Alex Morgan can simply rattle off the colours of the headbands worn by her United States teammates.
She wears pink, as does Rose Lavelle. Sophia Smith likes black. Julie Ertz prefers a shade nearer to Tiffany blue. Lindsey Horan wears pink, principally as a result of Morgan doesn’t.
“One of the first times I wore pink, someone said I’m trying to copy Alex Morgan,” Horan stated.
Morgan laughed. “I never knew that,” she stated.
Soccer’s favourite headband, although, isn’t a scarf in any respect. The sheer coloured strips conserving among the world’s greatest athletes’ hair in place is definitely what is named pre-wrap — a skinny, stretchy medical gauze meant to be wrapped round injured knees or ankles earlier than they’re taped, partly to guard the pores and skin.
And whereas each women and men way back co-opted the athletic dressing for a extra distinguished objective of their hair, Morgan and different girls’s soccer gamers have turned pre-wrap into an emblem of ladies’s sports activities — and soccer specifically — to accent their crew kits and categorical individuality on the sphere.
“There is a kind of unique, almost strategic use of pre-wrap in women’s soccer,” stated Rachel Allison, a sociology professor at Mississippi State who has studied how the game has marketed itself. “Obviously, wearing the headband can be functional in terms of holding your hair back while you’re playing the sport, but I think it’s become far more than that.”
Morgan, for instance, started sporting pink pre-wrap in order that her mother and father may decide her out in a sea of ponytails on the soccer area, and later selected the colour to honor her mother-in-law, who’s a breast most cancers survivor. Morgan is now even sponsored by one of many main producers of pre-wrap, Mueller Sports Medicine.
“These are forms of individual self expression, but they’re also really important to how we’re marketing women’s sport,” Allison stated. “They become part of the storytelling that we do around who these women are, not only as players, but also people in ways that help to connect to the audience.”
The pre-wrap options prominently within the branding of the gamers, together with how they’re portrayed in varied merchandise. Before the event, goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher shared an image of a figurine clipped to her bag that depicted Becky Sauerbrunn, the defender and former captain of the U.S. crew who’s out of the World Cup with a foot damage, full with a pink strip throughout her brow.
Brett Mueller, the chief government of Mueller Sports Medicine, stated the corporate initially started producing pre-wrap within the Seventies to be used within the N.F.L. and N.B.A., however it turned well-liked as a hair accent for girls and ladies after referees stated they couldn’t put on onerous plastic barrettes or clips due to damage dangers. Quickly, he stated, his firm needed to increase its shade choices from the unique tan, first to well-liked faculty colours after which to a brighter, wider vary — together with pink.
“It’s exciting that these athletes — and our team is so good, too — are using our product,” Mueller stated, including: “But we didn’t design it for that.”
Allison stated that when she performed faculty soccer at Grinnell College in Iowa, the place she graduated in 2007, a few her teammates wore the gauzy headbands. Many extra individuals do now, she stated.
“It’s not uncommon to see other people, especially girls or young women, wearing pre-wrap when they’re in the stands watching,” Allison stated. “It’s a way for them to symbolize their fandom.”
There are two camps of pre-wrap headbands: those that roll it into skinny, tubular strands that rise up barely on their heads, like Morgan and Horan, and people who unfold it flat on high of their hair, like Smith and Ertz. The technique issues — midfielder Rose Lavelle wears pink pre-wrap, however as a member of Team Flat, she’s protected from comparisons to Morgan.
And whereas it’s most evident within the gamers’ hair, Morgan stated the crew additionally makes use of pre-wrap for its initially meant objective: beneath their shin guards and in addition to tape up ankles.
“Pre-wrap is everywhere,” Morgan stated. “You look in the bins, and it’s endless pre-wrap.”
Source: www.nytimes.com