goodmenproject:
Xavi doesn’t look like your traditional athlete, Elliot Turner writes, but that doesn’t make him any less of one. Sounds familiar, no?
This piece is part of a special series on the End of Gender. This series includes bloggers from Role/Reboot, Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, Salon, HyperVocal, Ms. Magazine, YourTango, Psychology Today, Princess Free Zone, The Next Great Generation, and Man-Making.
Sometimes you only need one glance to recognize genius. In the painting, a landscape will surround you. In writing, a sentence jumps off the page. Sport is no different, yet the physical component clouds the view. Yes, sport requires athleticism. But our own societal prejudices—classifying a gender’s physical trait as desirable or discard-able—also cast a fog over our own eyes. Broad shoulders, bulging biceps, thunder thighs, Xavi Hernandez has none of these. He would never be confused with Mark McGuire or another juiced-up home-run hitter from baseball’s Steroid Era. He’s just the essential soccer player to Spain’s dominance of Europe and the World.
