WNBA star Sue Bird, girlfriend of U.S. Women’s Soccer star Megan Rapinoe, recently took a swipe at soccer saying it is “generally” made up of “cute little white girls.”
Bird, a four-time Olympic Gold Medalist who recently captured her fourth women’s basketball championship with the Seattle Storm, dismissed soccer as the lesser sport compared to basketball, according to an interview she gave to CNN.
“Even though we’re female athletes playing at a high level, our worlds, you know, the soccer world and the basketball world are just totally different,” the 40-year-old star told CNN last week.
Indeed, Bird even went to pains to note that soccer only seems to appeal to one sort of woman: “cute little white girls.”
“And to be blunt,” she added, “it’s the demographic of who’s playing. Women’s soccer players generally are cute little White girls while WNBA players, we are all shapes and sizes … a lot of Black, gay, tall women … there is maybe an intimidation factor and people are quick to judge it and put it down.”
Rapinoe seemed to agree, obliquely, anyway. In a recent interview with The Players Tribune, Rapinoe slammed America for being “deeply” racist and homophobic for giving her sport more notice than it gives women’s basketball because the WNBA is mostly “Black, and a lot of them are gay.”
In her comments to CNN, Bird agreed with Rapinoe and said that America does not pay attention to the WNBA because the league is not filled with players who look like the “cute White girl next door.”
Bird also dismissed any complaints that the WNBA has become too political. Indeed, she claimed that if the league expects its players “to show up,” it better let them push for hard-core, left-wing causes.
“We wanted it to be more than just basketball and I feel that our league really accomplished that. There’s been a lot of highs and a lot of lows throughout it all,” she said.
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