Justice

The Reactions to This Badass Female Soccer-Pro Posing as a Man Are Priceless

November 9th 2015

By:
Laura Donovan

Spanish soccer star Brenda Perez just lived out the plot of the beloved 2006 comedy "She's the Man," disguising herself as a man and exposing the reality of sexism that exists in sports.

Brenda Perez posed as a male soccer player.

Like Amanda Bynes' character Viola in "She's the Man," Perez underwent an extensive makeover to play soccer as a man to fight sexist stereotypes against female soccer players. After assuming the physical appearance of a man, she pretended to be a guy named "Dani" Perez in an amateur league match. She fared well against the men in the game prior to shedding her costume on the field, much to the shock of the male soccer players and onlookers nearby.

"It was an unforgettable experience," Perez said, according to the Daily Mail. "A couple of players were looking at me a bit strangely and I overheard one making the comment: 'His beard’s coming off, what’s wrong with him' but apart from that it went well."

"Women’s football doesn’t have any presence alongside men’s football which receives all the media attention," Jordi Molto, script writer for the show "El Hormiguero" said in an interview, according to the Daily Mail. "Some people might say women haven’t got the same physical capacity or the same strength but this shows the technique can be the same and women and men with a ball at their feet can put on the same spectacle."

The significance of the plot of "She's the Man"

"She's the Man" Facebook page - facebook.com

"She's the Man" is a comedy movie inspired by Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" about a female soccer player named Viola (Bynes) who poses as her twin brother Sebastian to play soccer after the women's soccer team is cut. Viola faces immense sexism when she initially asks to play with the dudes, so she takes matters into her own hands by assuming the role of her twin. In another feminist move, Viola dumps her boyfriend when he publicly doubts her ability to compete with men after privately saying she's better than his male soccer teammates.