A Year Later: Squad Goals, Homosociality*, and Lessons from the U.S. Women’s National Team
Postscript: Thoughts in the Time of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter
by Lillie Gordon
*Not homosexuality, but that too.
One year ago today, the US Women’s National (soccer) Team won the 2019 Women’s World Cup. I’ve been obsessed with soccer ever since, particularly with this team. There’s so much to love about it: the empowerment, “equal pay!,” the righteous skills, the infinite creativity, the outspokenness, the queer presence, the social media festiveness, the representation of diversity (although lots of work still to do here), the crowds of Americans rallying around a group of badass women, and about a hundred other things. While many of those ideas have garnered media attention, I think most stories miss one key reason why this team has been so captivating: the existence of a squad.
Forgive the squad cliché, but here we have a group of adult women working closely together over a long period of time towards a common goal. That goal is both occupation and passion, and in striving for it, teammates seem to form close personal bonds. Particularly in America, we have very few spaces and occasions that encourage adults, especially women, to bond around doing things together with clear ends. The World Cup provided a brief window into the professional and social lives of driven, fierce, fun grown-ups. That togetherness, “oneness” and “allness” as Christen Press once called it, draws us in.
The team’s world enchants us for many reasons, but partly because it reminds us of something we miss. Many of us remember adolescent experiences with similar ways of being social. We remember what it was like to be on a “team” — that oneness we felt playing basketball, joining marching band, or doing theater. Most us found at least some of these communities. They gifted us with periods of prolonged interaction where we got to work on skills and projects with peers who became friends as we made or did something together.
Sometimes it mattered whether these groups were same-gender and sometimes it didn’t, and those dynamics are complicated. The girls on my mediocre high school softball team briefly allowed our usual cliques to recede for those hours of the day, although we unfortunately acted very differently towards each other when the baseball team rode to games with us. On the other hand, my co-ed youth orchestra, with folks from different high schools, allowed new and unexpected alliances, friendships, and crushes to form around our shared project. These groups weren’t perfect … there were hierarchies and bullying and tensions and divisions…but there’s something about collective effort around a passion that satisfies a different need than drinking beer together. Why did the softball team feel so good? Because we were joyously losing games together, but trying (pretty) hard. Why did I love orchestra? Well, there was my love of the music, but it was also a unique chance to be part of a beautiful machine of people creating something, and creating it together. The USWNT calls back to that feeling.
There’s a fancy academic word for the idea of same-gender friend interactions: homosociality. Ironically, that word tends to come up in discussions of the way homosocial situations like sports teams can increase and cement homophobia as a response to the close, often perceived-as-threatening relationships (mainly) men develop in those situations. Homosocial gatherings are not always inclusive, productive, or safe. It’s 2020, and we’ve rightly begun to acknowledge that there are many versions of masculinity and femininity, and it can be joyous and liberating to play with those ideas or reject them altogether. So we can’t assume that same-gender groups will provide more cohesive and comfortable spaces than mixed-gender ones. That being said, the USWNT, as presented through the team’s marketing and the content provided by team members, offers one of the few public examples of a team of women that little girls and even grown ladies ever get to see. (Don’t get me started on the general lack of media attention devoted to women’s professional sports!) Collaboration and dialogue are feminist practice for a reason, and here we get to see them in literal action.
We also get to identify with the players individually. The team’s promoters regularly use social media to emphasize the personal stories and triumphs of the players. I want to pause and be critical of that move for a moment, as women are not often allowed to excel without a discussion of their relationships and personal lives. Some of the players are openly weary of that tactic. But that marketing strategy also means that we get to know a sliver of the team members as individuals. Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger are now married, out about it, and still killing it on the pitch. Rose Lavelle scores amazing goals and loves her dog. Emily Sonnett will dance your socks off. Megan Rapinoe does … all the things. So the squad, like the wondrous squad in Congress that I keep signaling, make a richer whole out of a diverse many.
Representation is such an important part of this discussion. A League of Their Own (1992) had come out a few years before I hit high school, but my softball ladies would quote the hell out of it. Yes, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell’s accents felt like home to us in our NYC suburb, but what we really wanted to emulate and embody were the fierce, passionate, independent women trying to win together, each with their own personalities, responsibilities, bodies, quirks, stories, and strengths. We wanted to be powerful together. Our togetherness empowered us.
Last but not least, the fact that homosociality exists comfortably alongside many sexualities on the USWNT really is revolutionary. From the outside, the team appears to be a fluid space for relationships. As adults working closely together, members might come through their time on the team with deep friendships, some bitterness, a partner, an ex … whatever … and all of those eventualities seem to be okay. Working, playing, living, losing, and winning together create intimacy, and intimacy takes many forms. In this way, the representation that this team provides forges new ground. The intersections of sexuality and sociality are blurry, realistic, and seemingly not that big of a deal. And that’s a huge deal.
Not taking anything away from the brilliant soccer itself, part of the appeal of the USWNT comes from our nostalgic longing for a collectivity not often afforded us in adulthood. Nostalgia is also something to consider critically. We feel and activate nostalgia for many reasons. In reality, it almost always sanitizes the past to act on the present. Part of me wants to idealize the USWNT because I want more people to pay attention to women’s soccer**, but like most of the players, I’d rather look to the future. What can we learn from this nostalgia? For one, it celebrates alliances — messy as they always are — that show us what can happen when women have space to work towards something together. Now that we’ve seen it on the screen and the soccer pitch, how do we open up space for more of these opportunities? Where can we take it from here?
Postscript: I first drafted this article months before Covid-19 initiated at best a dramatic interruption in our lives and at worst a still-unfolding international tragedy. It was also before the crucial ramping up Black Lives Matter protests and activities. I let this piece sit, thinking (when I had enough brain cells and emotional energy to do so) that its content was past its time and too esoteric for the moment. However, the further we get into this new normal, the more clear the parallels between our society and a soccer team become. If we recall the days of tasting friends’ drinks at bars surrounded by strangers at very close proximity, we realize just how much trust we’ve always put in each other. On the other hand, BLM illuminates ways in which that mutual trust has always played out unevenly in reality. So now more than ever, our commitment to the global team’s goal is the thing that matters most: the goal of doing everything we can to protect the health of those around us, and reconciling and rectifying a past in which some of us were cared for by society much better than others. There won’t be a clear end with a trophy presentation. We won’t be able to keep everyone safe, and we’ll have to mourn and lament and adjust. But our collective prize of limiting suffering and using this moment to really reflect on what doesn’t work about our global and national game plan could forge the way to more just futures, but only if we do it together.
**On that note, please check out the engrossing National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) Challenge Cup, currently underway!