SUPER BOWL XXI : ROSE BOWL SCENE : MIRROR IMAGES : To Get the Women’s View of Super Bowl XXI, We Take You to a Few of the Few Ladies Rooms at Rose Bowl

Life in the bath lane:

--”They can take the ball right out of Elway’s hands? I mean, I don’t know anything about football.”

--”I love your earrings--where’d you get ‘em? I got mine at Mile High Stadium.”

--”I can’t believe it-- one little mirror?”

--”It was in the end zone--I saw it. That call, they have to change it if it’s wrong.”

--”He said, ‘Do you mind her messing with your husband?’ and she put her elbow on his knee.”

There was only one demilitarized zone in the give-no-quarter, four-quarter war they call the Super Bowl: Within the tan stuccoed walls of the women’s johns. Outside, bellowing men linked arms and happily hitched their manhood to a football star. Inside, the women Washed Up.

A Denver woman leaned gratefully against a wall that snagged her fuzzy sweater. “It’s heaven. “

Giant fan handed paper towels to Bronco booster. New Yorker obligingly shpritzed hair spray for Coloradan. Outside of a church social, this was the most amicable place for miles.

--”There’ll be a lot of drunks by halftime,” a sage Dallas Cowboy veteran fan warned another woman as they soaped their hands. “This place is the safest. “

The good Pasadena burghers who built the Rose Bowl back in 1922, when women had only had the vote for two years, couldn’t have envisioned that in 1987, a woman would sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, another would be sit as prime minister of Great Britain, and something more than 35,000 of them would clamor for facilities at the yet-unimagined Super Bowl.

--”Well, this will hold me. When I go to the games in Denver, I don’t drink any thing from 10 a.m. until it’s over.”

A baker’s dozen of the bathrooms are ranged around the Rose Bowl--and as long as we’re talking bakers, each is equipped with a single mirror not much bigger than a couple of sheet cakes.

That’s a dozen mirrors, divided into, oh, maybe 35,000 women at least, not counting the 40 Shirley Temples and the 100 Ginger Rogerses dancing the halftime show, and then factor in those for whom the call of nature always rings twice. They lined up in front of each mirror like the movie posters for “The Three Faces of Eve.” Then, they broke huddle quickly; there’s a game on.

--”They didn’t expect a lot of women here, did they?”

--”Aw, hell, I don’t want to look anyway.”

The Denver women came in jeans, they came in pearls. The Giants women came in jeans, they came in poils.

Who knows what to wear to a Super Bowl?

--”Is that silk?”

--”Yeah, and it’s not breathing at all .”

--”Nothing’s breathing today.”

--”I started to bring my fur jacket, but I didn’t.”

For first timers, everything they learned about the Super Bowl, they learned from TV. Emily Post doesn’t cover it. There is no dress code on the ticket. With the vision of the gala tent parties they were invited to, the celebrity interviews on television, it looks glamorous, like “My Fair Lady” with moments of trench warfare. The red-haired woman in a bugle-beaded replica of a Giants’ jersey, a pearl and rhinestone collar and white leather pants--well, if the Giants couldn’t stop Denver, at least she could stop traffic.

No one ever told them about the odds of getting beer dumped down their backs or fronts, of being poked in the eye by the TV antenna of some guy who don’t think he’s getting his money’s worth without instant replay.

They were the ones in the four-inch-heeled boots and glamorous Lurex sweaters that cost as much as a well-scalped 50-yard-line ticket. If there was a rule of thumb in the women’s bathrooms, it might go like this: The smaller the purse, the less likely the woman carrying it was an ardent fan, the kind who stashes pompons and binoculars and foam-rubber Number One fingers in her handbag, with room left over for T-shirts.

But millions of people watch the Super Bowl. You couldn’t blame women who came dressed up like Joan Collins, only to find they would have been better off dressing like Joan of Arc, armor and all.

--”My feet are killing me.”

--”I’m a little overdressed for this ,” said a woman, looking for a spot to set down her red fox jacket and wash her hands. “Jeans and a T-shirt would have done it.”

--”I just want to go back to the hotel.”

--”Some guy offered me $500 for my ticket. I said I’m sorry, I have someone waiting for me, or I would have (taken it) . . . Yeah, and gone shopping.”

