Lotte Wubben-Moy

North Carolina · connectedBorn 1999

English association football player (born 1999)

Studied at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

association football player

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

People don’t realise how much football can do beyond on the pitch.

Having females and people of multi ethnic and minority groups in higher-up positions will give young people the hope that they can reach the top too.

I want people to see that women are capable and accepted. I want to see people like me in powerful positions to know they’re looking out for women like me too.

Well, if I had campaigns and images like these as a young girl, my journey might have been somewhat different, and I’d have felt more empowered to simply be myself.

I think one of the most frightening statistics is that one in three women don’t want to participate in sports because of how their skin looks. When you’re faced with that statistical reality, it would make you want to be a part of anything that can help change that.

Everything today is so visual and forced upon us – girls and women especially – that we feel as if we have to accept and apply a standardised version of what’s ‘beautiful’.

It’s important that they feel like they can be who they’d like to be and move how they’d like to move.

Yeah, I think there are a lot of tangible barriers that you see regarding women’s sport, especially football. But, I feel what’s often overlooked are the intangible ones; the societal barriers that have been plaguing us for years for example.

We’re often told to be quiet or be careful, which as a way of growing up, I find to be quite unhealthy. So, already being able to talk about your skin with other people allows you to celebrate it, as you’re all in the same boat. That’s really important to me.

As athletes, too, you’re prone to thinking about your physical appearance because of how much you’re in the public eye. You question whether you should post one picture instead of another because of how you might look, and those pressures come from wider societal perceptions and expectations of how women should look.