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“I have given everything I see […] all the meaning that it has for me.” — A Course in Miracles Lesson No. 2
*Trigger warning: Parts of this essay process a person’s suicide.*
I’m standing in the backyard of a small rustic house atop a hill called Saint-Didier-Mont-D’Or. I’m staying with colleagues from The Equality League (EQL), an org that trains athletes to be activists and advocates.
God, I could pinch myself.
I can see everything: from the sprawling stone and metal of downtown Lyon to the ocean blue saltwater pool glittering a silent serenity in the luscious garden below.
This place is a scene in a European fairy-tale — a type of place you’d find Belles and Beasts singing “Bonjour” on their way to buying bread in the square. If anyone needed baguettes, though, they should come here where we’ve got plenty. My roommates got way too many, thinking they would last the week. But the French apparently don’t use preservatives and the loaves are hardening quickly. Please be our guest.
I walk around the kitchen half-expecting the cups and the silverware to speak to me. Why wouldn’t they, when I’d watched the walls come alive? Earlier, I had gone to the bathroom in awe of the crimson wallpaper and the drawings in the print. One of them had wings so detailed and textured I had to reach for it from my seat. A moth fluttered under my touch and flew away, breaking the spell that I was under. Back to mindless scrolling. I washed my hands, then checked Insta to read a comment on how the vid I took of that “humming bird in the garden, wow!” was not of the avian variety at all:
“That’s a big-ass bug.”
Another moth, in fact. Those muffinlover masters of mirage.
I don’t understand why my eyes keep deceiving me here. They keep painting these fantasies over what is, what’s real, and what could be — all of which might be more enchanting or disappointing than I could ever conjure up or predict.
Right now it’s nearing 90 degrees. Thunderclouds roll across the sky, preparing to give us relief from the heat, I think. The pitter-patter on the roof, though, sounds like the dance of pebbles. Ceci, PJ, and Leela stand in the backyard giggling up at a sky that’s dribbling nonsense.
“It’s hailing!”
“It’s hailing?! What the heck, it’s summer,” they say.
Lightning strikes behind the rainbow that frames the pelted city. Somehow at 9 o’clock at night there’s enough light to show how much color is in the clear.
And yet I am standing here confused at the sorcery of this place, realizing there wouldn’t be room for wonder if I fully understood. What would magic be without a little trickery? Something like a joke with a footnote. A true gem of marvel doesn’t need explanation, just space to be felt. I play around with this notion as I kick the beads of ice at my feet.
Groupama Stadium is a labyrinth not by intent but perhaps shitty design.
Or is it me and my boggled eyes?
After the semifinal against England, I leave my section having no idea how to get back to my roommate Sara, who was at another part of the stadium. The letters and numbers of each gate are supposed to guide me to our meeting spot. Instead the ramps and signs usher me into a maze of parking lots and grassy knolls — the latter of which I climb and traverse thinking I’d pioneer new shortcuts.
Alas, the final frontier eludes me. A stadium employee catches me crawling in the sod like my last name is Jones (first name, Indiana) and offers to drive me close to the nearest McDonald’s. There, I could get WiFi and text Sara on WhatsApp.
Dozens of Americans have the same idea, apparently. Some officials had shut down the trains shuttling people back to the city center and everyone had gathered at Micky D’s to cop some internet and McNuggets. When I get there, though, the restaurant is closing and most people are sitting on the curbs outside. For some reason I can’t hop on the web so I ask a person if I could borrow their hotspot.
“Sure!”
Within seconds I have full access to “Parker’s Bitch.”
Sara, luckily, isn’t too far away, and when we reunite, we discover there are hardly any Ubers available to take us home. We wait hours. The McDonald’s parking lot gradually empties and we are alone. Men pretending to be taxi drivers harass us, trying to coax us to get into their cars.
I want to sleep, pee, and punch a guy in the peehole all at the same time.
“Is this possible?” you ask. “Is that in the realm of ‘doable’?”
I wish I could tell you, but I gotta go. Finally: Here’s our ride.
Here we are in France celebrating the 4th of July. What I don’t know is that this is probably going to be the last time I celebrate it feeling as comfortable as I do. This is before George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Brianna Taylor…
You know, it’s funny because today I put on a dress and a necklace. Lipstick, even. I ask my friend Minky to take a photo of me in front of the flag at the front door. This is All-American drag. I hold a yellow pitcher of margarita and drop my shoulder the way I’d seen sorority girls do. How sweet.
We’ve formed a rag-tag sorority of sorts, me and the EQL crew: Minky, Mara, PJ, Cheryl, Cece, Leela, and Sara. Over the past few nights, we stayed up late eating bread, cheese, and charcuterie, sharing prom and sports stories, trashing misogyny, and how we could continue to advocate for Iranian women who are fighting for their right to watch soccer in stadiums. #NoBan4Women.
For the 4th, though, we have way more company (friends and colleagues) to drink all the lemonade and delicious burgers PJ made. This community is the bit of America I can laugh and splash with in the pool. This is the bit of America I carry with me when I’m not home. I’m privileged to get to see this side sometimes. Privileged to occasionally feel aligned on the 4th, which can and often does resound so false.
People leave. The night quiets. I Facetime my parents to find out someone we knew completed suicide: The sweetest guy who struggled out loud for others to know that we shouldn’t hide our emotions behind masks.
He reminded me that we need each other because we only have each other.
And sometimes even that isn’t enough to keep us here.
It’s strange to eulogize and I want to cry. But for some reason I’m not able to tonight.
Back by the window in my room, fireworks brighten the sky an ominous purple. They are so far away that they are mere pops in my ear. The thunder growls to reclaim its authority. I feel the rumble in my sheets.
The air is electric with anticipation. The U.S. soccer team will probably make history tomorrow as the first national squad to win four Women’s World Cup titles; they’re that strong. Many will cheer when that happens. But tonight I hear many trying to make room for their own celebrations.
Downtown a girls’ soccer club honors their 10th anniversary. I know this because the party was a part of a soccer conference I went to that day. For that team and their revelry: an orchestra, pyrotechnics, and a pasta buffet.
The churches on the hill chime in and ring in the 10th hour, reminding us of the faith, the eternal, and our surrender to time. The bugs tweet and jitter to claim the evening as theirs. They flit and dance around the lamps as if they desired the afterlife.
The Gods rumble.
The people pop.
The bells toll.
The gnats zap.
These are the sounds of light and death, keeping me awake with static.
Back in the maze of Groupama Stadium, time, space, and reason seem to warp again. I think I’m better prepared this time, at least when it comes to making my way in.
My strategy?
Follow the people who look confident in where they’re going. I befriend a white family who also chose to traverse the lots and hills. I don’t know why I think this couple and their son know what they’re doing. Maybe I’m attracted to those who also like knolls.
Anyhow: Huzzah! We find an entrance lined with red carpet, like a tongue entering the mouth of Alice’s “Where am I?”–land. The dad says something bold. Tells security that we are Carli Lloyd’s family and that our VIP passes are inside or something.
Lies.
Terribly successful lies. The secret codes that allow us to move through each security checkpoint with ease. Maybe there is something about the language barrier, something that overloads and rearranges the system. The family tree. If anyone asks, I’m now Carli’s adopted Black cousin.
The universe shrinks and my circles collide. I see all the women I’ve met on this trip at a crowded bar booming with Americans who buy beer and spirits. My team. My girls. My drink. Each out here working to change the world and my equilibrium.
On the patio, I bump into someone I knew from grade school and I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen her in years. We talk about running track, my 7th grade Tina Turner weave, and our history teacher Mr. McGee: the one who I’d tripped many, many times with my less-than-cool camping backpack that I’d mindlessly leave in the aisle during class. Been laughing “Sorry!” ever since.
Before the starting whistle, I walk to my seat and casually cross paths with a fellow Dyke Soccer Club teammate from Brooklyn.
“Hey! I gotta go but I’ll see you on Monday,” they say.
“Yeah, see you some 3,800 miles away.”
Small world. Big confusing stadium. Fortunately, this time I find my section without any problems: 409, Gate C.
I’m high up in what my Australian friend Trang calls “the bleachers,” looking down on a field with players the size of legos. I’m by myself this time in between strangers: to my right a French man with a reddish tan, his daughter, and two American kids eating sandwiches and dishing out soccer analysis.
The Netherlands are putting up a decent effort, but the feeling is that the U.S. is going to win. Holland looks tired. Young. Like they aren’t prepared enough to withstand all the demands of a long tournament. Their goalkeeper, Sari van Veenendaal, is playing out-of-this-world, but it’s still not enough. American, Megan Rapinoe nails a PK, then her teammate Rose Lavelle slips past the defense to knock another to the back of the sack.
It’s 2-0.