--”Look at that,” said one, licking her fingers and taking a swipe at her pants leg. “I can’t believe I wore white. I don’t know what ever possessed me to wear white.”

--”I got way too much makeup on, I know. “

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what’s a touchback? Where’s the ball?

--”I can’t believe it, all the money they make in this place, and look at this mirror.”

But many of them were Marlboro Women--loyal, tough fans. The Denver women could ride horses. The New York women could ride subways. If their men went barechested in the California sun, they went barefoot, and could grind out their cigarettes with their bare heels, too. These women didn’t even go to the bathroom in pairs.

--”I think women even get a little more heated” than men in the game. “Women don’t like to lose.”

The Denver fans went in for Broncouture: Orange scarves, helmet earrings, fright wigs like Brillo pads, headdresses of orange balloons. A Denver woman, eyeing sedate Giants’ women leaving the bathroom, “They don’t dress up very good, do they?”

A Denver woman, drying her hands, her nails gleaming blue and orange paint. “Oh, that’s nothing. Some ladies in Denver have them professionally done, with pictures of different Broncos painted on each nail.”

No one who isn’t a Broncos fan or a Caltrans worker wears orange. Nobody looks good in orange, except an orange, and have you ever looked closely at the skin of an orange? Cellulite city.

--”Actually I’m for Cleveland, and I didn’t want to be wearing this because those guys beat us, but my boyfriend is out here and he’s for Denver.”

--”It’s such a horrendous color,” says Tracy Spencer, daubing blue and orange war-paint on her face in the mirror, as other women craned to apply more mainstream colors to their faces.

--”Aw, my husband is completely orange. Orange pants. Orange shirt. Painted his face orange.”

--”Takes all kinds, doesn’t it?” nods Tracy’s friend, taking her picture as she painted numerals on her cheeks for her favorite players--numbers 80 and 49. “49 is married, but 80--yeah, he’s pretty cute.” She turns, and her friend gasps. The numerals are backward, mirror-made images. “Oh bleep,” Tracy swears, rubbing at her face. “I didn’t think of that.”

Most of them wanted to be there--desperately. Those were soprano voices you heard out there, yelling “Lateral! Lateral!” Strong men wept when the Broncos lost. So did strong women. No football lover wastes a three-figure ticket on any companion, man or woman, who has to be told how a coin toss works. These women adore their game, and did not dawdle over ablutions.

When they had to, some listened on headphones, even when the game was piped over loudspeakers into the johns. When Elway was sacked in the end zone for a safety, the women inside the stalls screamed and banged on the walls and doors in delight.

--”I couldn’t believe it--on my flight, a man turns to me and says, ‘Are you a fan? Do you understand the game?’ It was so sexist. I’ve been a fan for 18 years. I’ve gone every week. I wrote a football column for the Brooklyn Phoenix, and I can’t begin to tell you--men are so much more upset when they find out I understand the sport . . . nobody likes to lose power.”

Four women, ex-New Yorkers, now from Florida:

--”Are we expatriates? No, we’re not for them, we’re for the Giants!” shrieked Debbie Gladman. “Oh, the men are great, but the women are the worst. Most of the women are with the men and don’t know what the hell they’re cheering for.”

--”In this bar, we yelled, ‘Go Giants,’ this old lady went nuts,” hollered Kathleen Kerrigan. “As a truck driver, I wouldn’t know some of the words she used.”

Half an hour before kickoff, a man ran through one women’s bathroom. “Louis?” he bellowed, stumbling from stall to stall. “Louis?” The women exchanged indulgent glances and ignored him.

--”What, can’t they spare a mirror?”

A pregnant woman in a Mickey Mouse sweater tugged it down over her belly.

What was she doing here, so far along? She turned sideways. She didn’t fit in the mirror. “Well, sometimes you don’t have any choice.”

Two bathrooms over, a woman waiting for a stall whirled and pointed at a loudspeaker bleating third-quarter plays into the sanctum.

--”I hear this football all year long, but in the women’s bathroom? Please!”

A chic brunette brushed her long hair amid a cloud of Opium fragrance.

--”Well, I’m for Denver, and I’m not pulling for the Giants, but if they win (by 11 points), I get a Porsche from my husband.”

She’s already picked the color, too. It’s black.