Since long before its loss to Sweden, the U.S. women's national team has been under attack.
Yes, the U.S. women's national team is conspicuously absent from the finals of the Women's World Cup this weekend. The Americans have been out for a while now, having been eliminated earlier than ever before, when they lost to Sweden before the quarterfinals. It's completely fair to criticize their athletic performance. But there's also been a swell of armchair athletes, led by Donald Trump, who have attributed the team's loss to activism or today's prevailing buzzword, wokeness. |
They are revealing the paradox of being a woman in sports. |
As I write in an essay today, activism is exactly why we are talking about this team's athletic performance — for better or worse — in the first place. For this team, standing for more than sports has never been optional. From the beginning, it has been existential. |
I'm part of an entire generation of girls (hello, millennials, geriatric or otherwise) who grew up watching the U.S. women's team fight on the field. We were awe-struck by their wins. After one of those wins in the 1990s (it seemed that all they did was win), my soccer travel team and I went so far as to ambush Mia Hamm and the whole national team at the airport, caravanning across the great state of Rhode Island when we heard they were going to be there. |
It was a celebrity sighting. I still remember Mia Hamm's expression. (I can still utter her name only in the hallowed construction of first and last: Mia Hamm.) It was a little bewildered but generous. Proud. I don't know what I wanted from her, exactly; it was probably no different from what today's tweens want when they get dressed up in cowboy boots and glitter for a Taylor Swift concert. Just to be near greatness. Inspired. And that is what I got. |
When Mia Hamm signed my soccer ball, it was like taking sacrament from the pope. It was all part of one sacred deal: When the adults around promised girls like me we could grow up to be anything we wanted, in that impossibly rosy '90s way, we believed them. |
I had no idea that the heroes I was watching battling it out on the field were fighting another battle. For one, to be able to get work travel arrangements in which you can't be ambushed by a group of awe-struck girls while you're waiting to collect your bags. (Sorry, Mia Hamm.) But the fight was much deeper. To not wear hand-me-down uniforms. To not play with the same size balls as children. To earn salaries even remotely close to those enjoyed by men, especially men on an American soccer team whose highest World Cup finish was third place and occurred in 1930. |
In order to win that fight, that team had to beat everyone else around, repeatedly and sometimes seismically. Is perfection a precondition for equity? In this team's case, maybe. |
In my reporting, I spoke with one of those women's soccer pioneers, Michelle Akers, about just how hard she had to fight for her team's right to exist at all. The message back then, she told me, was clear: "Just be grateful." Sound familiar? |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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