The final seconds count down and I’m anticipating the crowd’s hugs and tears. An immense roar of sorts. I pull my phone out and press record.
The whistle blows and I’m under water. Not really, but the cheers sound distant, feel as underwhelming as if I were submerged. I blame the bleachers, my neighbors’ stoicism, and the fact that I’m technically alone in this sea of feeling.
I feel a mere ripple from the tide I watch rise and fall through my camera. I see the American Outlaws, the USWNT fan club, drumming, chanting, and hopping afar, and all the iPhones recording each other nearby. In 409C, many of us are taping one another taping the game, a mirror experiment we are all a part of, etching history into the fragile infinity called the Internet. Ours is a rather silent celebration that we hope to share on social media or at least send to family back home.
It’s snowing confetti on the pitch. The U.S. players dive in to swim in the way angels fly: blessed. Next up, the demons. FIFA officials walk towards the podium and the stadium comes alive with boo’s and a chant:
“Equal pay!”
“Equal pay!”
A short protest before we all resign to party or go home. (Let ’em have it. Let ’em know.)
I have an early flight in the morning.
A room in a one-bedroom AirBnB close to the airport.
I lay my head on the pillow where I guessed my generous host sleeps when there are no guests. Tonight he gets the couch. I sneak to the bathroom, hoping to avoid ghosts, meaning: the shadows of his friends, who hang around the apartment watching TV or playing games. I have no words for small talk. No energy for “How was the game?”
I’m too busy processing the end.
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“Let’s face it: Money gives men power to run the show. It gives men the power to define our values, and define what’s sexy and feminine. And that’s bullshit. At the end of the day, it’s not about equal rights. It’s about how we think. We have to change the perception of how we view ourselves.” — Beyoncé, Life Is But a Dream
Under the lights of Groupama Stadium in 2019, a patchwork of American and British fans spread across the seats like a worn quilt. Ruffled and warm, it billowed and fell with bones swayed by the waves of our emotions. (Look closely to see the dark sweat in our seams).
Sixteen euro and I had one of the best seats in the house thanks to Natalie, a woman I had met a few days prior at the Festival of Football. Lucky for me, she had an extra ticket to the semifinal last minute. We sat right above the U.S. goal, drinks in hand, doing what most peanut galleries do: analyze the match like we knew better — woulda chose better — than some of the best talent in the world.
Still, we tossed our opinions back and forth as if playing catch: feeling our words leave our tongues and land in our ears; letting our minds play around with perspective, variations of our truths. This was how two strangers began to know each other through echoes. Like,
“Man, Rose Lavelle is tearing it up in the midfield. I love watching someone so small hold her own in traffic like that.”
“Right? She’s killing it. Even my dad’s a superfan.”
[Shared values: defying stereotypes, beating the odds.]
And,
“Crystal Dunn has done a great job shifting from forward to defense in such a short time.”
“Yeah, I doubted Coach Ellis at first, but watching Dunn skillfully attack from the back really adds another layer to the U.S.’s offense.”
[Shared values: versatility, dynamism]
We were building, laying…
[bricks] [of]
[The] [bridges]
…connecting. Finding common ground.
We both agreed that this wasn’t the best tournament that we’ve seen from Alex Morgan. Besides the five goals the U.S. captain had scored in the team’s 13-0 blowout against Thailand (a World Cup debutant), she hadn’t found the back of the net since. This was unlike her. Or at least unlike the reputation that she had built.
The forward had an incredible résumé. For example, during the 2012 international season, she scored 28 goals and notched 21 assists, joining Mia Hamm as the only other American woman to collect over 20 goals and assists in one calendar year.
“But it seems like this time around, she’s been better at drawing fouls than scoring goals,” said Natalie, and the moment that sentence left her lips, a frustrated Morgan flopped onto the field. The ref blew the whistle, and I reclined in my seat, amazed at Natalie’s observation. “Oh my God, I think you’re right.”
Is Alex Morgan actually as good as everybody says she is? I thought.
[“Good” meaning…?]
This was a question I had discussed many times with my family and some of my soccer friends. I don’t remember these conversations containing a lot of deep soccer analysis or stats. (For a better take on that, you may want to read Jeff Kassouf on how Morgan’s role has changed over the years.) Instead, I found that two themes cemented the tone of our talks:
“Alex Morgan is overrated.”
[Rated over what?]
And, “She’s too commercial.”
[“Commercial” meaning…?]
Sometimes when we sports fans talk about liking or disliking a certain athlete, I don’t think we get to the core of what we actually mean. We don’t really talk about why we feel a certain way about a player much beyond whether or not the player is putting points on the board. Or maybe it’s another number. Statistic. Boiling the human experience down to math. Arithmetic. Sometimes, when we talk sports, we don’t want to dig deeper or aren’t yet awake to what’s behind our commentary.
But recently when Morgan — a celebrated feminist and heroine to many — has come up in conversations with my buds, I’ve felt that there was something festering underneath our words: a curious umbra beneath a long and tunneling overpass that first had me wondering, “Why exactly do my friends love to hate on Alex Morgan?”
And yet to ask this was to deny the pettiness that crawled within me and masqueraded itself as self-righteousness. For me, there’s a lot of shame and fear in integrating this lonely creature, in calling her back home.
To beckon her forth, the question wasn’t, “Why does my circle love to hate?”
It was: “Why do I?”
This really wasn’t about “Alex Morgan” the person or her talent.
This was about a shadow I’ve cast in her place. A cloud that needed to be traced so I could understand the nature of my perception: to pick apart how it’s influenced, how it affects my judgments of and interactions with others, as well as how I see myself.
I once worked with a self-love coach — the wise and intuitive Melissa Simonson — who taught me to get curious when I am continuously triggered by certain types of people. (Triggered could mean a bunch of things: annoyed, bothered, judgmental, spiteful, etc.) When I notice a pattern it’s time to ask:
“What needs or values are being mirrored to me through my judgement of this person?” (Or this shadow, rather.) And then, “Is there something that this person is expressing that I decided I’m not allowed to be?”
Well, Coach, I wasn’t always a part of the Petty Party. At least not towards the Alex Morgans of the world.
I’ll never forget seeing the “Baby Horse” make her World Cup debut in 2011. Morgan, then the youngest member on the team at 22-years-old, lit up the pitch every time she entered as a sub. She had incredible speed on and off the ball — something I really admired as a track athlete. Her long brown mane flowed behind her as her tall legs galloped past defenders. It was beautiful to watch. She was beautiful.
Morgan had blue eyes clear enough to swim in. America plunged into the deep end and flooded her Facebook page with marriage proposals. Morgan was also smart, engaging, hard-working, and tenacious — characteristics honored by most American fans. The media pegged her as the next face of U.S. women’s soccer. She became a new role model to inspire young girls everywhere. I was awed by her. Just thinking about Morgan’s breakaway goal in the final gave me chills.
That fall, I returned to college still brimming with the excitement of the tournament. Even though the U.S. lost the championship, that game had everyone on the edge of their seat. Over 13 million viewers tuned in, which at the time was the sixth-largest TV audience of a soccer game in U.S. history. Women’s soccer was cool now, so I thought I could finally connect with my guy friends on the track team about it.
“Did y’all watch the U.S women play Japan? It was incredible.”
“Yeah, and that Alex chick is so hot,” one of them said, as they pivoted to discussing her looks and how attractive the other women on the team were.
This wasn’t a shock to me since media outlets like Bleacher Report and others had a habit of ranking female athletes according to their hotness: a poor effort in expanding women’s sports coverage à la objectification. But it was still disappointing to me to think that part of the uptick in viewership included a bunch of men who just wanted to gawk instead of fully appreciate what these women had achieved.
Eight years and three Alex Morgan Sports Illustrated swimsuit covers later, a part of me had solidified her as this untouchable symbol of the American feminine ideal — one that is raced, gendered, and heteronormalized. It seemed like it didn’t matter if she was playing well or poorly. She still was going to be “it.”
Ironically, this, too, was a form of objectification on my part — a flattening of a person used to paint some maladaptive narrative of feeling rejected. Meaning: Those times that I grumbled about the countless girls wearing “Morgan” on their jerseys at USWNT games were actually expressions of the 12-year-old in me who wanted to be like her, too…or rather, someone like her: Mia Hamm. For my younger self, Morgan didn’t exist yet. Hamm, though, was someone elementary school Adele would’ve loved to embody; she just didn’t feel like she really could.
Elementary school Adele would tell you about those soccer games when all of her teammates thought it would be cute to pull their hair up into super-high pigtails. How their straight, thin hair went up so easily. How the parents raved. Her twists resisted, whining at the root as they were tugged into ties. Or did she have those braid extensions that summer? The ones that looked beautiful for a month or two then occasionally fell out when they were tired? The ones she’d rushed to hide in her pocket before her white classmates saw?
