Normal. Because shaking what your mama gave you and coming thisclose to showing the world your boobies in a magazine is normal. Kicking black and white balls down the pitch in the World Cup is not. Did you catch that ladies?
If only the whole team of girls running around the soccer field back in high school had known what a bunch of freaks they were for getting a good workout in front of us. I'm willing to bet they'd have kicked the German national team in the shins. Hard.
It's those type of girls I tend to think of whenever female sports stars strut their stuff for Playboy or similar venues. Is this really the message these women want to send to their young fans? An unfair burden for some women who do have as much sex appeal as they do talent, perhaps. But consider these women were once teens themselves, girls who excelled at sports and struggled to be considered as "normal" as the classmates who spent the same time after school painting their faces and flirting that they spent running passing drills.
The "normal" comment itself comes from Kristina Gessat, one of five teammates who showed up in the magazine feature. In an interview that accompanied photos of the scantily clad footballers playing in white t-shirts in the water, rubbing each other's naked thighs, and so on, Gessat said: "The message is, look, we are normal -- and lovely -- girls."
I give them credit for keeping their clothes on at all. But the phraseology is a slap in the face. Posing in photos that are all about your sex appeal rather than your talent as soccer players because it shows you're "normal" is like writing a letter to your teenage self and saying, "By the way, you really do suck." And these women just wrote that letter to thousands of girls who just want to play soccer. If posing forPlayboy is what makes them "normal," what does playing in the World Cup make them? Freaks with sex appeal?