#kitgirlsummer: a hashtag that gave me life
Probably like most of you (all of you?), last summer was unlike any I’ve ever lived through. As a person who is very social and may secretly be a mermaid, emotionally and mentally the pandemic hit hard. I was teaching online and being overly cautious, but was definitely missing my daily swims and socializing. One of the silver linings was when fútbol came back. Ironically, during a pandemic, I found a community I would have never otherwise connected with if I weren’t spending so much time on Twitter because...again...pandemic. When #MLSisBack started, my new friends and I started to get together nightly on Zoom to watch the games together. This gave me a reason to connect with all my fútbol kits again. At the same time, I was teaching a summer English class, and decided to wear a different kit every day while I taught as a way to have something to look forward to and get excited about, and it gave us something to talk about daily within real life context and practice conversational skills with the students.
As a professor, I usually wear kits to proctor finals, on days where the students have presentations, or days that are more chill. It’s a great way to connect with students. I used to have #FútbolFridays every Friday and I would wear a kit and do a lesson related to fútbol and culture in some way, and the students were encouraged to wear their kits as well. We would banter about different teams and the students would even write about it in their assignments and it was always such a great time. It got rave reviews at end of semester evaluations. While I am no longer doing it so institutionally, my kits are still a great way to “dress down” while showing off one of my passions.
So, it all started very organically. I have a TON of kits. More than I can count. Ironically before this summer, I never wore them as much as I started to during that time. One day, when I was being silly playing with hashtags as I am wont to do, I was thinking about how I wasn’t seeing as many #HotGirlSummer posts as I normally do. People were obviously being responsible and I was very glad for that, there wasn’t anywhere to really go and promote Hot Girl Summer. On this particular day, I had taken a series of selfies and as I was thinking about this hashtag I got an idea. Change out “hot” for “kit.” Boom. A movement was born. Kit Girl Summer. There was a clear void and a need for this very niche idea, as people began to connect immediately.
Borussia Mönchengladbach 19/20 Away
Manchester United 18/19 Home
I did not think it would pick up any steam, most of my tweets felt like I was screaming into a void (this is NOT a complaint...sometimes that is exactly what I need!). Earlier in the pandemic one of my threads went probably the closest to viral I will ever get (fascism in fútbol) and my followers doubled after that. Since then my “echo chamber” became more fútbol focused, and people started interacting and looking forward to the #kitgirlsummer posts. They would ask questions about kits, and some started participating. It became a thing I and others started to look forward to: what’s the next kit gonna be? And my kits were seeing the light of day more than they ever had. Some people ask me if I’m a collector. I don’t consider myself one, as all of the kits I have are due to a personal connection of some sort. I’m going to delve into some of my favorites.
2016 Argentina Classic
2014 Argentina Training
2014 Uruguay Classic
I was born in Argentina and grew up in Uruguay. During the US CIA ordered and backed fascist repressive military dictatorship that affected most countries in South America, my parents had to exile and did so in Argentina, where the repression had ended before it had in Uruguay. I was born in exile in a nation that had just been through the same thing as the one my parents came from. This event shaped me. These are the two nations I root for in every international tournament they’re in. And the question I get asked the most is “who do you root for when they play each other?” My answer is it depends, and also it’s a win-win situation. Sometimes I feel more Uruguayan, sometimes I root more for Argentina. The fact that Uruguay hosted and won the very first World Cup ever, and that between them and Argentina I have six World Cup Stars on my jerseys has turned me into a bit of a fútbol snob, and I make no apologies for that. Uruguay has won the most FIFA sanctioned, official international tournaments in the history of the world, and the greatest player in the world currently is Argentinian, Lionel Messi, and historically the best player is also Argentinian, Diego Maradona. I just can’t help that I happen to be from two of the best footballing nations in the world. When they do play each other, which is often, I don’t suffer too much over the result but I tend to root for the country that is more of an “underdog” at the moment. Depending on the tournament or if it’s qualifiers, whomever is lower on points or on the table, I tend to secretly root for a little bit more.