By her freshman year of college, she’d permanently straightened her hair and made the varsity soccer team, “the prettiest team on campus,” the upperclassmen half-joked. That fall she made out with the star kicker on the football team and showered in the applause from her teammates. She felt like she was finally getting it. That she’d matured into someone wanted. Appreciated. But there was something hierarchical about this new sense of pride. Something that put a piece of herself in the backseat.
One day, she was sitting on the bench when she overheard one of the assistant coaches talking about how he went about recruiting: If two players in the same position had equal skill, he was obviously going to pick the more attractive one. Another joke, she hoped. Full joke.
True or not, after that moment, she started to see her team differently. Her sport, too. As much as soccer taught her that your skills and heart spoke louder than appearances, she was still trying to fit into a world shaped and whittled by white men and their preferences. This effort was heavy. In some ways, she was breaking under it. Her then-straight hair had many split ends where she wore her high pony.
So, Coach,
What need was being mirrored through my judgments of Alex?
My need to understand how to embody my beauty without supremacy telling me how to.
A need to feel seen in my own unfolding.
This void, this hole was not my creation but something I’ve tripped and fallen into countless times. I’m still mapping it out — still trying to fill it in — but I want to believe I know the edges pretty well.
This journey began when I chopped off my straight hair and shed what wasn’t mine…when I had realized I had been seeing myself through the wrong eyes.
I was seeing through the lens of TV screens and magazine spreads: “America’s Next Top Model,” Barbie commercials, CosmoGirl — Clarissa Explains It All, even. All of these reflected the beauty standards of the 90s and early 2000s. You could tell based on who they put at the center, who they made their stars. But these standards aren’t unique to Hollywood. These standards leak into everything. Even sports.
You know what’s funny? Soccer has done so much to show me how to be present with my body. It’s taught me to relish in the clean strike of a ball off my foot. And to this day, I squirm with delight when I’m sore. That soreness means growth. Strength. There is ownership here. A sense of capability and power.
However, there’s an aspect of soccer culture that has left me feeling disembodied. I think it’s rooted in what scholar Jaime Schultz calls the “beauty-myth recoil” of the 1980s.
After Title IX sparked “the sports revolution of the era” in 1972, many feminists celebrated the progress towards physical equality and autonomy. But this progression — which disproportionately benefited white women of higher economic status — was met by a beguiling resistance in the media garnished with aesthetic rhetoric. This occurred during the 1980s when the first “strong is the new sexy” movement began, and “strong” here largely meant lean, tight, and light-skinned. Sports journalists (most of whom were men) wrote about how women who participated in athletics were better in bed. From this perspective, it seems like the only way some cis-straight men could accept this movement was by framing it in a way that benefitted them — all the while belittling the effort and talent put forth by these up-and-coming female athletes.
Taking this stand seemed to be a profitable stance, too. Focusing on female-athlete sex appeal was seen as a way to draw in formerly uninterested male sports fans and nonsports fans alike. Like that time in 2004 when former FIFA president Sepp Blatter suggested that “the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball.” Tighter shorts would supposedly attract more audiences and bring in more money. This suggestion to wear something “more feminine” was not only sexist, it was reflective of the homophobia and transphobia that still lurks within women’s sports culture.
Sports are still largely oriented “for the boys,” for hetero-male viewers and their supposed preferences.
But to place all the blame on the male gaze is false and ignores the role of women in sports and fitness beauty politics. During the 1980s aerobics boom and the reign of Jane Fonda, achieving the ideal body type — whether through sports or Jazzercise — was a sign of personal mastery, discipline, and legance to womanhood. Even now, it’s easy to praise and shame each other, ourselves, against these standards, Hope Solo’s abs, and Carli Lloyd’s legs.
I’m now thinking about that iconic image of Brandi Chastain from the 1999 World Cup where she’s on her knees roaring sweet victory in her sports bra. That picture challenged our crusty old notions of which expressions, which bodies were considered “ladylike.”
This image also represented the moment that women’s soccer became the stage for the celebrated versions of femininity in American athletics.
Not only were Hamm, Chastain and the others phenomenal athletes, many of them checked the boxes of a feminine ideal that leant itself to hetero-sex appeal and idolatry. I say this not to blame these women but to call attention to the water we are all swimming in.
The water makes me wonder about the the nonbinary and trans athletes, who still play (if they are allowed to) in cis-oppressive and heteronormative environments. I think about my sister who was told she had to lose weight before a college coach would consider recruiting her…my former teammates with eating disorders.
I get really curious about the way the women’s national soccer team gained such notoriety when the U.S. women’s basketball team (which is largely Black and queer) doesn’t get as much hype despite their back-to-back gold medals and the long-standing presence of the WNBA. (None of them, by the way, are included on Nielsen’s list of 50 most marketable athletes). I think about the U.S. women’s national hockey team: bodies all suited up in pads, and helmets. Hidden. Masked. “Needing” to be proven feminine, unalien.
“We’re normal women,” defender Monique Lamoureux-Morando told ESPN for their 2017 Body Issue. “We like to be feminine. We love to get dressed up and be pretty. But we love to train and be strong and be aggressive. There’s this misconception that, if we play ice hockey, we’re a certain way off the ice. We’re normal.”
What is this “normal”?
America, on what and on whom do you place your value? Because as Mikki Kendall writes in her book Hood Feminism, “Pretty comes with privileges, and when one’s health, wealth, and opportunity for success in this country are impacted by looks…who gets to define pretty matters.”
On my flight to Lyon, I read a Time magazine profile on Alex Morgan and her advocacy of equal pay, and within it Hamm said something that made my heart sink. “When I was playing 75 percent of my money came from endorsements, 25 percent came from playing,” said Hamm. “I would love for that to be flipped.”
This means that the split hasn’t really changed. This means that female athletes still have to play into the market’s hands — hands that still hold onto beauty hierarchies and trends. Beyond the field, female athletes have to put in the extra work to show that they are normal enough, pretty enough, liked enough, trendy enough to make a decent dollar. Those who don’t may not enjoy all the corporate sponsorships and have to make do with their league’s salary and other forms of support.
In the past couple of years, I’ve watched America celebrate the retirement of Abby Wambach. I’ve watched (at least part) of this country rally behind Megan Rapinoe. They are two out members of the LGBTQ community who paved the way for many to be who they are in sport. It is clear to me that we are increasingly leaning toward celebrating diversity.
However, there is so much more to be done. If we can’t chuck them out entirely, we need to create more inclusive beauty aesthetics not just to further the conversation on equity but to also increase access and overall well-being for folx of all shapes, sizes and forever-changing bodies. Otherwise, we’re ignoring what’s in the mirror.
While I parcel out how to dismantle the pageantry of women’s sports, I recognize that many of us have tried to solve this issue before.
One way many feminist sports fans have done so is to focus on an athlete’s talent over her looks; take beauty politics out of the conversation; minimize talk about a woman’s sensuality, sexuality, diet, and fashion; speak about her strength, skill, and stats…put this all together and you begin to treat female athletes like their male counterparts. I kinda like this.
But why have I been feeling like something is lost in this process?
When I was a sports writer at (the now-defunct) Excelle Sports my coworkers and I would talk about how much we loved ESPN Magazine’s “The Body Issue”and how it was way better than Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit spread (like, ick).
To us, the Body Issue handled nudity with a delicate awe of human form and a charming dash of humor and joy. On one page you’re (somehow) simultaneously looking up and straight at Breanna Stewart landing a dunk in the buff. The next page, you’re smiling with a laughing Tori Bowie, just beaming light in her midnight skin. In The Body Issue, you find male and female athletes of all ages, side-by-side, participating in a wide range of sports.
Flipping through the Body Issue always felt liberating to me. It was like their embodied pride became mine.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve ever held SI’s Swimsuit Issue. To me it represented the epitome of pandering to the white male gaze. It didn’t matter how many strong female athletes appeared within its pages (Alex Morgan, Sloane Stephens, Aly Raisman, Simone Biles, Ronda Rousey, Danica Patrick, Serena Williams, Skylar Diggins, Crystal Dunn, Megan Rapinoe) or how “classy” they posed. It felt as if the act — looking at women lying half-naked in the sand with those eyes Nala gives Simba when they’re “feeling the love” — was robbing me of my Disney innocence. Like I too had become a sexual objectifier of women by looking.
There are good reasons backing this discomfort and disdain. Perhaps those feelings are best described by Canadian journalist and former member of the Trinidad and Tobego national soccer team, Geneva Abdul:
“Years have gone by in Sports Illustrated’s history without a female athlete appearing on its cover, but, every winter since 1964, there’s been a woman in a bikini,” she wrote in The Globe and Mail. “We’re quick to glamorize the female body, but when it comes to athleticism, women are nowhere to be found […] We don’t need to be naked to be powerful. We already are.”
