Invisible Women: See Us As We Are

This football-ambivalent writer went to a women's football match and you'll NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Sep 02, 2024

Hello, my dear GFPs!

First up, an acknowledgment that you did not hear from me last Monday. A mitigating factor is that it was Bank Holiday here in the UK, but to be perfectly honest, as a freelancer Bank Holidays mean really very little to me. So little in fact that I didn’t realise one was happening until the day before. So it doesn’t really mitigate much at all.

The real reason I deviated from your regularly scheduled programming is simply that I was trying to figure out a knotty part of my book and if I had broken off to work on a newsletter I would have lost the thread. This is actually increasingly happening as I get deeper into the book writing, and indeed you may have noticed that the newsletter schedule has not exactly been sticking entirely to…well, schedule.

So what am I saying? Basically that this is probably going to keep happening for a while.

I take this Substack community seriously. Your support—particularly of those of you who are paying subscribers—is not taken for granted. It’s just that newsletters take me quite a lot of time and, at the moment, I can’t always predict when I will be able to spare that time away from the book. So while I’m going to do my best to keep writing these fairly regularly, I can’t make any promises. On the other hand, it hopefully means you’ll get the book sooner than you would otherwise, so swings and roundabouts!

In conclusion: I’ll write these when I can! And hopefully you all understand ❤️

It won’t be forever, just to get me to the end of my first draft.

Default female of the week

I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m not exactly a fan of football. It wasn’t a huge part of my life growing up outside of the UK, apart from of course when Argentina was beaten by Germany in the 1990 men’s World Cup final (the first official FIFA women’s World Cup would not take place until the following year believe it or not). And thus began my long history of being disappointed by whichever team I was supporting — in football as in politics. What can I say, I’m an inveterate loser.

Then we moved to the UK six years later and suddenly football was everywhere. Men’s football, naturally. And everyone had to have a team. Not having a team or indeed knowing what any of the teams were was just one other way I stuck out like a sore thumb in those early years, before I learned how I was supposed to dress as a British teen and what on earth Marmite was and why everyone liked it so much.

And look, I tried to care about football. I really tried. I learned all the names of the England squad; I sang along to Three Lions and watched Gareth Southgate missing that penalty in the ‘96 Euros; I saw England get knocked out (by Argentina!) in the ‘98 World Cup (and kept my neutral feelings quiet out of respect for my new British friends). I put in my time. But somehow, it never took.

For my brother, it was different. He had probably been into it before we came to England, to be fair; there is an adorable photo of him aged four in an Argentina football top that is so enormous it’s a dress on him, from the ‘86 Argentina - West Germany final (which we won, but since I was only two I don’t remember that one). But still, I don’t remember it being such a central feature of his life. But now he had a team he was fanatical about and he would watch late night Italian football (remember that? The days of only four channels) where he didn’t care who won just “for the beauty of the game”. In fact, he recorded over a video of my favourite period drama with said late night football and let me tell you I did not find that match particularly beautiful.

But unlike my duck-to-football brother, I never really managed to understand the English obsession with the beautiful game. Marmite, that I understood. Mmmmm lovely salty marmite on buttery toast, with a nice cup of builders’ (another British thing I learned to love after I moved here.) But football always left me feeling alienated.

In retrospect I can absolutely see why. The 90s were peak football lad culture in the UK and as a young girl with “big tits” that “the lads” were always grabbing, who hated beer (nope, never got that one either) I was never going to be one of the lads, however hard I tried. The moment I realised that I could simply….not pretend to care about football was a moment of great release and for decades after that lightbulb moment I relished avoiding the sport and the lads who were into it.

And then I met my A[merican]B[eefcake] who has been on a one-man mission to get me into football ever since because, despite being an American, he has always played and watched actual football (as opposed to the American variety). I mean, he does also watch the American variety because, well, beefcake who is American, but I think I’m right in saying that football-football is his one true love. And gradually he’s been breaking down the barriers I had successfully built for so long, ably assisted by the Lionesses — it turns out watching football is more fun if your side might actually win. And, it has to be said, if you can watch it from the comfort of your own sofa rather than in a pub with bad drinks, bad toilets and bad lads. No YOU’RE middle aged.