Back to #kitgirlsummer. The kit that started it all, unbeknownst to me at the time, was my St. Pauli kit. It was May, it was finals, we had switched to online teaching with zero warning or training, and were expected to maintain business as usual. I was exhausted. At the end of that day, I took a selfie, posted it, and reflected. Normally we wear kits to games, on game days, in situations where we will see people. However, now, we were on lockdown. I wasn’t going to see anyone outside of Zoom. So I figured I would make #KitGirlSummer a “thing,” subconsciously at that time, and then I decided to wear more kits more often. St. Pauli is important to me because they are inherently anti fascist, anti racist, anti homophobia, and these values greatly align with mine. Yes, they’ve become a hipster team, but these values have inherently been in my blood since before birth. My parents were persecuted and exiled during the brutal Operation Condor. My family members escaped the civil war in Spain and that’s how my family is Uruguayan. These values aren’t just a fad for me, they’re part of my entire being. St. Pauli is a team that is admired by anti-fascists all over the world, so my St. Pauli kit is one of my favorites to wear, if not for aesthetic reasons (I am not the biggest fan of brown…) definitely for ideological reasons. And as we know, fútbol is incredibly inherently political.
2019 Peñarol Classic
19/20 St. Pauli
Just like these values, my love of fútbol was also passed down since before birth. A team I did not get to choose or walk into was Barcelona, I was born a fan of this team. Historically and traditionally, Barcelona represents resistance and anti fascism as a city and as a club. So a club I have several kits of is Barcelona. It’s one of the clubs that breaks my heart the most when they lose and makes me the happiest when they thrive. I feel a connection to this club that I don’t feel with some of the clubs that came later. Peñarol (Uruguay) is my first love. My grandma and my mom are peñarol fans. It was passed down. It’s a club that is difficult to love at times, as they are one of the two big clubs in Uruguay, where there’s corruption in AUF management and they don’t do things well. But like Guillermo Francella’s character Sandoval said in “El secreto de sus ojos,” (2009, Argentina) one of the best movies of all time, referring to fútbol: “una pasión es una pasión.” (“a passion is a passion”). RBNY is another team I didn’t “choose,” the MetroStars chose me when they arrived to New Jersey in 1996. One of my favorite kits of all time is the original black and white zig zag metro stars jersey, which unfortunately my family got rid of at some point unbeknownst to me, and I will forever be in search of a replacement. When they sold out to RedBull, I boycotted them for a while, but my love for live fútbol won out and I came back. I remain a fan, although cautiously and forever critically. MLS and RBNY are like a little sibling. We can talk bad about them as fans and criticize them, but outsiders cannot. Manchester United and Borussia Mönchengladbach are more recent teams I’ve added to my fandom and who’s kits I love to wear. For the record, another team I love and was born into was Boca Juniors who unfortunately did not make it into this summer’s thread.
16/17 Barcelona Home
2010 RedBull New York Home
18/19 Barcelona Third
So here’s to #kitgirlsummer (See whole thread here!) While it seems silly and superficial, the fact that I got to share a passion of mine since birth with the world was massive for my mental health. Also relatedly, at a time where my mental health (specifically anxiety and panic attacks) was probably the worst it had been in a long time, and where my self worth and self esteem was plummeting, this silly idea gave me something to look forward to, something to “dress up” for, and it helped me make connections with folks everywhere. It was a movement that made the summer months more bearable. Last year was brutal. If something silly and fun gives you a reason to get out of bed, we should all be celebrating it. Additionally, the misogyny and gate keeping in the fútbol community, especially in the US, is suffocating. Reclaiming the feminine, the “superficial” or the “unserious” is a way to take back the power from bigots and be unapologetically ourselves. I look forward to continuing to be unapologetically Latina, anti imperialist, silly, girly, and inherently my truest self.