Yes we are. And yes, it’s highly problematic that a publication centered on a male-dominated sport industry makes millions off of female bodies who still get paid less than male ones. Certainly there are many people drooling over these women without understanding what it means to honor them. Trash that.
I am curious, however, about the models themselves and how their choice, their agency is often left out of this conversation. We often look at these athletes as if they have stepped down from their feminist-role-model pedestal to impress guys. And really, who’s to say but the athlete themselves, some of whom feel like they need to justify and defend. Like Olympic swimmer Jenny Thomson in 1994:
“My stance in the picture was one of strength and power and girls rule! It’s nothing sexual…”
And if it was, Jenny?
You see, I’m stuck on this Nala energy that’s rarely seen of female athletes outside of men’s mags. This magnetic force — bedecked in bikini, muumuu, three-piece suit, what have you — that sucks you in like an undercurrent. This is power. The seat of creation. So much of it has been harnessed on the “wrong” platforms that we cannot clearly decipher whether a model’s intent or impact is “positive.” And should that be our job? To paraphrase Schultz, the false binary of “oppressive-liberating” can be unproductive in this conversation. It is and could be both.
Regardless, this has me thinking about how difficult and confusing it can be for women to learn to embrace their unique sexuality, their sensuality for themselves. Part of the reason for this is because as model Paloma Elsesser says, sexuality has often “been co-opted into a performance for somebody else.”
“But sexuality is so deeply our own,” she adds.
Somewhere along the development of my identity as an “empowered” female athlete, this side of me has been disconnected. Perhaps this also adds to why the Swimsuit Issue made me uncomfortable.
Who have I not allowed myself to be?
I’m longing for a space where female athletes can — if they so choose — express this side of themselves without the white male gaze being the dominating presence, without pageantry. Because Nala energy lives inside all of us to witness, enjoy, and hold sacred.
Which parts of myself do I push aside in trying to be treated like “the guys”? Maybe something. Maybe nothing. Individual, decide.
On June 18, 2019, all eyes were on Marta’s lips: purplish red like bruised flesh and hungry for more, they were both a symbol of seduction and war. Although the Brazilian legend wasn’t on the pitch to entice, save to hypnotize her opponents with her dancing feet. She was out for blood — an Italian feast — in the last group stage game. And. Did. Marta. Eat. In the second half, Marta scored a penalty that lifted her team into the sweet 16. It was her 17th World Cup goal, which put her on the list as the best striker of any gender that the tournament has ever seen.
And to believe I missed it!
I only caught this historic moment during the news recaps after one of the other games. I was watching it with a woman who played soccer in the 80s, and she asked the question that many viewers had on their mind:
“Why was Marta wearing lipstick?”
Back in my friend’s day, soccer was the one place where she didn’t need to think about appearances; that’s how she felt most comfortable. Why Marta wanted to wear makeup on the field, she didn’t understand, but okay, sure. Go for it.
Perhaps that comment was coming from a person who genuinely felt like makeup is not for her. But I’ve heard this kind of talk before: talk of sports not being a place for “girly” things or things that get pegged as “feminine” display. (I mean, “God forbid the girl who plays with her hair down.”) To some people these expressions were a sign of being distracted and therefore were distracting — of caring more about one’s looks than the game, and thus taking away from a sporting feminist agenda.
Distancing oneself from that which has been taken to mark us as “less than” is an understandable recoil. Also: trying to prove oneself — to “lean in” to structures that were never built with us in mind — is an often-needed effort at survival.
This has been entertaining and rewarding. I think about that infamous Gatorade commercial featuring Mia Hamm and Michael Jordan. In that ad, “Anything You Can Do” plays in the background as Mia and Michael duke it out in different sports. I also think about tennis’s “Battle of the Sexes”: Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs and how thousands anticipated that event as if it was the next blockbuster film.
This has also been exhausting. This form of internalized token syndrome is energetically expensive, and sometimes we pay the price with the depths of ourselves.
I see Marta’s journey illustrating this struggle. Women’s soccer in Brazil was illegal until 1979, only seven years before her birth. Reason being: the leaders believed that femininity was not compatible with the sport. And yet, as a young girl, Marta played pickup in the rural streets of her hometown. “She had to be quicker, more nimble, and more imaginative than the boys, who would do anything to beat her,” writes Louisa Thomas in the New Yorker.
When the ban was lifted and the Brazilian began to develop women’s leagues, femininity took on a different significance.
“Where femininity was once a barrier, it soon became a requirement for women attempting to play in the sport professionally,” writes Nicole Froio in her piece “Don’t Take the Red Lipstick Off.”
For example, in 2001, the São Paulo Football Federation started a women’s championship where they held tryouts. The preferences of the coaches were clear. They favored blonde, light-skinned women, regardless of their talent, while short haircuts were banned. Even beyond that event, masculine-presenting players like Sissi were often criticized and discriminated against by members of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF). This was one of the reasons why Sissi, one of the world’s best forwards of the late 90s, left the game. For the gatekeepers of the game, aesthetic policing was one way to keep women athletes “in their place.”
“Enforced femininity exists to attract male viewers, to soften the blow of women practicing a ‘masculine sport,” says Froio. “It exists to add normativity to the sport, it exists to exclude masculine women like Sissi.”
This is why when Marta suited up against Italy, she said, “Today…I’m going to dare,” and put on that crimson lipstick. That day the world learned that she in fact frequently wears lipstick, just never before on the international stage. This integration of one of her many expressions on the field was a reclamation of the so-called “feminine” in Brazilian soccer. Those red lips were battle stripes, striking out the constructs women have been forced to squeeze into. Her liberated passion demanded that her version of “femininity” be recognized and respected — that “femininity” was not something that shames women who express from another space in the spectrum. Her lips were her own to speak her uniqueness, her heart.
For similar reasons, this is why I loved Shanice van de Sanden that summer with her leopard-print buzz cut and bold maquillage. To me her style obliterated the need to balance these gender constructs in the way society demands. Both Marta and van de Sanden remind me that turning towards individual authenticity creates fertile ground for others to play freely in their own power.
♩Anything you can do, I can do different.
We can thus cocreate balance this way. ♩
I’m curious now about what becomes possible when we stop seeing women by how “well” they stack up to men. That is a central aspect of the white male gaze. I wonder what would happen if we dropped that narrative and explored what it truly means to explore our differences and the potential within.
When we embrace our differences…
We may find that we’ve been trying to fit into the wrong shoes.
Two days before the World Cup final, I attended Equality Summit, where I had a conversation with Equal Playing Field’s cofounder Laura Youngson, who started a female-specific cleat company called Ida Sports. Youngson started it in 2018 when she was fed up with the lack of good-fitting women’s boots on the market and tired of wearing super-large kid’s cleats. From reading medical journals she discovered studies that revealed how oftentimes women’s feet are shaped differently than men’s; they’re not just smaller. And yet, most major sports companies make women’s cleats by cutting corners — by just shrinking men’s boots and offering them in pink. We all know playing in poorly fitting shoes is downright uncomfortable and in some cases can lead to injury. Female athletes are approximately five times more likely to tear their ACL than their male counterparts. Would we experience less if we had the right boots?
We may better understand (and accept) our bodies.
Ever since the day my mom gave me a little purse to hide my first “sanitary napkins,” part of me has always felt that menstruating was more than just a little uncool: it was uncomfortable, inconvenient, and just plain gross. But when I read that the USWNT was tracking Aunt Flo to win the World Cup, I started to think of my own Auntie differently.
At the Summit, I also met Georgie Bruinvels, PhD, a research scientist who created the period tracking app the players were using to document their energy levels, mood, and symptoms as their bodies flowed through each phase of their cycle. This information helped the coaching staff to know when to push an athlete, when to give them more recovery, and how to adjust their nutrition.
As someone who’s been coached to push through discomfort and sleep deprivation, as a player who’s often been told to “empty the tank” even when my body was calling for less intensity, this tracking thing was amazing to me. This discovery meant that I could release judgement when I felt like crying for no reason or wanted to lay in bed all day. I started to become even more curious about the messages my body was whispering to me. If I listened would the whispers louden to a clear and open conversation?
Most of our society (namely the hustle economy) operates according to the sun — a 24-hour cycle. Some experts claim that testosterone operates on this schedule as it diminishes as the day dwindles. For those of us who have a period, we tend to see hormones estrogen and progesterone as well as our energy levels cycle with the moon: roughly 24-38 days (although this varies). Whether or not you menstruate, there’s actually some studies that suggest that we might all have some degree of a lunar cycle and not know it. Regardless, I think if we look to the moon, there’s a good chance we might all finally begin to honor our feelings, and most of all, rest.
