On May 16, 1975, Junko, accompanied by her Sherpa guide, Ang Tsering, became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. When she reached the top, her first thought was simply: “Oh, I don’t have to climb anymore.” The simple observation about finally ending this particular journey fit Junko’s often repeated approach to climbing: to put one foot in front of the other. She took photos and 8mm movies, made radio calls to base camp, and buried a thermos of coffee at Everest’s peak to mark her ascent.
HILLARY
Since Junko’s triumph, women around the world have followed in her footsteps. One of the most thrilling examples is Ascend Afghanistan, an all-girls’ climbing group. In 2018, Hanifa Yousoufi, a twenty-four-year-old member of the group, became the first Afghan woman to climb Mount Noshaq. She confronted freezing temperatures, gender expectations, and even Taliban attacks. After she made it to the top of the mountain, she explained: “I did this for every single girl. The girls of Afghanistan are strong and will continue to be strong.”
After Everest, Junko did what she always did: She kept putting one foot in front of the other, making her way up mountains. She found that she was just as thrilled at thirty-five years old as she had been at ten by the prospect of seeing things she’d never seen before. The way she saw it, it was straightforward: She loved climbing, and she was still having fun. In 1992, she became the first woman to complete the storied Seven Summits, reaching the peak of the tallest mountain on each continent. At seventy-six, Junko had climbed the highest peaks in seventy-six countries. She didn’t stop climbing until the cancer that finally took her life made it impossible, and that was just a few months before she died.
Junko’s dedication to her sport didn’t end when she was at lower elevation. She advocated for climbers to respect their natural environments and to clean up after themselves. She was a vocal supporter of limiting climbing permits on Everest so that the mountain didn’t take more stress than it could reasonably endure. She worried—rightly—about mounting trash, water quality issues, and growing deforestation as more climbers tried to make it to the top or even to Everest base camp without the ecologically minded ethos of not leaving a trace. She told an interviewer toward the end of her life that she would tell her younger self, “Do not give up. Keep on your quest.” She never gave up—not on climbing, and not on her faith that humanity could find a way to conquer the natural world’s challenges without harming it.
Billie Jean King
Hillary
The date was September 20, 1973. My friends and I were crowded around a television set, and I was nervous. We were a handful of the ninety million people around the world tuned in to “The Battle of the Sexes,” the most watched tennis match in history. On the screen, Billie Jean King was carried by burly-looking men into Houston’s Astrodome like Cleopatra on her throne. Her opponent, Bobby Riggs, rolled in on a rickshaw, accompanied by a pack of scantily clad women he called “Bobby’s bosom buddies.” Riggs, ever the showman, seemed to revel in the circus-like atmosphere. But from the steely glint in Billie Jean’s eyes, it was clear: She had come to play tennis.
We were rooting for her as though she were a friend we had known all our lives. I was on the edge of my seat, reminding myself to breathe in and out. I knew, and Billie Jean definitely knew, that she had a lot riding on her shoulders. Riggs was a self-described male chauvinist who said: “The male is supreme. The male is king.” If she lost to him, Billie Jean worried, she would undermine the newly passed Title IX, bring shame to women’s tennis, and set the women’s movement back fifty years. But if she won, she would send a resounding message to women and men everywhere that everyone deserved a level playing field. We really, really, really wanted her to win.
And win she did, trouncing Riggs decisively: 6–4, 6–3, 6–3. The audience in Houston rushed onto the court. Riggs leaped over the net to shake her hand and admitted: “I underestimated you.” As in so many other hard-fought victories in her life, Billie Jean didn’t win this one just for herself—she won it for all of us. It may have been a symbolic match, but it had a very real effect on how people saw themselves, women in particular.
Billie Jean King first captured my attention over a decade earlier, in the early 1960s. As an aspiring (and mediocre) tennis player myself, I thought: “Here is an American woman, not that much older than I am, and she’s doing something I know is really hard, and doing it well.” Most of all, she really seemed to love what she did.
She grew up in a family of athletes. One day, a friend brought her along to play tennis at the country club. She loved the physical aspect of the sport—jumping, running, hitting the ball. But she knew playing a country club sport was out of the question for a kid like her, who came from the “wrong side of the tracks.” It wasn’t until someone told her there were free lessons at her local public park that she thought: “That’s more like it.” She worked odd jobs for her neighbors until she finally managed to save up the eight or nine dollars a racket cost. She had high standards for herself from the beginning. One day, she calmly told her mother: “I am going to be number one in the world.”
Growing up, Billie Jean always knew things were different for her than they were for her brother. “Girls didn’t have the power,” she said. “People wouldn’t listen to us the way they listened to boys. I couldn’t articulate it then. I felt all these things bubbling up inside me.” Her first experience with outright gender discrimination came at age eleven, when she was barred from a group photo of junior tennis players because she had decided to wear a shirt and tennis shorts that day rather than a skirt.
