the reaction of many young Americans to reports that the Trump administration is mulling a slate of policies aimed at boosting the country’s birthrate. Proposals reportedly include awarding $5,000 bonuses to new parents, medals for women with six or more children, and infrastructure funding preferences for communities with high marriage and birth rates.

These ideas reflect the growing influence of the pronatalist movement within American politics, a movement that promotes high reproduction rates in order to have a successful and thriving society. But while some on the right have rallied around the call to “make America procreate again,” the response from many of the women these policies ostensibly aim to target has been swift, sarcastic, and overwhelmingly skeptical.

The U.S. birthrate has been declining for years. And while some Americans say they’re simply not interested in having children, others say the decision is less about desire and more about dollars. A 2025 Harris Poll found that 65% of Americans say the economy has negatively impacted their plans to have children. According to the Brookings Institution, the cost of raising one child in a dual-income middle-class household is between $285,000 and $311,000. Even just giving birth in the U.S. can cost around $3,000 with insurance. Then there’s childcare, which has become prohibitively expensive for many families.

Critics argue that Trump’s pronatalist pitch is deeply flawed and riddled with contradictions. For one, while the administration reportedly wants to expand incentives for stay-at-home parenting, it has also floated slashing Medicaid, which covers over 40% of U.S. births, and eliminating Head Start, a program that supports early childhood education for low-income families. At the same time, Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, which many parents, especially those with children in public schools or with special needs, rely on heavily.

A deeper layer of concern lies in the selectivity of the pronatalist message. Critics say the movement appears more focused on white, traditional families, and less concerned with supporting marginalized parents, particularly Black, immigrant, disabled, and LGBTQ+ families.This way of thinking is also eerily similar to regimes like Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, where state-sanctioned motherhood was used as a political tool. In the U.S., similar surges in pronatalist sentiment have historically aligned with attempts to restrict women’s rights and reinforce traditional gender roles.

Internationally, pronatalist experiments haven’t delivered the promised results. Hungary spent 5% of its GDP on incentives like tax exemptions for mothers with four or more children. Despite the investment, the country's birth rate remains stuck at 1.6, far below the replacement rate of 2.1. Even in Scandinavian countries, where government supports for families are far more robust, birthrates are declining. This suggests a complex truth: when people have real reproductive freedom, they often choose to have fewer children. A 2024 Pew survey found that nearly 60% of Americans unlikely to have children say it’s because they simply don’t want to. And that's okay.

What young Americans are asking for their future families is not unreasonable, and for the Federal Government to minimize the everyday struggles of so many people by offering a minuscule amount of money and a shiny medal is just insulting.

The Hidden Scars of Beauty: Jamie Lee Curtis and the Pressure Women Face in Entertainment

In an industry built on appearances, women in entertainment have long been subject to impossible beauty standards that often lead them down paths of cosmetic surgery, regret, and in some cases, addiction. Jamie Lee Curtis, now 66 and widely respected for her candor, recently opened up in a 60 Minutes interview about how this pressure affected her own life. Her story is both deeply personal and painfully familiar.

Curtis revealed that at just 25, a cinematographer on the set of Perfect — a 1985 film she starred in with John Travolta — told her he wouldn’t film her because “her eyes are baggy.” It was a single comment, but one that carried enormous weight and was the reason Curtis had her first procedure.

That surgery, she says, was a mistake that sparked a cascade of consequences. What began as an attempt to conform to Hollywood’s narrow definition of beauty soon turned into something much darker. The post-surgery painkillers turned into a 10-year addiction.

She described her descent with a frankness rarely heard in the public eye: stealing, hiding, and maintaining a quiet dependency for a decade. In 2018, she told People she was “ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic.” Today, she celebrates over 26 years of sobriety, a testament to resilience, but also a sobering reminder of how the pressures placed on women can manifest far beyond the surface.

Curtis has emerged as a vocal critic of the beauty industry and the normalization of cosmetic procedures, especially for younger women. Jamie Lee Curtis’s story is sadly not unique. From studio executives’ cruel remarks to the silent pressure of seeing only filtered, ageless faces online, young women in entertainment are often taught that natural beauty is not enough. This toxic culture not only fosters insecurity but can lead to irreversible physical and emotional harm. Cosmetic surgeries at young ages can become gateways to other struggles: body dysmorphia, addiction, or self-esteem battles that last decades. And when young women become over saturated with these messages, it's hard to bring them back to Jamie Lee Curtis's reality: "You're gorgeous and you're perfect the way you are."