IT WASN’T SUPPOSED to be like this.
Last October, Game Changers: The Unsung Heroines of Sports History was released by Molly Schiot, an American filmmaker based in Los Angeles.
Game Changers has a simple message. Her inscription reads: “This book is dedicated to all the women who were forever told no.”
The heavily-researched book is about shattering the glass ceilings and giving women in sport a place. A tribute to the brave heroines who dared to be first.
How did it all come about?
A few years ago, Schiot was invited to send in documentary ideas for ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 series. She’d already directed the popular 30 for 30 short, Our Tough Guy, for the network, which was about Boston Bruins enforcer John Wensink.
But, despite her previous success, her pitches about female athletes were repeatedly rejected.
Increasingly frustrated, she set-up the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, “as a personal protest,” posting a daily image of an inspiring sportswoman.
She did her research in the ’84 Library’, a huge sports library built in L.A.’s West Adams district after the 1984 Olympics were held in the city.
The account grew quickly (at the time of writing it has 26,600 followers) as she shed a light on the women who paved the way for modern female sporting icons like Serena Williams and Simone Biles.
It vividly accounts famous female path-breakers like Ronda Rousey’s mother AnnMaria De Mars, who took home a gold medal in the World Judo Championship, and Wilma Rudolph, who won three Olympic gold medals at the 1960 Rome Olympics, despite having Polio as a four-year-old and wearing leg braces until she was nine.
But it also features lesser-known women like Conchita Cintrón, who began bullfighting at 13 and went on to defy Spanish laws and enjoy a legendary career in a male-dominated sport.
Or like Emma Gatewood, who survived over 30 years of vicious domestic abuse from her husband before becoming the first woman to hike the entire 2,050 miles of the Appalachian Trail. She did so by herself in 1955 aged 67.
A book contract soon followed.
“This book isn’t some crazy original idea, it’s just a book about women’s sports,” Schiot tells The42. “When you think about women’s stories, they’ve always been there.
“They’ve always existed, but there’s a problem if only men’s stories are being told. As it shows, not only young girls, but also young boys, that there’s some partial tendency to tell men’s stories and not women’s stories. That’s pretty messed up.”
“When it came out it did really well,” she continues. “It was received in a really positive, exciting way.
“Then, as I’m sure you are aware of, there’s been an election over here that has pretty much steamrolled everything.”
A matter of weeks after the book’s release, on November 8, minorities in America woke up to a frightening new reality.
Donald Trump was president. Everything changed.
“On November 9th we woke up and it was 1964. That’s the running joke everywhere.
“I wasn’t ever expecting him to be president, but the beginning of the book is about shattering the glass ceilings and women finally having this space.
“I just assumed, along with the rest of the people that lived on the east and west coast, which is our insular bubble, that we would have a woman in a place of power.
“(Instead) you have someone coming into the White House that is an asshole. Who doesn’t treat women with respect and who is such a jerk. The way he talks about women and the way he makes fun of people that are disabled.
“The way he has divided our country is so toxic. He’s at the helm and his wife isn’t even moving into the White House. She’s staying in Trump Tower in this billion dollar building in New York City. It’s so backwards.”
The United States almost had its first female President, but instead they elected an alleged sexual predator into the Oval Office. This is a man who has been accused of sexual assault by 15 women.
A man who has promised to sue each of those women during his first 100 days as president. The new leader of the free world.
“It makes you feel like you are sinking in quick sand,” Schiot says. “We’ve been so blessed in the last eight years to have a woman as the First Lady, who is talking about normalizing women’s bodies, getting boys and girls that are overweight to go and exercise and putting gardens in schools.
“She’s doing things that create a positive and better world where people are accepted for the colour of their skin. Michelle Obama has extended this hand that I feel a lot of people feel they can reach out and be pulled up by her.”
Aside from the misogynistic side to his personality, Trump’s bag of horrors extends to racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and xenophobia.
