It happened for the first time at a children’s football tournament. Wendy Topham watched as her daughter Flo scored a hat-trick in the final. Abruptly, a mother on the other touchline marched across the pitch and demanded the referee stop the game. Pointing at Flo, she shouted: “It’s not fair! They’ve got a boy in the team!”
“It was really awful,” recounts Wendy. “Flo had never really experienced anything like before. She went to a little primary school, has always dressed like a boy and has short hair, and she was just Flo. The girls were all looking across and looking worried. We felt quite annoyed that it was almost like saying, ‘It must be a boy, because girls aren’t that good at football.”
Flo, a striker for York Railway Institute AFC’s under-12s team, and company went on to win that game but her team-mates and parents were shaken. In the car on the way home, Wendy emphasised to Flo that she had done nothing wrong and cleaved to the hope it was a one-off.
But it happened again and again, not only to Flo (pictured top, facing towards camera on the left), but her team-mate Cami (pictured top, facing towards camera on the right), in various leagues, cups and tournaments. One opposition coach stopped the game and demanded to see players’ registration sheets while several members of the team broke down in tears as the opposition whispered among themselves.
That lit the touchpaper on what had hitherto been a long-standing joke between Wendy and Cami’s mother Aimee Little: ‘Time to get the T-shirts printed!’
The pair paid for the squad to have blue warm-up T-shirts with a statement printed on the back: “Girls can have short hair. Get over it.”
Word spread. There have been national television and radio appearances, and press interest from around the world. Wendy received a message from a woman in America “who sent pictures of her when she was growing up with short hair and saying how much she supports the girls.”
Flo, in her mother’s words, “just wants to play football and be herself” and doesn’t like attention, but understands the campaign’s significance and has found her confidence boosted significantly after football became a source of anxiety. At one point, Flo had resolved to grow her hair longer because of the confrontations.
(Courtesy of York RI AFC)
“There’s actually been a few matches that she’s not gone to because she said, ‘I’ve not played this team before. They might think I’m a boy’,” says Wendy. “She just didn’t want to deal with it. There’s been quite a few mornings when we were going to play football and at the last minute she’s had a massive meltdown. I’ve been in tears a few times.
“People often aren’t being unkind if they’re just asking. It’s when they’ve said (Flo and her team-mates), ‘Actually, I’m a girl,’ and it carries on. That’s what Flo finds upsetting.
“She’s quite resilient and knows people mistake her for a boy, it’s been like that all her life, but every time we go to a match or tournament, those emotions and anxiety come up again. She worries about going to the toilet in other clubhouses — ‘You’re in the wrong toilet! Get out!’ She sees how it affects not only the girls in the team, but the grown-ups, as well.”
The campaign has gathered traction online in part because so many girls’ teams have endured similar experiences. It raises many issues, chief among them self-expression, acceptance and what parents are inadvertently teaching their children in the often combustible climate of kids’ football.
The side’s assistant coach Adam Cooper is a headteacher by day and therefore used to difficult conversations, but has noticed differences between parents at school matches and sports days and those on the sidelines at weekends.
At school, he can “simply say to people, ‘Boys can have long hair and girls can have short hair. They are girls’. Usually, people take it at face value.” Under-12s football, he says, is more a full-on and aggressive environment. “Clearly, the competitive thing then pushes it over the edge,” he says. “Rather than an observation, it’s an accusation.”
He notes the irony of parents speaking out in the belief they are protecting girls’ football when they’re actually policing what the kids playing it look like. “This isn’t meant to be about one team and one event, but the general prejudices and stereotyping that just needs to move on,” he says.
Just as striking is the assumption that the talented players in these matches must be boys. “I’ve been involved in girls’ football for 25 years and I was running girls’ teams in the 2000s,” Adam continues. “That aspect hasn’t moved on at all. That is a real shock.”
Though Flo did start growing her hair out, within a fortnight she asked her mother if they could get it cut short again. The team have joked about all doing the same in solidarity. They have protocols in place, now, should trouble arise: walk off in solidarity. And, of course, wear those T-shirts.
“I think other teams quietly appreciate the T-shirts, and I think that forewarning and making the point early on can then just take away it being an issue,” says Adam. “All teams can see it and all teams can feel supported.”
“It’s high emotion and not thinking about how words can be hurtful,” adds Wendy. “It’s just kids playing football.”
GO DEEPER
Sexism, abuse and harassment: The experience of female fans at matches
(Top photo courtesy of York RI AFC)
