Megan Rapinoe - One Life

PENGUIN PRESS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright 2020 by Megan Rapinoe

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All photographs from the authors collection.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION CONTROL NUMBER: 2020942559 (PRINT)

ISBN 9781984881168 (HARDCOVER)

ISBN 9781984881175 (EBOOK)

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Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

I want to start by saying something about the purpose of this book. A frequent criticism of people who have a lot of media attention is that theyre using the spotlight to leverage themselves and hijack the moment. You become famous and you run with it. You make a commercial, you put out a perfume, you cash in with a book or reality show. I am totally cashing in to capitalize on the moment. Im just doing it for what I hope are reasons that arent exclusively seedy. In the pages that follow, you will read about my childhood in Northern California; my twin sister, Rachael; my hilarious mom and wacky dad; as well as my highs and lows with the US womens national soccer team. But while I have your attention, I also want to discuss issues that are important to me and have nothing to do with sports or my family.

As a child, I was small for my age. I was shy and let my sister speak for me. I didnt always fit in. And while I was a natural athlete from the get-goRachael and I could both do double Dutch in kindergartenfor a while, I wasnt totally sure of myself. Not until I was eighteen and in college did I even realize I was gay, for gods sake, something that, given how completely obvious it was in hindsight, Im still pissed at my family for not pointing out sooner.

Like almost everyone in my hometown, my family was socially and politically conservative, although we werent an overtly political household. The lessons I learned growing up had to do with standing up to bullies and doing the right thing, part of which, my parents said, meant acknowledging how lucky we were. There were lots of kids in our family and we didnt have much money, but we grew up in a safe, loving environment where all our needs were met. On top of that, my twin and I were cute, good at sports, and popular at school. We had it incredibly easy.

We were also white. This might seem like stating the obvious, but I honestly think many white people dont realize they are wandering around with a four-hundred-year baked-in advantage. I know I didnt. After college, I could talk about environmental and womens rights, and as I got older I spoke more about LGBTQ rights and pay equity. But it took me longer to piece together an understanding of how power and politics work beneath the surface and beyond my immediate experience. The very fact that Im addressing you now, in a book I received lots of money for and began writing at the end of a year when I won every possible award, isnt simply because Im a good soccer player or, as athletes love to say, because I worked really hard. (You know who else works hard? Everyone.)

The platform Ive been given is a result of other aspects of my life, including the way I look, what I represent, and the associations that come with the sport I play. A small, white, female soccer playereven a lesbian one with a loud voice and pink hairlands differently in the press than, say, a six-foot-four-inch black football player with an Afro.

It took me a while to get here. Speaking up can be embarrassing. Walking into a room to ask for more money can be super awkward, as can calling people out for being racist. People get angry. They get angry even when you dont say anything to them personally. Its amazing to see what makes people go off, particularly when a woman is doing the speaking. As a professional female athlete I cantor Im not supposed tocurse in public, talk too much about politics, wild out after winning, suggest I might be really good at what I do, or admit to being interested in money. Men play sports because they love it and want to get rich; women are there for the purity of the game.

Im not supposed to squander my celebrity, either. Judging by my fellow athletes, the rule of thumb is that once you have wealth and fame, you must do everything you can to hang on to them. Ive made a lot of mistakes in the past four years. Im not exactly a forward thinker. I didnt map out what might happen if I took various political stands, like the tanking of my business or strangers from Florida calling my parents to ask them where they went wrong with me.

But I have always understood that once you have a tiny bit of power, space, or control, you should do everything you can to share it. I dont think you need a big platform to do this. It can be as simple as pushing back against a bigoted remark when you dont belong to the group being targeted. It can be taking time to think about Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and countless others, and to consider why, when I say those names in public, I continue to be invited to the party when others dont. Sometimes, what Ive said or done has caused a big fuss. But given the breaks Ive had, speaking out seems like the least I can fucking do.

And heres the thing: the more you stand up for others, the easier it is to stand up for yourself. I love playing soccer. Its the only job Ive ever had. I want to play and I want to win, but given the amount my team and I do wingiven, as the US Soccer Federation likes to put it, the market realitiesI also want to buy a gold Rolex and I dont think its outrageous to say that. Equally, I dont think its outrageous to say that while Im grateful for my talent and other accidents of birth, Im not grateful to the people making money from me and my teammates. I think they should be grateful to us .

In 2019, after my team won the World Cup for the second time, we played a bunch of exhibition games around the country. It was a victory lap of sorts, but I got a bigger kick out of another tour I went on that year, talking to people at companies, charities, schools, and colleges, and on panels with other feminists and social justice campaigners. I talked about paying men and women equally, and about calling out sexism, racism, and homophobia. I talked about the perceived risks of activism and also the joys, the fact that caring is cool and lowering the ladder can raise your own game. In soccer, scoring a goal and hearing fifty thousand people scream your name is awesome, but I take a lot of pride in my assists, too; setting someone else up to scorebeing the opportunity makeris just as important, if not more.

Im not the best soccer player in the world. Im pretty high up there, but thats where my expertise ends. Beyond that, I dont know anything that anyone else doesnt know and Im not doing anything that others cant do. We all have the same resource, our one precious life, made up of the decisions we make every day. Here, Im telling the story of how I made my decisions, from the choice I made when I kicked that first ball to the one I made in 2016 that risked bringing my career crashing down. In telling it, I hope Im also asking a question: What are you going to do?