Before long, the tennis world started to take notice of Billie Jean. By 1966, she was ranked number one in the world. Between 1961 and 1979, she won twenty Wimbledon titles, thirteen United States titles, four French titles, and two Australian titles—a total of thirty-nine Grand Slam titles. She was sure-footed and fast, with a strong backhand and a competitive spirit. The sport had never seen anyone quite like Billie Jean, on the court or off.
Billie Jean’s ascent in tennis coincided with social upheaval in America. President John F. Kennedy had signed the Equal Pay Act into law in 1963, but that didn’t change the glaring disparities in tennis. When Billie Jean King won the Italian Open in 1970, she was awarded six hundred dollars. The male winner took home nearly six times as much. The discrepancy in prize money was sometimes as much as eight to one. Along with eight other brave women players, “The Original Nine” broke away from the tennis establishment and launched their own tour in 1970, signing contracts for one dollar with publisher Gladys Heldman. They were risking their careers and their standing in the sport by taking this stand. But they did it anyway, because they knew how much it mattered. Three years later, the newly created Women’s Tennis Association would absorb the tour.
“Everyone thinks women should be thrilled when we get crumbs, and I want women to have the cake, the icing, and the cherry on top, too.”
—BILLIE JEAN KING
The Battle of the Sexes was one of the most visible wins in the struggle for equality, but it was far from Billie Jean’s only one. After she threatened to boycott the 1973 U.S. Open, it became the first major tournament to award equal prize money to men and women. She became the first woman to be chosen Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year.” Meanwhile, she founded World TeamTennis, a coed league, and started the Women’s Sports Foundation.
After she was publicly outed as a lesbian in the 1980s, Billie Jean lost her endorsement deals. Even this unwelcome invasion into her private life she took in stride. She squared her shoulders, kept her head high, and decided she wasn’t going to back away from who she was. “This is important to me, to tell the truth,” she later said. True to form, she not only came out, she became a fierce advocate for LGBTQ equality. Once again, when it would have been far easier to stay quiet, Billie Jean spoke out.
For Billie Jean, it was never enough to fight for herself; she was in it for the generations of athletes who have come after
her. When a group of champion soccer players was struggling with the low pay and lack of attention for women players, they looked to Billie Jean. Soccer star Julie Foudy remembered going up to the icon and asking her what could be done. Billie Jean immediately turned the question back on the questioner, demanding: “What are you doing, Foudy? Like you, as players—what are you doing?… You have the leverage! You change it!” Thanks in part to her encouragement, Julie and her teammates took up the fight for equal pay for women’s soccer—a fight that continues to this day despite the fact, in 2019, U.S. women’s soccer games have for the past three years generated more revenue than U.S. men’s games.
Billie Jean King is even more inspiring to me today than she was the day of the Battle of the Sexes in September 1973—because of the life she’s lived, the fights she’s waged, and the integrity she brings to everything she does. She is a constant reminder that none of us can rest for very long. In the fight for equality—on the court and off—there is always more to do.
Diana Nyad
Hillary
There have been plenty of times, as a woman lawyer and politician, when I felt like I was swimming with sharks. Diana Nyad actually did. In 2013, she became the first person to swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, without a protective cage. Along the way, she braved the treacherous currents of the Gulf Stream, the lethal box jellyfish, and the infamous oceanic whitetip shark—not to mention the exhaustion of swimming for nearly fifty-three hours straight.
Born in 1949 in New York City, Diana grew up in Florida, leaving the house before dawn to put in a few hours at the pool before school. She survived sexual abuse as a teenager, at the hands of the beloved swimming coach she regarded as a father figure. Despite her shame and hurt, she threw herself into swimming. When she was in high school, a teammate urged her to finish a race knowing she couldn’t have done it even a fingernail faster. Diana wrote in her autobiography, Find a Way, “I walked out of that locker room determined to tackle my future just that way, each day not a fingernail better. No regrets.”
Her extraordinary willpower led her to marathon swimming, which opened up the world. She swam in lakes, rivers, and oceans. She was the first person to swim from north to south across Lake Ontario, and in 1975, at twenty-five, she swam around Manhattan. And then, at twenty-eight years old, she made her first attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida, shore to shore. With a boatload of friends to help navigate, cheer her on, and keep watch for sharks, she headed out into eight-foot waves. Eventually, the wind and currents took her so far off course, she had to stop. Two years later, she retired from swimming.
Yet for the next three decades, she couldn’t shake the nagging idea of trying again. So, try again she did, at the age of sixty-one. And again later that year. And again. And again. She set out for her fifth try in 2013, at the age of sixty-four, with the help of a world-renowned jellyfish expert, a determined navigator, a team of shark divers, and a group of friends and family. She spent long hours fighting seasickness and the cumbersome suit designed to keep the jellyfish away, staying focused by counting strokes and going through a mental playlist of her favorite songs. And then, finally, she made it. When she staggered onto the beach, overcome with emotion and exhaustion, she managed to offer a few words of wisdom to the gathered spectators: “One: Never, ever give up. Two: You’re never too old to chase your dreams. Three: It looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a Team.”
