Selling Woman for Sport

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Thursday, July 8, 1999

As any European sportswriter worth half his salt will tell you, the last century's history is bursting with stories of leaders who have used the success of their national soccer teams to advance a discreet political agenda. Mussolini's links to the 1938 World Champion Italian side are well documented, as is Slobodan Milosevic's personal obsession with the success of club side Croatia Zagreb. It took the professional side Glasgow Rangers—owned for a century by the city's Protestant elite—until 1990 to sign their first Catholic player, striker Mo Johnston. There has even been a border war sparked by an international match, between Paraguay and Chile, that's gone down in history as the Soccer War.

The United States, despite a popular predilection for the tamer fare of, say, baseball, has not been immune to the phenomenon. When the United States lost to Iran, 2-1, at last summer's World Cup, national team coach Steve Sampson was forced to resign immediately. America couldn't stomach losing to a nation which not only possesses no real soccer development program but also routinely hangs its dissidents. Henry Kissinger, who one official has said is the most important fan of American soccer, has used his personal influence several times to help European-based soccer players of dubious American-ness secure citizenship and qualify for the national team.

But the Women's World Cup, currently being staged at a mega-stadium near you, is an entirely different sort of political beast.

The tournament has been phrased as an appeal to the simplest sort of feminism, but any committed feminist should be disgusted and offended by the perverse marketing tactics that the Cup's organizers and jabbering press corps have taken. This tournament abuses feminism in it's own name, when all it really wants to do is use cheap politics as an advertising ploy.

When Tony DiCicco, the U.S. national team coach, announced the cup squad in May, the one unexpected inclusion was a midfielder named Tisha Venturini, who is a solid player, certainly, but who had not anticipated making the team. Venturini's presence prompted a fair bit of confused muttering among the attendant press corps, until Nike launched its television ads meant to accompany the new squad's appearance. Featured prominently were four stars and Tisha Venturini, the last player to make the team. Nike, which thoroughly funds the women's national team through sponsorship fees, needs photogenic players to help sell sneakers to little girls. Though an internationally marginal player, Venturini happens to be beautiful.

Get the picture? Wait, there's more.

The first game featured the United States, probably the world's best side, and Denmark, which is about as relevant in women's soccer as it is in international relations. Striker Mia Hamm scored in the seventeenth minute, which both ended any question about the result (the U.S. cruised to victory, 3-0) but also prompted the following exchange between announcers Bob Ley and Wendy Gebauer:

Ley: 'Anson Dorrance [Hamm's college coach at North Carolina, ironically under suit for sexual harassment] says that there's never been a bad picture taken of Mia Hamm.' [The game is progressing at the other end of the field, but the camera is lingering longingly on Hamm's retreating rump].

Gebauer: 'She's so beautiful, and dignified.'

This is not serious athletic commentary. This is cooing. There has never been a bad picture taken of Michael Jordan either, but it's not remarked upon. These women—world-class athletes, keep in mind—are discussed like cute and cuddly mascots for liberation, feminist Cabbage Patch Kids with exceptionally well-working arms and legs. The sexual angle, which the broadcasters seem to find impossible to ignore, has rendered the entire proceeding more than a little offensive. That real feminists have not yet objected is a bit mysterious.

Any integrity the Cup hoped to retain has been further undermined by the unrestrained pro-American tone the event's publicity has taken. The official promotional video for the Women's World Cup (which is nominally an apolitical international competition, like the Olympics) spent its first four shots and the majority of the tape lingering on footage of the US National team and, in particular, on Hamm. Linda Mendalen, the venerable Norwegian captain, was so offended by the unabashed and cheap American fanaticism of the organizing committee that she called a press conference to decry it.

The Cup has not, subsequently, gotten any better in this regard. The announcers have clinically side-stepped any serious soccer commentary (particularly any critical discussion of the quality of play, which has been decidedly poor) in order to devote more time to gushing profiles of the players, and, remarkably, their families. Putting a player in the Women's World Cup, you see, is a triumph of the enlightenment of the whole community. Criticism detracts from the political point.
The politics of the thing (mixed with a little healthy jingoism) also help explain the absurd national boosterism that has infested the tournament. America, you must understand, is the most sexually liberated nation in the world, and so an event which is meant to celebrate female liberation should end with American victory. Hence the off-putting American focus, which Mendalen so acutely noted.

In case anybody was still under the mistaken impression that the Women's World Cup was attempting a statement of real political feminism, the organizers staged opening ceremonies at Giants Stadium last Saturday. The preening musical act N-Sync pranced suggestively in front of a screaming crowd of nearly 80,000 little girls and an impressive selection of billboards hawking Monistat, the vaginal yeast cream.

Mia Hamm is the absolute embodiment of this culture, through no fault of her own. Hamm the player is truly one of the world's best, and is articulate and respected to boot. She is also strikingly good-looking, and so Nike and friends have created Mia Hamm the symbol, who is everything a 12-year old girl should want to be: beautiful, eloquent, immensely talented, impossibly successful. The announcers have insisted on referring to her only as 'Mia' (she's the girl next door) and the advertisers have been shameless, using every aspect of her person to sell shampoo, cleats, and a corporate-friendly political agenda.

The Cup is not ideological feminism but cheap corporate feminism, and what it celebrates is not women but the ability of women to sell products—to men and women alike. So the athletes (world-class athletes) are displayed as sex symbols and a neat crossover dribble somehow becomes evidence of feminist liberation. So they end up as cuddly mascots who can't be criticized—Super Mia and her Feminist Friends.

Selling Woman for Sport

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