By Sneha Rajaram
Long long ago in the mists of time, when I was 17, I was passionate about playing football. And I was told by a man: “Women shouldn’t play football. By nature they’re not rough like men.”
I’m terrible at comebacks. But on that day the stars smiled on me. I snapped back, “Oh really? Have you been in the women’s compartment of a Pune local train?” (I’d been peed on, shoved, beaten, elbowed, strangled, and scratched. Oh I’d been scratched and how.)
Back then, I discovered that women’s football of the 17-year-old, raging-angry-hormones variety was about shoving, shoving and more shoving. I was unfortunately skinny, and colleges used to cherry-pick their biggest girls and put them on their teams, “irregardless” of skill (my new favourite word).
And it’s true. You can’t demonstrate nimbleness and fancy footwork if you’re being pushed to the ground by the other team’s coach’s pet’s enormous shoulder. In fact, the only time they leave you alone is penalty kicks. Fun women’s football fact: the defense wall doesn’t have to clutch their groins against penalty kicks, although we were still taught to do so by our poor male coaches. How sorry for them do you feel right now?)
But the sweet homoeroticism of lying in a tangled heap of limbs with a teenage girl whose skeleton is ginormous makes up for it all, even if you have to wear a knee brace for a month. (Guess what, I recently found out that ginormous is pronounced guy-normous. I suppose you already knew that.)
This is where we get to football-watching. Ripped women tearing about on a field (when you yourself can’t run without your lungs setting fire to the world). Crashing shoulders. Pumping fists. Bulging calves. Brawn. Aerobic capacity. Kicking balls with actual, real, wothentic Skill. Using their brains (I suppose you’ve heard of “sapiosexual”, though it pains me a bit to have to mention this bit of uncouthness that has been spawned into the world). In fact, from a bird’s-eye view, you’re practically watching a chess game.
And just to remind you of the excitement of watching a game of any kind on TV, listen to this here audio bitty. Go on, you know you want to! Or at least now you know:
Now that I’ve made an enthu-cutlet out of you, as a necromancer does with a corpse (yes I have, you know I have, come on you do), let’s talk about the FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP 2015, HELL YEAH!
So if you think you’re ready, you think you’re among the deserving few, and you can handle it, tune in to, well you can’t tune into anything if you are in India because our broadcasters are not broadcasting the World Cup. Look for live streaming online.
Also, Google “Soccer Players Wall Against Penalty Kick”. It’s funny. So sorry. But it’s funny.
Sneha Rajaram is a Bengaluru-based writer. Her writing has been published in Tehelka, Penguin First Proof 7, and TimeOut magazine. She wrote a column for TimeOut Bengaluru for three years, on the experience of living in Bangalore.
Audio bitty credit: Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZqf1LUAfW0