A Black Fly in White Milk: The 1999 Women’s World Cup, Briana Scurry, and the Politics of Inclusion

Abstract

Abstract Briana Scurry’s world-class save in the penalty shootout of the 1999 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Women’s World Cup provided the opportunity for the U.S. women’s national team to win their second World Cup championship. However, Scurry’s exceptional athletic feat was scarcely noted, as media outlets were more inclined to select images of Brandi Chastain’s emotional celebration. Situated in a particular historical neoliberal context characterized by postfeminist and postracial politics, Scurry’s mediated representation served to market this team to a global audience. I use a critical and oppositional reading of major U.S. sport magazines, daily U.S. national newspapers, and Nike advertisements to uncover and foreground decentered and obscured narratives. This analysis reveals the selective and strategic ways Scurry’s blackness and femininity were made to matter (and not matter) in order for a neoliberal, white, middle-class America to appear as an open, inclusive, and color-blind society while limiting Scurry to a precarious and restricted space within this American imaginary.

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