It’s possible — nay, natural — for a woman who is sexually attracted to men to watch the World Cup while perving the hell out. You’re still a real fan if you realize once you level with yourself that you definitely want to fuck the goalie.
Today, the 20th FIFA World Cup commences in Rio de Janiero and on every high def flatscreen in every bar and exposed brick loft in blue states, and half the screens in half the bars in red states. And leaping, running, kicking, sweating, diving, dogpiling, and disrobing on those screens will be an almost overwhelming number of incredibly attractive men with foreign accents and soccer-level thighs in the best physical shape of their lives. For female fans, this is both a blessing and a curse.
Female fans of men’s soccer (or football, if you’re anywhere else in the world besides the ass-backwards non-metric-system-using United States) put up with a lot of shit to watch the sport they love, much of it from male fans — accusations that they’re only into it because their boyfriend is, that they don’t really understand the intricacies of the game, that they have no business occupying space at pubs or at games that real, male fans could be occupying. They’re catcalled, derided, and quizzed as though they don’t belong there. One hard core female soccer fan I spoke with told me that she had her ass grabbed at her first soccer game. Because she was there.
But most annoying to the women I spoke with was the constant demands from male soccer fans to brandish their authenticity like an ID badge that grants them admittance to the Real Fan club. Women who love soccer are so often asked by male fans to “prove” that they belong, says Carrie Dunn, academic and author of Female Football Fans, that they do their best to mute their female-ness in contexts when it could be used against them.
Basically because men’s football is so very male-dominated in the stands (and in its administration…and its media…but that’s another story) female fans tend to be very wary of doing anything that makes them stand out as “female” or “feminine”. So that means they’ll wear trousers to games, not skirts; flat shoes, not heels; they won’t wear too much make-up; they don’t want to be accused of what you’re saying – that they’re there to look at the boys, not to watch the football. It’s almost as if this gendered/sexualised element of watching football would detract from how much you enjoy the sport.
With our without fake eyelashes and push-up bras, female fans are plenty authentic. The dozens of female soccer fans I spoke with for this piece told me they watched for all manner of reasons just as “real” as those of any male fan. Some grew up playing it, some fell in love with the sport alongside a parent, others became fans after getting swept up in World Cup fever as adults. One New Yorker told me that she was lonely and living abroad during the 2002 World Cup and going to pubs to watch games was a way to participate in something that felt truly communal, and after that became a devotee. They’re in it to see the national team spirit, to support the best athletes in the world, to see the usual configuration of professional European leagues completely upended and reordered on the world stage. “It’s my lifeblood,” confessed one female fan, sans hyperbole.
Female soccer fans tell me that hostile male fans often accuse them of watching the game because they’re only interested in exploring their sexual attraction to soccer players, resulting in tens and hundreds and thousands and uggghhhhh exchanges between casual male fans and female devotees that look like this one that occurred on my Facebook wall just the other day:
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