My son goes to a sprawling public school that provides the majority of players for our local soccer (football) league in Washington DC. He plays on a team of boys and girls where, as is often the case with six-to-eight-year-olds, the girls frequently dominate on the field of play.
In addition, his awesome classroom teacher played soccer at the most legendary women鈥檚 collegiate program in the United States.
And yet, despite all of that, when recess happens, it is just the boys playing soccer while the girls watch. Despite all of that, my son came home to say that one little boy at his school told him and his friends that they 鈥減lay like girls鈥. I鈥檓 proud that my son knew that this was an utterly fucked-up thing to say.
I say this because, while this piece is about the sexism plaguing Brazilian soccer, I want to be clear that this is not a South American issue, or an 鈥渙ver there鈥 issue: It鈥檚 a global issue.
Women鈥檚 soccer is not only the story of a sport. It is the story of a fight for access and opportunity and respect, often against the very people who are supposed to be developing the game.
Perhaps nowhere is that reality more evocative than in Brazil. As we know, Brazil still loves its soccer with a passion few countries can match, despite the foul after taste of the 2014 World Cup.
At the Women's World Cup in Canada, Brazil's best player - the transcendent Marta - scored her 15th World Cup goal, making her the most prolific scorer in Women鈥檚 World Cup history.
Now, like her one-named compatriot Pele, she is without rival in international competition. And yet her goal did not even merit a mention in the main Brazilian newspaper, O Globo.
Meanwhile a friendly match between the men鈥檚 national team and Honduras was on the front page. As Stephanie Nolen reported in Toronto鈥檚 Globe and Mail: 鈥淪ome Women鈥檚 World Cup games are being broadcast on Brazilian cable channels 鈥 but no one appears to be watching.鈥
Nolen was able to secure comment on this state of affairs from the head of women鈥檚 soccer for the Confederation of Brazilian Football, Marco Aurelio Cunha, and his analysis was infuriating in its predictability.
Cunha said that he was hopeful for the future of the sport in Brazil, because 鈥淣ow the women are getting more beautiful, putting on make-up. They go in the field in an elegant manner.
鈥淲omen鈥檚 football used to copy men鈥檚 football. Even the jersey model, it was more masculine. We used to dress the girls as boys. So the team lacked a spirit of elegance, femininity. Now the shorts are a bit shorter, the hairstyles are more done up. It鈥檚 not a woman dressed as a man.鈥
Cunha鈥檚 screeching sexism and subtle-as-a-blowtorch homophobia is a nasty echo of Sepp Blatter鈥檚 infamous comments a decade ago that the women鈥檚 game would be more successful if they played 鈥渋n more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts.鈥
Even responding to these comments feels nauseating, but to be clear: This is not only morally wretched, it is a recipe for warping, if not destroying, the future of the sport.
As proven in field studies by the Tucker Center for Women鈥檚 Sports, sexualising women athletes is a road to neither attention nor respect. In fact, it is the opposite.
As Mary Jo Kane of the University of Minnesota鈥檚 Tucker Center told me: 鈥淔or a female athlete, stripping down might sell magazines, but it won鈥檛 sell your sport.鈥
Women鈥檚 soccer will only achieve greater growth when we have a FIFA not run by sexist men. It will grow by pressuring the media to acknowledge the greatness of players like Marta. It will not grow by saying her invisibility is understandable if she does not dress in a bikini.
Marta, who is still just 29, has been named FIFA鈥檚 player of the year five times and for 11 years has finished in the top three. This is without precedent in any sport. She is the most laureled soccer player on earth.
Marta achieved this despite a childhood where she endured beatings for wanting to play. It is a story for the ages. But her odyssey has been met with a call to turn the game she honours into a lingerie league. She is not being told to 鈥渟hut up and play鈥 but 鈥渟hut up and pose鈥.
That moral midgets like Blatter and Cunha have overseen Marta鈥檚 development says wondrous things about her resiliency and love of the beautiful game. It also says horrific things about the state of leadership in the sport.
Their call to sexualise women鈥檚 soccer is a call to debase the game, repel the best young female athletes from playing, and justify the media鈥檚 ignoring women鈥檚 soccer on the basis of it not being a 鈥渟erious sport鈥.
It justifies a status quo in Brazil that I saw: where young boys played in the favelas and on the beaches in bare feet and the girls stood on the side watching. They watched with that yearning universal of children to run, jump, and play, but a force field of sexism kept them at bay. It鈥檚 not unlike the recess force field at my son鈥檚 school.
It is a force field we should be tearing apart with our bare hands. If FIFA鈥檚 sausage-fest of leaders stands in the way, let them be torn to pieces as well.
[Abridged from EdgeofSports.com.]
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