They’ve already won.
I know, I know. Anything can happen, and that’s why they play the game, and on any given Sunday … etc., etc. But when the U.S. women’s soccer players take the field today to face Japan for the world championship, they will have already won.
Lest you confuse this with one of those namby pamby “everyone’s a winner” or “they’re champions just for getting there” tomes, allow me to explain. You see, the U.S. Women’s National Team has spent the past two decades delivering victories that extend well beyond the world of sports. In capturing two FIFA World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, the team has transformed our notion of women’s sports and our notion of female athletes.
How? By the simple act of being grown-ups, of being women competing at a world-class level, of being well-rounded people with college degrees and, in some cases, being wives and mothers and still kicking tail. In other words, they actually are women, which all too frequently is not associated with “women’s sports” in this country.
For American tastes, our idea of women’s sports traditionally has been defined by the pixies who inhabit gymnastics and figure skating, the kind who appear on our TV screens during the Olympics and on our Wheaties boxes shortly thereafter. And then they disappear before being replaced by the next round of figure skaters and gymnasts at the next Olympics.
There are exceptions, of course. Tennis player Serena Williams might be the most accomplished female athlete in United States history, and nobody has ever suggested that she is a pixie.
But America’s female athletic heroes exclusively have been in individual sports, and they more often than not have been the likes of gymnasts Mary Lou Retton or Gabby Douglas or skater Sarah Hughes; they’re wondrous athletes, sure, but ones for whom the idea that “she’s so cute” came to mind more readily than “she’s so athletic” or “she’s so strong” or “she’s so mentally tough.” That is not fair to the athletes, and it is not the fault of Retton or Douglas or Hughes. It simply is the nonthreatening nature of gymnastics and figure skating, sports in which sequins and makeup are part of the uniform, sports in which prepubescent daintiness is viewed as an advantage.
And then along came the women’s soccer team.
It started, really, with Brandi Chastain’s World Cup-winning penalty kick in 1999 in front of 90,185 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. It has continued ever since. Consider this remarkable factoid: When the United States lost to Japan in the final of the last Women’s World Cup, in 2011, the contest drew better TV ratings than the previous year’s World Series. Or this one: Tuesday’s victory over Germany delivered the best U.S. TV ratings for any World Cup semifinal … men’s or women’s.
Girl or woman next door?
All of that, however, simply distracts from the salient point. Because the issue is not whether women’s sports can deliver TV ratings. It’s not whether a women’s soccer league can thrive in this country. It’s not whether women’s sports should be compared with men’s sports.
No, the issue is that the U.S. Women’s National Team arrived at the nexus of feminism and post-feminism, and demonstrated that the woman next door can be just as appealing as the girl next door.
During the 2003 Women’s World Cup, I asked standout Julie Foudy why the general public found her team so interesting. “Tall, big boobs, blonde,” she quipped, pointedly mocking our traditional notions of femininity. Or as Chastain once said, “I ran my ass off for this body. I have biceps and shoulders as big as my dad’s. I’m not going to hide it.”
It is difficult to imagine a 15-year-old gymnast expressing such self-aware confidence. And it is refreshing to see a team expand our definition of what it means to be a female athlete.
So, yes, the U.S. soccer players already have won. And it has been a victory for women.