We may be able to loosen our grip on binary thinking.
Midway through the Summit, I sat in for a presentation called “Moving Female Physiology Mainstream.” It was presented by a woman named Celeste Geertsema, MD, a sports physician who worked for Aspetar, a FIFA-accredited “Medical Centre of Excellence.” She was talking about how “gender equality is not gender similarity,” and that every cell in our bodies has a sex, be it XY, XX, or any other combination. In other words, our sex chromosomes don’t just affect our hormones and other processes related to our gonads. They affect the biochemical behavior of each of the trillions of building blocks that make up our physical beings. They influence how our bodies react to stress, medication, our environments, and other stimuli.
Despite this knowledge, we have very little orthopedic research on female athletes, according to Dr. Geertsema. And so we don’t actually know how different women are from men when it comes to sports performance — or if we are really that different at all. I got from her that “different” doesn’t mean “less than”, but knowing the details of our differences could help experts optimize treatment and care for cis-women.
Of course, I knew it was more complicated than that.
As I was listening, I was thinking about the many people who exist outside the XY/XX paradigm — for example those who may be X, XXY, or who’s bodies just respond differently to hormones. I was thinking about South African gold medalist Castor Semenya, who was banned from competing as a woman since her body naturally produced “too much” testosterone for a female athlete. The International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) supposedly did this to preserve “fairness” in track and field (more specifically the 800-meter race, Semenya’s main event). But who could call this fair when trans athletes and intersex athletes are frequently denied access to sports?
I wanted to ask Dr. Geertsema about this since she was born in South Africa and understood the science of physiology and sex.
“Currently, we are separating sport based on sex, male and female,” she said. “That is wrong in the sense that it implies there are only two possibilities, and we know that this is not true.”
A person’s sex expresses itself differently according to many different factors: other genes, your hormonal expression, the protein receptors on your cells, cells swapped between mothers and their children. Some researchers suggest that many of us are “biological hybrids on a male-female continuum.” That some of us are mosaics of XY, XX cells and cells of other combinations. And so on some level the lines we are drawing are arbitrary. The lines we are using to discriminate and exclude are grey at best.
“Men vs. women” doesn’t truly exist. There’s something more holistically intricate.
As human embryos, we at one point understood this miraculous wholeness. Before we developed gonads, our bodies had the parts to form different types of sexual anatomy.
When I look at them, it seems like human embryos are the living shape of yinyang. These inseparable forces that are spinning with, against, and within one another — transforming each other — stirring the pot for infinite expressions and beautifully complex realities.
This embryonic perception can create the worlds that we want: sports cultures where all genders are welcome and celebrated; soccer teams where Black girls can play, feel beautiful, and know that they are enough. Societies where “feminine” expression isn’t co-opted by the white male gaze. Where women don’t have to win popularity contests to get decent pay.
I know these worlds are alive in the minds of those who imagine righteous futures. And maybe I’m being too optimistic but I believe these worlds will manifest because when I close my eyes to see it, it’s alive in my body. It’s this joyous liberation.
Envisioning has been a powerful tool used by our ancestors to create freedoms for those who had none. How we see the world and its potential shapes how we move about it. It can give any object, resource, painful and/or rewarding experience purpose. Movement.
Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once said, “Perception is expressing […] Seeing is doing, acting. There is no gap.”
Quantum physicists have shown how this is true through the “observer effect.” The double-slit experiment reveals that just the act of looking at atomic particles — the things that build our universe — changes the way they behave. Some scientists even go as far to say that our expectations and beliefs shape how these particles change. In his book The Orb Project, MIT physicist Seth Lloyd posits that the observer causes reality to reorganize according to what they believe is real or desirable. This would mean that we are all observing and shaping this collective experience, and deep, quantum change actually starts at the level of perception and belief. Paradigm shifts.
If this is too much of a jump, I believe many of us can start here — head out of space, feet on the ground: when the dominating perception puts white maleness at its center, this drives our culture, shapes our behaviors, and our relationships with ourselves and others on micro and macro levels.
If we were able to clean the lens of the white male gaze, how would we act in community? How would we value our bodies and bodies that have been “othered”?
In her book Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown describes that “we are in an imagination battle,” particularly when it comes to Black and Indigenous lives mattering in the U.S. The white gaze is the filter, the cage. “I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.”
We must continue to dream and continue to discover radical self-love, underneath the white haze. Let’s wipe it away and see all the beauty we’ve been missing.
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To get updated on new content, sign up for the email list or follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. And consider making a donation! the money goes to support all of the artists and creatives making the magic happen. We so appreciate you <3.
To get updated on new content, sign up for the email list or follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. And consider making a donation! the money goes to support all of the artists and creatives making the magic happen. We so appreciate you <3.
On a balmy Saturday evening in Lyon, France parties of people gathered before the Hotel of God. It wasn’t a holy ensemble per se, unless you consider romance a religion: The pious lounged beside the Rhône River to drink up the rosy sun at dusk.
As darkness descended, the water began to glow. Liquid gold reflected the hotel’s ethereal lights. Couples sipped wine and sucked lips as my friend, Emma, watched me toss a sandwich at a flock of swans. Skateboarders ka-kunked-ka-kunked on the cobbled paths while a guitarist crooned somewhere in the crowd.
But the only show that got any applause — and some bewildered laughs — was a man who had no intention of being the entertainment.
He wore the classic road runner’s kit: white tank; blue shorts (too short) that billowed a bit; worn shoes and tube socks; the sweat that streams when it’s hot. He sprinted to one end of the quay, then back, faster than anyone had expected.The guy must’ve been in his 70s but he showed nothing of age slowing him down. What was time but the rhythm of the clapping? The milliseconds it took for cheers to reach his ears? The minute it took for him to complete a shuttle?
There and back. There and back. The crowd ooo-ed and aah-ed — shot vids to Snapchat.
As I watched his lanky frame gallop on stone, I thought that his passion for running was an animal worth studying. My team would need his tenacity in this heatwave. My team would need all of his enthusiasm to finish pulling this off. And his joy.
I came to Lyon as one of many volunteers of a nonprofit called Equal Playing Field (EPF) to complete one daring mission: To play the largest 5 v. 5 soccer match in the history of soccer. To earn a Guiness World Record in the name of gender equality. Codename “Festival of Football” would need over 800 incredible womxn (and their allies) from all over the world to sub in and out of the match and about three days to complete. That meant over 60 hours nonstop. This wasn’t a show.
But damn were we having a ball.
Two days prior, I had arrived to this city the way Winona Ryder enters most scenes in Stranger Things: sweaty, with bug eyes darting for help, and a quiet defiance that said “Eff you” to anyone who dismissed her as some kind of martian.
Fine.
She didn’t need you.
She would make it on her own if she had to.
She who couldn’t use Google Maps because, again, Non, monsieur. Je n’ai pas de ‘Wee-Fee’ or data. She who was trying to follow the rivers on a street map that didn’t account for the construction that would disorient her.
I was lost, searching for the spot I would meet up with my friend Susie who had the keys to the AirBnB.
I wandered around in 104 degree heat like a swamp thing, crop top pasted to my stomach and jeans soaked to high tide. After hours of dragging my suitcase through small alleys, school courtyards, and no-AC train stations that smelled like l’eau de socks, I did the smart thing my pride wouldn’t let me do earlier: Hail a cab.
I asked the driver to take me to Quai Saint Vincent where Susie was watching England play Norway at her buddy Amanda’s place. When Susie greeted me at the door, her cool blue eyes washed over me like holy water at a baptism. I swear I could hear angels singing as they welcomed me to delicious, orgasmic, bone-chilling air conditioning, and a fried chicken sandwich.
Susie and Amanda pointed towards the takeout and wine sitting on the kitchen counter.
“Help yourself,” they said.
Hallelujah.
I changed into dry clothes, sat on the couch in front of the TV and chowed down. In between bites, we all talked about how excited we were to play with EPF that weekend — how everything was supposed to start today but that it was too dangerous to play in the heat. We talked soccer and agreed that Norway might actually be tough for England to beat.
It was so nice to hang out with Susie again. We had met at a charity soccer tournament in NYC a few years ago, and the two of us vibed on the fact that we both played in the Ivy League. She played for Harvard in the early 90’s before America even paid attention to women’s soccer — right before the USWNT won their first Olympic gold in ‘96. Susie was a part of the generation that built the foundation for players like me. She is one of the many unsung heroines who were born around the time Title IX had passed in 1972.
Still, I ribbed her for being a stinkin’ Crimson, and we kept in touch on Twitter ever since.
While I didn’t have much of a chance to get to know Susie in person, I had the honor of reading an early manuscript of what is now her award-winning memoir Raised a Warrior. In her intimate, coming-of-age tale, she recounts what it was like as an athlete to understand America’s narrow sense of “womanhood” and to wake up to the world’s glass ceilings and sticky floors.