Anyway, all of this is a very long preamble to say that when I received an email from GFP Karen inviting me to a football match, she was, to a certain extent, pushing at an open door. I mean, not a wide open door, but, you know. It was ajar. Plus, her email was very complimentary about my Taylor Swift essay and I’m a sucker for compliments about my Tay-Tay analysis.

Karen is Special Projects Lead at Lewes FC which in 2017, she wrote, became the first professional or semi-professional football club to pay its women’s team the same as its men’s team and to give them equal resources. Obviously this got my attention, and so it was that I found myself down near the South coast on a delightfully sunny day in August, about to watch my first live women’s football match (naturally the AB had already dragged me to a Fulham men’s match — they lost, it was rubbish).

And…it was actually really lovely! The crowd wasn’t huge as it was a pre-season friendly, but I can confirm there were far more women there than at the Fulham match I went to, and there were also more dogs, since the Dripping Pan (the home of Lewes FC) is dog-friendly!

Poppy approved.

Sadly, Lewes lost on this occasion, but I put that down to the Curse of CCP because they literally have won every match since 😅.

As well as being the first club to equalise pay and resources between their male and female teams Lewes FC (or, as they call themselves, The Rooks) are also fully fan-owned (anyone can become an owner) and have a strong ethos of giving back to their community. One of their male team members set up what is now a thriving community garden (Player of the Match gets whatever is in season); they don’t take sponsorship from gambling companies; they have designated breastfeeding stations (no need to feed in the toilets at the Dripping Pan) they have a pretty amazing enormous statue of a couple of lesbian pirates overlooking their new fancy pitch — they won a grant from the Premier League Stadium Fund to install the pitch thanks to their pioneering work on pushing women’s football forward. And of course the new pitch benefited the men’s team too. It’s almost like, with equality everyone wins?

The whole team also benefited in other ways from the 2017 decision to focus on equality. “Since making this move,” their website explains, “our attendances have increased, Owner numbers have increased, sponsorships have increased and media coverage has sky-rocketed. Turns out that ‘different’ works. And this kind of different will work in other clubs and other industries. That’s the power of equality.”

They now have some big celebrity supporters, including Kate Nash, who wrote an anthem to support the team’s See Us As We Are campaign (of which more later) and the one and only Judy Murray, who became an owner in 2021. And of course, the inimitable CCP, who became an owner in 2024, yes ladies and gentlemen, you could say I…took the Rooks pill SHUT UP THAT’S AN AMAZING PUN.

And you can too! And you should, because let’s face it, we need to dilute the CCP curse. Plus, Lewes FC needs our help! They were relegated last season, which means a big cut in their budget — for both the women and the men’s teams, since the women’s team were bringing in more money. They’ve lost the ability to fund the junior teams that acted as a pathway into professional football for local girls and the development team that fed their top team with emerging talent. And, unlike a team like Manchester United (who have long been criticised for how they treat their women’s team which until this year included the national treasure that is Mary Earps) the Rooks cannot rely on their men’s team to fill in the funding gaps.

More money will also, says Karen, help to drive the club’s “See Us As We Are” campaign. “Women footballers are not small versions of men,” Karen told me, very much preaching to this choir of one.

And that is what the See Us As We Are campaign is fighting for. Female footballers, says Karen, “need period tracking, dark shorts to play in, extra confidence coaching (having been told they can't play since they were tiny), [and] properly fitting boots (otherwise they are prone to injury because of the angle from knee to hip).” They need “physiological and nutrition support and training regimes based on women’s bodies, not data from the men’s game,” and they need marketing and a good pitch.

Well, the Rooks’ commitment to equality has already won them the pitch…maybe us GFPs can help them to achieve the rest?

Poppy pic of the week

Poor poor darling Poppy has had to have a growth taken off her paw this week and so, well see for yourself…

💔💔💔 THAT FACE 😭

Until next time, my dear GFPs…xoxoxo