What Happens When a Woman Plays Football?
A personal essay about football by Florencia Galarza.
Florencia Galarza is an American model, host and professional football player. As a DJ, she was a founding member, along with Virgil Abloh, of the music collective Been Trill. During childhood, she spent every year travelling back and forth from America to Argentina, where her family is originally from. With that, came something else, something that Argentinian people are extremely passionate about, football. Breathing and living the sport came, for Florencia, almost naturally. However, as many of us are aware, football is not only a beautiful sport, but it is also one filled with sexism — something that has always weighed heavily on Florencia’s heart and life. Now, she’s telling her story.
When I was a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, I was lucky enough to take a Fem Lit class with a professor who was amazing and also taught at Yale. We read incredible essays and, although there was tons of writing which I struggled with, I never felt more excited and enraged about all the topics we discussed.
I decided to finally write about my experience playing football in Argentina. I had a rough time and never really mentioned it to anyone because I was grateful for having the opportunity to lace up my boots again… But there was a lot going on which was just not right. So I wrote about it for my final paper. Today, I will share the first 3 paragraphs of an eight-page paper as I am planning on publishing my full personal essay in the near future. For timing context, these experiences were a few years ago and things have improved but still have a very long way to go. I’m nervous to share, but we must not be scared to speak our truths and share our experiences. Here we go.
In the world of sports, football is known as the beautiful game but there are many issues including sexism which have yet to be overthrown or even identified in many countries around the globe. It is no secret, I love football and have played it my entire life from the streets of New York City to professionally in South America and have personally experienced sexism from just about every man I’ve encountered in a football context. In my essay, I will recount personal experiences to important known issues which women have been fighting for in the sport of football for decades. The beautiful game is actually not so beautiful.
In Argentina, football is a religion. People will go to great lengths for their favourite club, the national team and national heroes like the late Diego Maradona. But what happens when a woman plays football? The vibe and mood immediately change. Men and some women are not open to the idea of female footballers — although there has been a slight shift in perception in these past few years. More so, an Argentine man cannot grasp the idea of a woman lacing up her boots and playing the sport that everyone loves so dearly. Sadly, women who play football in Argentina are immediately dismissed as fools, low class and lesbians (using lesbianism as an appalling hindrance). This very open stereotype created by macho sexist men in Argentina has generated serious repression in the women’s sport, scaring away girls who love football from wanting to play it and have influenced the continuing neglect of investment in a more organised and proper place for women to play football. It bewilders me that this grotesque disrespect and sentiment is still very prominent and openly accepted in daily discourse in Argentina. Unfortunately, breaking through old, absurd and ill-informed ideas will take a long time to accomplish in a heavily conditioned machista culture.
In Argentina, football is a religion. People will go to great lengths for their favourite club, the national team and national heroes like the late Diego Maradona. But what happens when a woman plays football? The vibe and mood immediately change.
My experiences with sexism in football have been lifelong but very pronounced in the time I spent in Argentina from when I was a little girl and would visit my family in San Rafael, Mendoza to playing at a professional level for the world-renowned and beloved Boca Juniors, and the ultimate dream, La Selección (Argentina National Team) in Buenos Aires. As a young girl, I would visit my family’s town in Mendoza from the United States every summer and play pick-up games with the local boys. They never quite understood why I played football and even more to their ignorant surprise that I was talented, but let me “slide” because of my middle-upper class upbringing, my blonde hair, green eyes and expensive new Nike boots. They would constantly ask me why I didn’t play field hockey because “girls like me” play field hockey and would never consider kicking a ball around. Thankfully, I laughed and continued to ball them up but, deep in my heart, I knew this was so not right. I may have been ten or eleven years old but understood the feeling of falling to sexist remarks and wildly unfair perceptions.