When Susie was in high school, her team didn’t have a gym or a field. So for practice, they drove out to the Rose Bowl complex to train on a grass lot that was used as a parking area for UCLA football games. They had to run around the tire marks that often trenched the pitch.
Days before their first game, her teammates realized they didn’t have a uniform, so they had to dig up a box of jerseys long forgotten somewhere in storage.
“We started to pull them out of the box one by one,” she wrote. “There were shirts with different collars, some with long sleeves, some with short sleeves, two shades of brown, at least two different fabrics, some brown cotton, some brown polyester. There were three No.7 shirts, and not a single pair of shorts. The numbers were easy to fix – we used white athletic tape to change one No.7 to a 17 and another to 117 – but the shorts were a problem: we just didn’t find any. I called every kit supplier in the phone book that afternoon to ask about brown shorts, but no one had any.”
Instead, her teammates pitched in to buy neon pink beach volleyball shorts to wear for the entire season. Just thinking about serious soccer players running around in booty shorts makes me giggle and pick an empathetic wedgie.
Sometime during the second half of England v. Norway, another one of my sheroes arrived: In walked Moya Dodd, former Australian national team player and a previous member of the FIFA Council. Even amongst the corrupt mess that was FIFA-gate, and despite not having any voting rights, Moya was one of the few female voices to push for more investment in women’s football amongst other gender reforms. And now here she was, standing before me with her partner, daughter, and a platter of cheese.
We shook hands and I told her how honored I felt to finally link up face-to-face. Earlier that year, we had talked on the phone as I helped to edit one of her personal essays. I just love some of the stories she shared about the beginnings of women’s international soccer.
As a teenager, she had to take on various part-time jobs to afford soccer expenses. She picked oranges in the summer, shelved books at the library, sold ads in the newspaper. And if she already wasn’t a badass, she rode a motorbike around town because it was cheap.
When she made the South Australian state team, her squad often stayed in low-budget motels where they squeezed three to four players per room.
“We’d have to wash our own gear at the motel laundromats, or in hand basins in our rooms, and then find places for it to dry,” she wrote. “Socks and underwear were everywhere. Once […] we got creative and tied some clothes to a ceiling fan. We figured they’d dry faster spinning through the air at high speed, but they just flew off. When our coach walked in, he couldn’t work out what was going on. The room was filled with laughter. The floor was covered in undies.”
It always amazes me how much womxn are willing to sniff out and make the resources that aren’t given to us. This pursuit — albeit frustrating and painfully unjust at times — can bond us in the most absurd, daring, and adventurous ways. I’ve seen it turn many into compassionate leaders, brilliant storytellers, and …
Witches.
Witches we were, making up spells without always having the book. Conjuring something from almost nothing: Our dreams. We cherished them like enchanted beans despite the unyielding earth, and for some of us, the scathing witch hunts. And yet many of us took our chances not knowing what we’d reap. Or when. We took the risks of feeling unheard, unseen, hoping that people would eventually see our magic.
Now look at what we’ve created in the dark — what bloomed while the world slept.
My friends and I were among the 7.6 million UK viewers who watched England trample Norway 3 – 0 that night. A record high viewership for women’s football in Great Britain. Evidently, part of the world had awakened.
After the game ended, Susie and I left to go to her AirBnB on Rue de Plat. She called an Uber, and we waited on the sidewalk. It was a pleasant, breezy night after what was a suffocating day. The street glowed bronze under gentle lamps. You couldn’t see much beyond the quay besides the lit up apartments and a golden tower on a hill that looked something like the Eiffel Towel.
We heard a splash somewhere in the shadows. Then chatter. Laughter. There was probably a bunch of kids hanging out on the nearby footbridge each taking their turn to dive into the marble waters of La Saône. I shuddered thinking about all the what if’s, the unknowns: The river being too cold, too dirty, too shallow, too boat-y. I wouldn’t dare.
I asked Susie if she’d ever do it. You know, jump into the river like that.
“When I was younger, I would do stuff like that. But now I’m smarter … or maybe I’m just scared.”
I laughed because I know how courageous she’s been, and how that courage never really leaves a person. Perhaps now it shows up in other places: Being a mom, writing what’s on her heart, directing a women’s soccer film. Spending all the time and money to come to France and be part of this team despite the deadlines hanging over her head. She might be scared.
But Sooze takes the leap when it’s worth it.
For a moment, I watched the clear water waltz around my fingers. Let the cold kiss my skin.
That afternoon, I was standing under a white tent among turf fields which baked in a haze that bent the rays of the sun. I dipped my hand into a large, clean garbage bin filled with what the players were supposed to drink. I filled my watering can — a little beach toy — up to it’s neon orange brim then filled the empty water bottles on the table beside me. I walked over to the pitch to where 10 athletes in red and blue jerseys jogged about with a soccer ball, smiling as they stopped to wipe their brows, occasionally speeding up to shoot. It was too risky to play all out. We were only 16 hours into our world-record breaking match and we couldn’t have anyone pass out from heat stroke or dehydration.
“Water! Water! Who needs water?” I yelled with bottles in my hands.
Two players, a mother and her four-year-old son, stopped their play to come get a sip. Man, that kid could dangle, I thought.
Delivering H2O was one of my main jobs at the Festival of Football. There weren’t any water fountains around, so the crew had to get creative. I was surprised that such a beautiful facility with multiple fields, a clubhouse, classrooms, a kitchen, and a stadium sound system, didn’t have easy access to water. Maybe I was missing something…
Because otherwise, Equal Playing Field (EPF) couldn’t have picked a better location for this event. We were playing at the Groupama OL Training Center, the home of one of the most elite women’s soccer clubs in the world: Olympique Lyonnais. Six Champions League titles. Fourteen back-to-back domestic league titles.This team has developed international stars like Wendie Renard (France), Alex Morgan (USA), Lucy Bronze (England), and Shinobu Ohno (Japan).
OL, who’s female squad was founded in 2004, has been a prime example of a men’s club making women’s soccer a priority. From academy to pro, all of their athletes male and female share the same training facilities and medical staff. Coaches and players from men’s and women’s teams often swap ideas and support. The female pros are paid a decent salary, even though the pay still pales against what Messi banks a year. And the women only play at the large Groupama Stadium for major games (like Champions League bouts). But generally, the tone of Lyon is this: both genders are treated equally no matter what level of the club you are in.
Across the pitch, I could see Sandrine Dusang, an OL alum and formal French national team player, chuckling with some of her friends on the sidelines. I imagined she was overjoyed that the EPF gang was back together, again doing the unthinkable for a cause that meant the world to her.
When I met Sandrine earlier, I noticed she was carrying the cleats she had on when she hiked up Mt. Kilimanjaro to play the highest altitude game of football (EPF’s first Guiness World Record). I knew this because she had it inked somewhere on the leather. She laced them up as she teased one of her buds. I thought maybe she was one of the bigger goofballs of the EPF sisterhood.
Or was it Yasmeen Shabsough from Jordan? The woman who dared to play soccer in a climate where girls were highly discouraged.
“HEY!”
Suddenly, a cold stream of water ran down my back. I turned around and watched Yasmeen cackle as she ran away looking for her next target. That jerk. A sly smile crept across my face when I suddenly realized: This was a soccer camp for a bunch of instigators.
Jolly, determined, sunburned, loveable rabble-rousers.
Many of whom clearly enjoyed Sean Paul. The speakers had blared back-to-back Dutty Rock all day.
“Yo, who’s been bumping Sean-da-Paul this whole time?” I asked.
“Oh that’s my boy,” said another volunteer. “It’s a playlist on his phone.”
“I kinda don’t hate it.” I bopped and swayed with other athletes who were watching FIFA refs train on another field.
In the classrooms I learned other dances.There, various non-profits had gathered to teach and exchange ideas on how to teach young girls life skills through football, how to overcome sexism in the workplace, how to boost team morale. A Black woman from South Africa had the best cheer of anyone. She had everyone on their feet shaking their booties, parroting chants at her command. Afterwards, a group of young Indian women from Yuwa — an organization that develops soccer programs for young girls who are often susceptible to child marriage — motioned me to hang out with them outside. They taught me a little boogie that was trending on TikTok.
While we often didn’t speak the same language, I was amazed at the immediate closeness I felt from the womxn I had met. This isn’t always a guarantee. Not in a world where we are often pitted against one another. I guessed it was because we had this rare melange of mediums at our disposal: music, dance, and sport. Rich mediums that enlivened all of the senses, that cut through small talk and served up a piece of our hearts.