There are lessons in Diana’s story for any woman—any person, really—who is navigating uncharted waters. Lessons about the power of taking risks and refusing to be defined by failure. Lessons about the incredible strength each of us possesses, even those of us who aren’t world-class athletes. Lessons not just about sports but about life—about the importance of not simply trying to reach the finish line but learning to enjoy the journey, with all its disappointments, setbacks, and suffering. I have always felt a kinship with Diana and her team because of their mantra, which they repeated before, during, and after each swim: “Onward!”
Abby Wambach
Hillary and Chelsea
Hillary
Abby Wambach shattered records as a soccer player and cocaptain of Team U.S.A.: the most goals scored for the U.S. Women’s National Team and the most goals scored in international matches by anyone, man or woman—records she still holds today. But what makes Abby so remarkable is this: She’s powerful, and she knows it. She doesn’t apologize for it the way women are so often taught to do. She uses it—to level the playing field for women athletes and to change the story that we tell young girls about their own worth and potential.
“If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be this: ‘Abby, you were never Little Red Riding Hood; you were always the wolf.’ ”
—ABBY WAMBACH
If you haven’t watched Abby’s 2018 commencement speech at Barnard College, it is not to be missed. She referenced her childhood in Rochester, New York, which she spent playing on boys’ teams before making her U.S. Women’s National Team debut in 2001. I read her speech after the fact and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I still can’t. It’s full of advice I wish someone had told me when I was in college: words of encouragement mixed with some tough truths. It made me realize that the locker room pep talks Abby gave her team as cocaptain must have been legendary. I even wrote Abby a letter thanking her for inspiring not only the “badass” (her words) Barnard graduates but everyone who has come across her words—myself included.
Chelsea
Abby understands the power of leading by example, which she does even when it might make some people uncomfortable. “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” she tweeted after Megan Rapinoe said that she would not be visiting the Trump White House. Two days later, Megan scored both of Team U.S.A.’s goals in the Women’s World Cup quarterfinals, beating France 2–1. After Megan and her teammates won the World Cup, Abby said, “This team showed America what’s possible—no, they showed us what is inevitable: Women will lead us. And will win. And we won’t keep our mouths shut about inequality any longer. Now pay them.”
Abby is honest on and off the field, including about her complex feelings around coming out (“[I]t didn’t matter to the way that I played the game,” she once said, “but it does matter to who I am as a person”), as well as the joy her marriage and family bring her. Along with her wife, Glennon Doyle, she talks about important, sometimes thorny issues, like systemic racism and how white women can be better allies. “If you don’t like me, that’s not my problem. Not my worry, either,” Abby once said in Time. She doesn’t bend over backward to make people comfortable; she’s too busy for that, and life’s too short.
Just like she owns her wins, Abby Wambach owns her failures: the losing games, the time she didn’t make the starting lineup for her last-ever World Cup, even an arrest for drunk driving that she said humiliated her into getting clean. “Failure is not something to be ashamed of—nor is it proof of unworthiness,” she said. “Failure is something to be powered by. When we live afraid to fail, we don’t take risks. We don’t bring our entire selves to the table—so we wind up failing before we even begin. Let’s stop worrying: What if I fail? Instead, let’s promise ourselves: When I fail, I’ll stick around.”
“Women have learned that we can be grateful for what we have while also demanding what we deserve.”
—ABBY WAMBACH
After the U.S. team won the World Cup in 2015, Abby immediately ran to the stands and kissed her then wife, Sarah Huffman. It became an iconic moment because of how revolutionary it felt to see same-sex couples celebrate their love and each other’s achievements in such a public forum. The following year, Abby got divorced, and talked publicly about the toll her struggles with substance abuse took on her relationship. After her second marriage, to Glennon, she has been just as candid about the challenges and rewards of parenting.
Hillary
In 2015, Abby retired from professional soccer. Retirement can be a terrifyin
g moment in any athlete’s life, and that was certainly true for Abby. “Without soccer who would I be?” she asked herself.
Then one day, her sponsor Gatorade surprised her by unveiling a plan for her send-off commercial. The message was simple: “Forget me.” “They knew I wanted my legacy to be ensuring the future success of the sport I’d dedicated my life to,” Abby said. “If my name were forgotten, that would mean that the women who came behind me were breaking records, winning championships, and pushing the game to new heights. When I shot the commercial, I cried.”
Those words still ring in my head: “Forget me.” I look forward to voting for the first woman president as surely as Abby looks forward to cheering on future championship teams. It’s nice to be remembered. But Abby is right: Sometimes it’s more powerful to pave the way for others.
Michelle Kwan
Hillary
In the fall of 1992, Michelle Kwan’s figure skating coach went out of town. When he came back a week later, he got some surprising news. While he was gone, his quiet, rule-following twelve-year-old student had taken the test to move up to the senior competition level—without his permission. Frank Carroll had wanted Michelle to wait, to spend the year winning at the junior level instead of moving up to compete against older, more experienced skaters.
The Book of Gutsy Women Page 20