“I think there were so many factors as far as how he got in. As far as the media, I think the people I surround myself with are mostly in California and New York. We’ve learned that we live in a bubble. Our bubble is: When I walk to the coffee shop there’s someone that’s talking about how Donald Trump is a total asshole.”
“When I go to the car mechanic, he is talking about how Trump is a step away from Satin. When I got to the grocery store, there are people selling self-screening t-shirts that are really bad portrayals of him.
“So there’s not a moment in my day-to-day up until the election where I was aware that the other side was really full-on going to get this man elected. I think that bubble is the bubble that I live in and it’s the bubble that I read, whether it’s the New York Times or the Huffington Post.
“Our country is so divided and in that middle ground, they call it the rest belt, and in a lot of places in the United States people are tired of their lifestyles and they want a change. They think Donald Trump is the way to have that happen and the most obvious glaring thing is that at the end of the day people in the United States are really, really racist.
“There’s been a thousand swastikas that have been reported, there’s Muslims that are being beaten up and killed, there’s hate crimes that are skyrocketing through the roof. He’s pulling these people out of these caves that are just super, super scary.”
Trump’s America will soon become a place where’s it’s okay to see huge swathes of the American population, including women, as second-class citizens.
In a country experiencing talk of Muslin internment camps, witnessing cost analysis of border wall with Mexico and holding discussions on CNN called ’Are Jews People,’ some are speaking out.
Sport and television no longer live in an insular world. San Franciscio 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick continues to protest against oppression of black people by kneeling during the American national anthem, while San Antonio Spurs head coach Greg Popovich recently divulged his horror at the election results.
“It leaves me to wonder where I’ve been living and with whom I’m living,” he told reporters last month.
“I’m a rich, white guy,” he said. “And I’m sick to my stomach thinking about it. I couldn’t imagine being a Muslim right now, or a woman, or an African-American, a Hispanic, a handicapped person, and how disenfranchised they might feel.
“And for anyone in those groups that voted for him, it’s just beyond my comprehension how they ignored all that.”
It’s a scary time for many people, but that’s why Schiot’s book now means so much more. She has noticed a curious shift in attitudes since Trump’s election. Game Changers will be turned into a documentary series in 2017, something that might be a direct result of the backlash against the president-elect.
With a tangible and highly successful book at her disposal, Schiot is shopping around and taking meetings with high ranking executives from various production companies.
“You know, I think everyone that I’ve sat with – and these are people that are really powerful and create content that’s seen everywhere – there’s not one of them that is accepting the fact that he’s our president.
“All these people I’m meeting with, that are high-profile executives, are really almost in pain with the fact that this is the person that’s representing our country. It’s a ‘we need this more than ever’ sort of thing, because I know that young girls especially that have watched him talking about ‘grabbing women’s pussies.’
“Those family members are really worried about their daughters, that that’s the type of person that’s normalizing culture like that. I know that a lot of these people that are creating this content and are at these companies have kids. And they don’t want their kids to be raised in a place that feels unsafe.”
Schiot, who played ice hockey, soccer and lacrosse in high school, now stands on the verge of telling these women’s stories in mainstream media. It’s an exciting time for the 36-year-old.
“There’s about six stories in the book that I think are really compelling and powerful. That aren’t just about sport but are about race and culture and politics and can tug at anyone’s heartstrings.
“I hope in the first few weeks of January to find a home, that’s what I’m shopping around for right now. I’m just figuring out a home for this show to be born and raised and to grow in.
“For these past two weeks I had meetings and met with some really great networks and production companies and now I’m just trying to figure out which one makes the most sense.”
Amid the impending doom of a Trump presidency, it’s refreshing to know there are still people out there like Molly Schiot. In a time of sexism, swastika graffiti and resurgent white nationalism, she continues to give courage to the minorities.
“After the big punch in the gut that this is what we have to deal with,” she continues, “I think that people are now looking to the book as a way of feeling hopeful. Especially because it’s the holidays.
“A lot of people have started to reach out to me and say, ‘thank you so much for this. This is my favourite gift idea.’
“And a lot of dads are reading it to their sons, which I never expected. So I think that’s pretty cool.”
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