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Tag: women

Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe’s Goals Beyond the Goal

Published on October 10, 2019

Women’s World Cup Champions Are Using Clout to Spotlight Inequality

One is a self-proclaimed “walking protest” with fuchsia hair who sparked petulant tweets from the president. The other is a vocal vegan who riled up the Brits with her celebratory tea-time pantomime during a July game against England. Together, Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan led the U.S. women’s national soccer team to its second consecutive World Cup win this summer ​— ​and are hoping to rack up yet another victory in their next skirmish: a battle for equal pay.

The California natives and the team they co-captain have enjoyed much public glory as a result of their FIFA wins. In 2015, they were the first women’s sports team to be honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City, which they followed by visiting Barack Obama in the White House. Morgan was voted U.S. Soccer Female Player of the Year for 2018, and Rapinoe was named FIFA Women’s Player of the Year for 2019. Just last month, both were featured in Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Business issue. 

Yet despite the honor and hefty profit they’ve brought to the United States Soccer Federation (USSF), they argue that the men’s team is compensated at much higher rates despite never having won a World Cup. Now, with the eyes of the world ​— ​and especially those of idolizing young girls ​— ​on them, they’re using their considerable clout to bring attention to that absurd discrepancy. 

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Kristy McNichol is Gay

Published on January 19, 2012

Kristy McNichol has come out as a lesbian — in order to help people.

Do me a favor and read that sentence again. In a rational world, that string of words would make no sense whatsoever. In a reasonable society, the apropos-of-nothing proclamations of a 1970s child star and all-but-forgotten TV actress wouldn’t even be interesting, much less beneficial. In the universe I’d like to one day inhabit, no one would care about the sexual preferences of a woman whose face you probably can’t even picture.

I have nothing against Kristy McNichol. As a girl, I had a poster of her and her brother Jimmy, whose feathered mane, hairless chest, gold chain necklace, and loving proximity to his all-American tomboy sister made him precisely effeminate enough to be irresistibly, nonthreateningly attractive to a 7-year-old girl. (Oh, the ironies.)

But it disappoints me that Kristy can release a statement a third of a century later saying she’s a lady lover and it makes the damned news cycle. Who cares if Kristy McNichol is into girls? Who cares if the Osmond brothers like to dress up in women’s clothing (I made that up, don’t sue me) or if a young Danny Bonaduce ran a prostitution ring out of his Partridge Family trailer (I made that up, too, but would you be surprised if it were true?).

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Derby Dames

Published on August 13, 2009

I was pretty sure I was bitchin’. Dope on a rope. Wicked hip. I was fairly certain I had “badass” scrawled all over me. Then last week I met the roller derby chicks.

Half-scrambling, half-gliding around a no-frills rink in a concealed corner of Earl Warren Showgrounds, the Mission City Brawlin’ Betties learned me that there’s cool — and then there’s roller-derby cool. And while I may take the occasional lap around the former, I will never so much as accidentally roll downhill into the latter. That’s cooler than a polished concrete flat track in the shade. That’s cool on wheels.

I’m no slouch on skates. An only (lonely) child, I spent entire Hollywood weekends shooting the moon in hot pink denim. So when a couple of girlfriends told me they were trying out for Santa Barbara’s new roller derby team, I strutted over to check it out.

Invented in the 1930s, roller derby is a full-contact sport in which knee-padded, hot-pants’d gals race each other around an oval track at break-bone speed, trying to block opponents from passing them. It was huge in the ’70s, selling out arenas like Madison Square Garden, and has enjoyed a recent revival, with more than 75 leagues across the country. Drew Barrymore’s much-anticipated derby flick Whip It opens in October.

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