Special for Infobae of The New York Times.
Angel Reese considers herself “a girl in pink.”
Pink nails, pink hair ties, pink shoes, sometimes even “a little pink on the lashes,” Reese said of the eyelash extensions she wears before basketball games. “Everything is pink.”
For Reese, who transferred to Louisiana State University in May after a successful season on the Maryland women’s basketball team, it’s all part of a pregame routine. Before Reese walks onto the court, she puts lip gloss and gel on the edges—the hairline—to keep her hair from falling out.
“My grandmother always emphasized, ‘Don’t let anyone make your makeup sweat,’” Reese recalled.
Reese’s devotion to her gaming appearance expresses both who she is and her style of play. Players in women’s basketball feel free to mix a traditional standard of feminine beauty with finishing touches that are popular in Black and Latino cultures, such as gel edging. It’s a freedom that for some people means advancement in a sport whose female athletes have historically been pressured to fit into a mass-consumer ideal that has long benefited straight white women. Reese is black.
However, the introduction of name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts in college sports and a flow of marketing money in women’s professional basketball have added interest dollars and cents to the decisions they make. the players at the time of getting ready. In interviews with a dozen college and pro players, the women spoke about how the decision about how to express themselves through their appearance has changed.
“I never really felt the pressure until the NIL deals started,” said Reese, whose endorsement deals include Xfinity, Amazon, Wingstop and a Washington, DC-area supermarket chain.
‘I feel pressure to see myself a certain way.’
Cameron Brink, the Stanford forward, usually puts on concealer, brow gel, mascara and maybe a little blush before heading out to a game, but she scoffed at the idea of touch-ups during the game. “I look like this when I play; I’m going to accept myself like this,” he said.
His blocks were a key part of Stanford’s run to reach the 2022 final four, in which the team lost to Connecticut in front of a television audience of 3.23 million people, a 19 percent increase from with the previous season and a jump of 49 percent compared to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Brink also has a growing fan base on social media. Brink posts makeup tutorials, which he loves because he considers makeup to be an art. “It relaxes me a lot,” she commented. Brink has had deals with ThirdLove, Visible Mobile, energy drink Celsius and Portland Gear.
Brink acknowledged that her following — 203,000 on Instagram and 62,800 on TikTok — have grown at least in part because “I play that role of being feminine and dressing feminine.”
“There is pressure for me to see myself a certain way,” said Brink, who is white. “Sometimes it feels good to just go out and play a sport and not worry about it.”
Last year, the NCAA changed its rules to allow college athletes to monetize their NIL deals. It didn’t take long for women’s college basketball players to start surpassing the earnings of athletes in many sports except football, according to the marketing company Opendorse. Paige Bueckers from Connecticut, who is white, signed with Gatorade for an estimated $1 million.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of Opendorse, commented that female college basketball players had outperformed their male peers in the NIL market in part because of how they differentiate themselves through appearance.
“They are willing to create content; they are willing to create a character that you want to follow and applaud for a while on the floor, on the track, on the grass, “said Lawrence. “Maybe they do it through changes in their hairstyle, changes in their makeup, the accessories that they wear on the court.”
However, with this can come tremendous pressure to fit into traditional notions of attractiveness, adding yet another layer of competition to college basketball.
“Comparing yourself to other people is difficult: ‘Look, this girl is very pretty; she looks, she looks really cute,’” Oklahoma guard Kelbie Washington opined.
‘Women should be much more marketable than men.’
Viewership ratings for WNBA and college games, as well as player profiles—some of the most vocal and visible social justice activists in sports—are exploding.
Within that explosion, Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at Arizona State University, believes that female players are taking a generational turn, rethinking the norms. “Athletes themselves are grappling with historical ideas of what it means to be an athlete and what is acceptable for athletes to do,” Jackson said, adding that the WNBA is “a good example” of that.
Nefertiti A. Walker, associate professor of sports management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus, and a former college basketball player, said players don’t necessarily feel like they have to fit the usual standards.
“What’s happening is that there are definitely athletes now who might feel it’s okay to represent their gender differently, because of the changes we’ve seen in college sports — they all have LGBTQ pride nights; there are gay marriages now—all these changes that have happened in your life,” he commented.
That may be true on the court, but a recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue suggested a narrower view of sex appeal, which can be an important factor in marketing. The magazine featured five WNBA players in bikinis and cut-out one-piece swimsuits.
Courtney Williams, a guard considered one of the best in the nation who plays for the Connecticut Sun, commented on Twitter that the session would have been better if they had included a player in a sports bra and baggy shorts. “There is more than one way to look sexy and I hope that in the future we can have more access to this,” she opined.
Jonquel Jones was the WNBA’s top female player in 2021. “If you don’t fit the normal stereotype of what is female or what ‘should be,’ you miss out,” Jones wrote in an August 2020 Twitter post. “Women should be much more marketable than men.”
WNBA players, with a maximum base salary of about $230,000, earn far less than their millionaire peers in the NBA, making marketing money even more important. The WNBA has a $1 million reserve to spend on player marketing deals, and each team must spend between $50,000 and $100,000 a year on player marketing deals. Any unspent amount rolls over to the following season in addition to the minimum.
The league stated that it chooses players to participate in marketing initiatives based on a variety of factors: performance on the court, an established personal brand with an active fan base, and willingness to travel and participate in league events.
‘When I look good, I feel good, I play good.’
As early as fifth grade, Deja Kelly’s mother encouraged her to create a distinctive hairstyle.
“I called him a ‘DI comb’: if you want to make it as a DI, you have to look like you want to be a DI,” Kelly said.
Kelly adopted a slicked-back ponytail or chignon as her preferred hairstyles. Today, her grooming routine — lash extensions, a tight bun and detailed edging — “has never affected my performance” as last season’s leading scorer for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill campus. Kelly has received endorsements from Dunkin’, Beats by Dre, Forever 21 and Barcode sports drink, among other brands.
“For me, when I look good, I feel good, I play good,” Kelly said. “I always take pride in it.”
Walker, the sports management professor, said her studies in women’s sports pointed to a trend: Women in basketball are showing greater agency and self-determination by grooming themselves.
“A lot of female basketball players feel free to express themselves, to perform in an aesthetic way that they can achieve whatever they want to achieve,” Walker said. “Sometimes we underestimate how savvy they are to business, particularly in this day and age.”