Actually, there was a moment where I was challenged to go even deeper with a sister. In one of the workshops, I was asked to stare into the eyes of the person sitting next to me: Mabel Velarde, an Ecuadorian national team player who participated in the 2015 World Cup. Facing each other, we sat in silence for 40 seconds. As I looked into her golden brown eyes, I noticed how the room, her face, my discomfort faded away. My mind emptied itself of all narrative, all assumptions, and for a time I couldn’t see anything separating her and I — just the innocence of those rich, nutty irises. This was a lesson in intimacy a touch beyond my human perception. And therein lay the truth.
We are as much different as we are the same.
And truly seeing one another in that polarity can feel like the way your pupils bounce back and forth when you’re up and close with someone. When you’re trying to capture the whole of them. This is the dance that requires the utmost presence and the utmost respect.
Nothing less.
On one of the fields an 11 on 11 match had just begun. Someone bet that we could also break another record for playing a game with the most nations. When a woman on the pitch undressed to change her jersey, a male athlete whistled at her. A catcall. The ref gave him a red and both teams boo-ed him off the pitch. I laughed because I think this guy forgot where he was and why we were doing this. We weren’t going to put up with any objectifying bullshit.
When the moon rose, the turf cooled. At 11 PM I finally hopped into the 5 on 5. The stadium lighting was electrifying and I let my feet speak for me. Let them sprint, dribble, dodge, and jive when I scored. I didn’t play for very long. Maybe 20 minutes. It had been a long day.
When I subbed out, one of the volunteers handed me a silver medal. “WE HAVE MADE HISTORY” was etched in the center, as if it had already happened. And it would. And there would be a big celebration with sweaty hugs, high fives, wine, cheers, and pictures. But not until the next day, and I would only be there in spirit.
My job here was done, and it was time to wait for a shuttle to get back into the city. As I lay down on one of the inflatable bean bags next to the field — the ones meant for the volunteers to nap on as they worked through the night — I closed my eyes. I thought about my elementary school self and how often I asked the librarian for “The Guinness Book of Real World Records”. (I always butchered the title somehow.) Back then, I was so in awe about all of the incredible feats humans could accomplish on their own.
That kid would be ecstatic to know that she would be in that book one day, and proud that she didn’t do it alone. Lil’ Adele always wanted to feel a part of a team. A family of friends.
Bet she’d never imagined being a part of a squad so immense.
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I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. -James Baldwin
What’s in a symbol that costs 16 cents wholesale and comes on a stick?
One that consists of a small piece of rough fabric, maybe the size of your hand, with tiny, individual strands dyed red, white and blue? It’s star-spangled, trying to shine for everything that America represents: speed, markets, capitalism, productivity…I’ll have you name it.
Perhaps for you this symbol means nothing but pride. Pride for country. Pride for history. For family, freedom, opportunity.
That’s definitely it for me. Sometimes. I grew up as an upper-middle-class-first-generation-Jamaican-Guyanese-Black-American. Privileged and somewhat foreign, my lineage sounds long enough to be a Starbucks order: USA’s only legal liquid crack. This country (as well as many others) crawls across my skin like some unsettled energy trying to figure out how to express itself. Some days the fidgeting is more apparent. Like that afternoon I went to the U.S. women’s national soccer team’s (USWNT) last 2019 World Cup send-off match in Harrison, N.J.
It was a glaringly hot May day as we arrived at Red Bull Stadium. Families paraded the streets all face-painted and glittered. The crowds were formidably femme with young girls and women dressed like Rocket Pops, melting in their sweat. Minivans and SUVs clogged the streets as the unfortunate wandered to find parking. My girlfriend, Magdalene, and I were among them, riding with some of my teammates from my footie community, Dyke Soccer. We rolled in just minutes after kickoff in the back of an old grey Honda that had eyelashes fluttering over the headlights: “Pardon Moi.” The car. That was her name.
I was wearing my 2015 Megan Rapinoe jersey. Number 15. A tight size S. I was bursting out the seams with USWNT trivia for anyone who cared to listen. Like, “Did you know that Becky Sauerbrunn said that if she was a video game character she’d be Lara Croft from Tomb Raider?” Which, by the way, I never got to share because we were so caught up gossiping about which national team players we found hot and who was gay or not. Our priority was fueling the fire of our sensual daydreams as salsa music on the radio peppered our fangirl chatter.
By the time we walked to our gate, we were ready for our patriotic pantomime. Call it a primal surge from a national call to action. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” roared within the rafters, beckoning us to our seats, hot pretzels and overpriced beers. Sodas hissed at the snap of a bottle cap. My heart purred.
Stadium staff handed each of us mini American flags with a smile, with a nod, with utter indifference. Boredom. I imagined that for one recipient, the little trinket made for some cute momento they may or may not save. Another person, I imagined, would see it as an essential tool for their American sports fan kit. But I knew, at least for one person in particular, that that flag was…inconvenient.
Mid-game, Magdalene left to go to the bathroom and came back without it. I asked what had happened. She said, “I threw it out.”
“You did what?!” I laughed.
I couldn’t stop chuckling because this was “Classic Magdalene,” the girl who likes to have her hands free. Our bags were at bag check so between juggling our phones, wallets and two large bottles of water, having something else to hold on to was a bit of a burden for her. My laughter was brimming with the familiar. It was the kind of chuckle that bubbles, say, when Steve Urkel from Family Matters breaks something. Again. Turns the whole house upside down. Oh, Magdalene. In my head, I cue the audience laugh track….
Then check behind the curtain.
Hiding behind my hilarity was discomfort. Overprotection. The type that tenses tender feet that can’t handle being touched. You just don’t go there without getting kicked.
Magdalene throwing the flag in the garbage tickled the child in me that said the pledge every morning before school; who sang the national anthem before every basketball game, soccer match and track meet; who witnessed 9/11 playing over and over again in the dark den of her childhood basement. It teased the young girl who was frequently reminded of her allegiance and the moral importance behind it. She could never forget.
“So you trashed it?” I said with a smirk.
“Yeah,” Magdalene said. “Fuck that flag.”
And where were all the Mexicans in the crowd? she asked. (Magdalene, the proud Afro-Dominican.) Why wasn’t anyone handing out Mexican flags? And how can Americans be obsessed with tacos and still hate on the people who made them?
All valid points. Some of which hadn’t occurred to me because I was so blinded by my stripes. I could suddenly see the stadium’s true colors: White with a few accents of brown. Our sole Mexican friend, Roberta stood out even more to me. Roberta, an army of one, shouting, “Go Mexico!” anytime her team touched the ball.
I could tell Magdalene felt out of place — unwelcome, even — at her first USWNT soccer match. She wriggled in her seat. Her eyes wandered off the pitch to find herself. To her right, she found a quiet Mexican family: A mom, dad and their 10-year-old daughter. She smiled and gave them a wave.
Fuck that flag, huh? I thought. Understandably so, especially if Magdalene didn’t feel like it represented her.
One of the reasons I fell in love with Magdalene was because her tethers aren’t tied to where my ego clings for its life: my sense of what makes a good person, a good citizen. Every so often she’ll say something that allows me to breathe a bit easier. Or squirm. I’ve squirmed often with her. Against her. Magdalene gently questions my ties — tugs on my threads — and I begin to unravel.
Unpack.
On the field, American midfielder Megan Rapinoe sprinted up and down the sidelines with newly dyed hair: pink instead of the usual platinum blond.
At first, I didn’t recognize her from my seat high up in the rafters. But when I did, I remembered how much she went through in the past year and how much she might’ve changed.
In October 2016, Rapinoe — by then a 10-year veteran of the United States soccer team — knelt during the national anthem before the kickoff of an international match. This was the first time she did this wearing the red, white and blue, after having stirred a fuss for kneeling during a Seattle Reign FC game. The act was radical, but not unique. Rapinoe took a knee in solidarity with former starting 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
That fall, Kaepernick sat down during the national anthem of a preseason game to call attention to the unchecked police brutality wounding and killing people of color across the country.
Black Lives Matter.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color,” he explained to the press. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Many NFL administrators and military members, relatives and supporters were up in arms.
The next game, he decided to kneel in an effort to show more respect without giving up the peaceful protest. His actions were met with widespread support. Other athletes joined him, including Rapinoe.
“Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties,” she said after the Reign FC match. “It was something small that I could do and something that I plan to keep doing in the future and hopefully spark some meaningful conversation around it.”
Their actions were also met with harsh criticisms and severe consequences. Some people still say Kaepernick is “disrespectful” to all the people who serve this country — that he should be “hung and shot in public squares.” Football fans have burned his jersey. Ultimately, the 33-year-old has been blackballed from the NFL and hasn’t seen the field since.
Rapinoe, who kept up her protests, has not faced racism or experienced such a dire career punishment. But she knew she was taking an immense risk, that she would have to explain herself to the media, that she could eventually lose her job. She knew that at the end of the day, there was no payoff greater than standing in your truth.
