The news broke this morning that Yahoo, which had been discussed as a potential buyer for Hulu, the streaming video portal set up by the broadcast networks, decided to make another investment instead. For $1.1 billion, up from a valuation of $800 million in September 2011, Yahoo has purchased the microblogging and social networking site Tumblr.

One of the reasons Yahoo bought Tumblr is simple: it was available. Facebook bought photo-editing-and-sharing app Instagram last year, a move that made sense given Facebook’s focus on social distribution of information, particularly of images. The bulletin-board service Pinterest pulled in a $200 million round of funding in February, but it’s not clear that the company would be open to a sale, or even if it were, that Yahoo would have been interested in the business model, given the uncertain path from getting revenue out of Pinterest. Various estimates seem to be putting Twitter’s value between $9 and $10 billion, and the company seems more likely to opt for an initial public offering than to sell out to another social media or internet company. Facebook’s IPO is a year old. Of the large social media companies examined by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, that left Tumblr as the property available to Yahoo if it wanted to buy another popular service.

But even if there had been another appealing property on the block—and speculation continues to swirl about whether another company will buy Hulu—Tumblr would still have been appealing for two reasons, one a hard figure, one a perception. The first is that 13 percent of internet users aged 18-29 told Pew that they use Tumblr, a figure that suggests that an enormous number of Tumblr users could be coming online in coming years. The second is the perception that Tumblr is a female-driven service. That isn’t quite accurate. That same Pew study found that 6 percent of both male and female internet users report that they’re on Tumblr, though the sample Pew used is slightly weighted towards women, surveying 956 women out of 1,802 total respondents. But whatever the actual numbers, the perception is that Tumblr has a female-heavy user base (as well as a strong LGBTQ one).

So when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer talks, as she did this morning on the call that announced the deal, about the fact that “Tumblr views itself as a home for brands,” like movies, or suggests that Tumblr and Yahoo could work together the way Google and Blogger did, with Yahoo serving ads on Tumblrs whose users would like to have ad placement, she’s talking about getting ads in front of young users, and monetizing content by young people. And whether it’s true or not, the perception will be that Mayer specifically means getting ads in front of monetizing content created by female and non-straight young people.

Whether that means that the oft-mocked confessionals and .GIFs of Tumblr will come to be seen as respectable because they’re something Yahoo is going to try to make money off of is a different question entirely. Yahoo’s perception that young people will help it shore up its aging brand, and that they’ll be valuable to advertisers isn’t actually much different that the insight that young women be shopping. Sometimes, the very fact that young people, particularly young women, have money to spend is the thing that makes them seem ridiculous to the very people who would like to extract that money from them. Trendhopping that necessitates regular consumption and deep engagement on things that other people have deemed frivolous are traits that make consumers or users valuable to advertisers. But the assignment of financial value to those behaviors has never meant that we pass along any more deference to young people’s tastes as part of a larger bargain.

For the second half of its 2012-2013 the Shakepseare Theater company in Washington, DC is currently putting on performances of Coriolanus, Wallenstein, and The Winter’s Tale. The first two plays are being performed in a pair the company is calling the Hero/Traitor Repertory, but it’s also fascinating to read the two Shakespeare works currently in production, Coriolanus and The Winter’s Tale, together. Though the former is a tragedy set in ancient Rome about a war hero who becomes the enemy of his city when he refuses to temper his manner to secure elected office, and the latter is a comedy of mistaken identities set in Sicily and Bohemia, both plays have tremendous roles for older women, Volumnia, Coriolanus’s mother in the play that bears his name, and Paulina, advisor to the royal family of Sicily, in The Winter’s Tale. And to a certain extent, both plays are about what happens when women are barred from formal roles in public life, or when their voices are ignored.

In Coriolanus, Volumnia is the model of a Roman mother, a woman who has raised a great war hero. But while Marcius (the name her son bears before he is given the title Coriolanus in recognition of his war service) can do what Volumnia cannot, represent his country on the battlefield and win honor and political power by doing so, Coriolanus lacks his mother’s deft political perception and ability to compromise when necessary. To a certain extent, this is Volumnia’s fault in raising him. She’s the kind of woman who tells her daughter-in-law “If my son were my husband, I / should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he / won honour than in the embracements of his bed where / he would show most love,” and insists that if Marcius were killed in battle “Then his good report should have been my son.” Marcius’ success is a proxy for Volumnia’s own ambitions. When he wins his greatest victory yet and is poised to become a consul, she reflects, “I have lived / To see inherited my very wishes / And the buildings of my fancy.”

But she may actually be more fit to make the compromises necessary to hold that office than her son is. “Pray, be counsell’d,” Volumnia begs her son when he’s furious at having to go through the rituals to make him consul, including hearing himself praised for his accomplishment, and seeking the approval of Rome’s ordinary citizens, who he has nothing but contempt for. “I have a heart as little apt as yours, / But yet a brain that leads my use of anger / To better vantage…You are too absolute; / Though therein you can never be too noble.” The implacable nature that leads Coriolanus to storm entire cities by himself, and to fight his bitter enemy in single combat makes him an incredibly terrible politician. Volumnia may never have been able to kill in battle the way her son does, but it’s a shame she isn’t allowed to stand for office in his place. Coriolanus may be repulsed by the prospect of compromise, but Volumnia understands a politician’s job all too well: “I would dissemble with my nature where / My fortunes and my friends at stake required / I should do so in honour.”
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LPGA Tour star Lexi Thompson in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14

Augusta’s first female members aren’t the only milestone for women in golf this spring, though. On March 26, EA Sports released Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14, the latest in its line of video games named after golf’s biggest star. And for the first time ever, the game features the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LGPA) Tour alongside the men’s tour.

Gamers have long had the option to play the game as female professionals like Natalie Gulbis. The new version, however, gives them the option to play not just as women but to create female players and play a career mode that takes them up the amateur ladder to the LPGA Tour. It even includes the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the biggest tournament on the LPGA Tour schedule. And in a nice touch of gender equality, the game also allows female players to compete against the men on the PGA Tour, which isn’t unrealistic: LPGA players Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie have both competed in men’s events before.

This isn’t entirely new territory for EA, which included international female stars in NHL 13, its hockey line, and plans to add female players and teams to its line of soccer games in the coming years. Still, it’s a welcome step to include not just a handful of recognizable female athletes but the entire league in which they compete, particularly given that some versions of the game are branded with the Masters logo and that it was released in time for this week’s tournament.

There are more than 6 million female golfers in the U.S., according to the National Golf Foundation. Plenty of them are LGPA Tour fans, and plenty of them also play video games. As I wrote when EA announced it was including women in NHL 13, its great that the company is acknowledging that women deserve to be able to identify directly with avatars when they play these games in the same way men do. More importantly, video games can have a major positive experience on young people like the girl whose father hacked Donkey Kong to make the princess the hero. So in a sports world where women still face sexism and questions about their legitimacy as athletes, something as simple as equality in virtual reality can go a long way in planting the seeds of equality in actual reality too.