If you were alive in ’99 you remember it. That picture from the Women’s World Cup of Brandi Chastain, after making the winning goal for women’s soccer. She’s on her knees with her head thrown back; victory is clear on her face. Her arms are held in front of her in the air. Her hands are balled into fists and in one hand she is holding her wadded up jersey. Yes, if you were alive in ’99 you remember above all else from this picture that, above the waist, she has nothing on but *gasp* a sports bra.
I never really got the hype surrounding this moment and this picture. At the time I was just happy. They’d won and what a game! It wasn’t until the next day that I realized what a sensation she had caused. It must have been a slow news day because it seemed like the media had nothing else to talk about. It was rumored that this was a carefully calculated moment; that Chastain was in cahoots with Nike to help them sell what would become their most successful sports bra model that year.
Calm down, conspiracy theorists, this could not have happened. As Chastain points out, there is no way that she could have planned or even anticipated this moment. It was the end of a tied game and two fifteen minute overtimes. That’s hard enough to predict, but to take it further and assume that somehow she knew that the penalty kick shooters that went before her would set up the situation so that it would be her kick that won it? That’s plain silly.
It was just a moment. But it was a moment that made her the second best known woman in soccer behind only Mia Hamm. There’s something else about that picture. Rip your attention away from that bra for a second and look at her knee. It’s right there in the foreground of the shot. You can see, big as life, a long, straight scar running from her thigh down beside her kneecap to her shin. Evidence of one of the many injuries and surgeries that she has endured to become a world class soccer player. She has earned the right to say a few things about sports in general and soccer in particular.
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