I believe this to be true, so then why is it that when I’m at an event and the trumpets start blaring, my legs start to shake? Where does my courage go? Where does our country’s courage go?
My friend Jen Sinkler once asked me, “Why aren’t we all kneeling?”
Many of us have very little to lose and much to gain in a collective movement.
Still, here we have Kaepernick and Rapinoe. Some of the biggest public sports figures willing to put their childhood dreams on the line “to get political.”
“Shut up and play,” they said. But when Rapinoe knelt instead, even those people started to ask, Can you really be a representative of the United States and protest the symbol that identifies us? (All the while forgetting Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos who had raised the Black Power fists in 1968.) Is that patriotism?
Back then, U.S. Soccer answered, “No” even though they have since changed their minds. Rapinoe received a firm slap on the wrist from the organization and she agreed to comply with their new policy: All national team players must stand during the national anthem. For a while, Rapinoe stood with her hands behind her back instead of her hand on her heart, opting out of singing.
“I can understand if you think that I’m disrespecting the flag by kneeling, but it is because of my utmost respect for the flag and the promise it represents that I have chosen to demonstrate in this way,” Rapinoe wrote in the Players’ Tribune. “When I take a knee, I am facing the flag with my full body, staring straight into the heart of our country’s ultimate symbol of freedom — because I believe it is my responsibility, just as it is yours, to ensure that freedom is afforded to everyone in this country.”
It would be a long time until Anthem v. Pinoe headlines stopped trending.
Maybe because as her girlfriend, Sue Bird, said, “Megan is at the boss level in the video game of knowing herself.”
It’s funny that some people take that knowing as a threat — especially when you’re a Black man like Kaepernick.
At the crux of America’s flag anxiety is the word “symbol.”
Symbols are the empty vessels — I mean, if we could ever imagine them void — that give this world meaning. A flag, a badge, a color. Anything really: Consider a coffee mug, even.
There was a time in your life that you didn’t know what a mug was. Not until someone told you its purpose, or you played with the new object yourself. Not until you grabbed ahold of the ceramic, let it slip through your fingers and watched it splinter on the floor. How your mom yelled at you, even though you cut your hand trying to pick it all up.
Firm. Fragile. Dangerous. Temporary home to hot Nesquik. Your favorite. The mug quickly becomes all of these things and redefines itself as you fill it with your own thoughts, beliefs, experiences, memories and other people’s thoughts, beliefs, experiences and memories that you’ve absorbed over time. It becomes so full that the sight of the word “mug” will subconsciously (and consciously) bring up so much more than a mere search in Merriam Webster. Look into your cup and you’ll see your reflection.
Symbols mean different things to different people. Meanings are inherited from older generations, from schooling, from the environment, from the media, from living life. What I learned to be “pretty,” “beautiful,” “honorable” and “shameful,” is based on what I’ve taken in from this world. These definitions aren’t always true in all cases or for everyone. I keep flipping through my own dictionary to find a whole trove of paradoxes.
Like when I see the flag, I remember summer nights smelling the alluring smoke of BBQ and fireworks on the Fourth of July. I also remember going to a network marketing conference where the flag stood big and tall on the stage as the speaker told us that we were “idiots” if we didn’t vote for Trump, “who stands for what this country is about.” To me, the flag equals warmth, connection, celebration. It also equals anger, marginalization, disbelief. I understand that not everyone has these conflicting emotions when they see that banner. Maybe all they feel is admiration. Maybe all they feel is hate. One thing I do know is: None of us can truly see anything without bringing our past with us.
We wear the past like dusty old glasses that have scratches and cracks that can prevent us from seeing reality or the humanity in one another. This is partially why a lot of us are floundering over this flag dilemma. We engage in screaming-in-all-caps “debates” on Facebook walls, listen to the echo of our own voices, and wonder why we don’t see the same murals in our minds.
While we have these individual experiences coloring our lives, we do meet in the middle somewhere. We have these narratives that string together the clues of who we are. In that sense, collective symbols, like flags, are agreements and exchanges among a body of pins — various points of consciousness. We are all connected and affected by these threads, for better or for worse. This is why it is important for us to reevaluate collective symbols as we evolve as humanity. This means bringing everybody’s experience to the table and listening to what’s really being said — and particularly listening to the voices that aren’t often given stage.
So what is it that I’m hearing when people protest the flag? What is it that I’m hearing when people protest the protest?
On both sides I hear:
I am hurt. I’ve been hurt. I’m hurting.
You’re not respecting me.
You’re not hearing me.
You aren’t here for me.
When I see people continuously kicking and screaming over the kneeling: I see a lack of compassion. A lack of introspection. Closed ears and closed minds. Inner turmoil that doesn’t quite know how to find the right words.
On some level, I see myself. I remember times when I was called out on my own bullshit — homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism (yes, alive in a black queer woman, perhaps still). Every time I was called out, a small part of my world cracked open. Oh, how it hurt my ego. How angry I felt at that other person for correcting me. How dare she! How sorry I felt later. How ashamed. During those moments, I wanted to hide from people. I hated making mistakes. I hated people thinking that I could be a bad or an ignorant person. Then I learned I could separate my harmful behavior from my being. I discovered that all the -isms that scream inside me don’t ever have to become -ists. You just have to cut them out.
I grew up in a white-dominated, patriarchal society so I have adopted some of its false beliefs. All Americans have. As children, we took them on to no fault of our own. But I’m learning to take responsibility in every moment that I become aware. To Cut it out! no matter how much it I think it pains me. That “pain,” I realized — the “pain” that feels like you’re chopping off a part of yourself that will never return — is actually the release my old worldview so that I can open up to a new reality. One where I learn to love myself and others more deeply than I knew was possible.
Still, it can feel scary. But even if cutting out the -ists leaves some fear that can prevent us from stepping into those tough conversations again, we’ve got to remember: those scars are proof that we can heal and create a new body of people. Our hope is not to relapse.
I can’t speak for all protesters, but when I’ve watched Kaepernick kneel, bow, or close their eyes in demonstration, I sense not only deep and agonizing disappointment, but also the vision for a new kind of country, where we are able to truly see and hear each other. This vision comes from a knowingness that we can do better, that we need to do better. That for sure is inspiring.
But the kneeling aspect is what really draws me in. Kneeling in many cultural traditions, is a form of surrender — and in this case, “surrendering” doesn’t mean “giving up” or “being weak.” Instead, Kaepernick’s surrender, to me, takes the form of an open invitation. It’s an invitation for others to sit with their own values and discomfort. It’s an ask for each of us to join in, to observe our beliefs and biases and look at what needs to be cut out and what can be kept.
For many of us, it’s also a surrender of these privileges that have created false hierarchies among us. It’s a commitment to balance the scales and end the vicious cycles of bloodshed.
This is the sort of inner work that unfortunately cannot be forced upon someone else. We can only envision that others will make their way there as we build new worlds, new systems, with co-conspirators, and continue to flush out our own murk. (Spoiler alert: We never will get all of the gunk out and that’s okay.)
The work requires us to see the potential in the other to be their best selves (as hard as that can be) and hope that they are doing the same for us in all our imperfection.
The work — this work — can and must be provoked, poked and rattled by a call for more love, however that may come, be it from the depths of our sadness, rage, or joy. However long it might take. And yet we somehow must allow everyone to be on their own journey.
I can try to rip open the eyes of another.
But will they actually wake?
I pictured blood.
As I sat in the bleachers watching USA vs. Mexico, I imagined Magdalene’s flag sitting in a tiny trash bin in a bathroom stall, covered in tampons, pads and rolled toilet paper, seeping in red DNA. The white stripes of the banner were stained with the lives of women many have tried to erase or make small, “crazy,” “bitchy,” “slutty.” The lives of women who are beginning to remember themselves, their power.
Me, too.
I am also remembering because there’s a shift going on. Don’t you feel it? It’s the hormones. (Horman: the Greek word meaning “to set in motion.”) A new cycle approaches, howling from the depths of our wombs.
Time’s up.
Suddenly, the final whistle blows and the game is over.
I was so in my head and so sure of the outcome, I was hardly paying attention to the score of the match. I glanced at the board. America, 3. Mexico, 0. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” the crowd boomed. I high-fived my friends and hollered with the masses as more “fun facts” trickled into my brain:
“Did I tell you that one of Tobin’s favorite hobby is cutting grass?”
What I couldn’t tell you, though, is what happened to my flag.
I probably dropped it, mindlessly trying to rush out of the stadium to beat the homebound traffic. In my mind, I saw it lying at the foot of my seat — accompanied by others shed by proud yet forgetful, indifferent or dissenting fans — being swept away by custodians equipped with brooms that will service another game.
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HERE FOR THE LONG BALL 