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Talk City presents

Briana Scurry and Carla Overbeck
The Conflicts Between Beauty and Brawn

December 14, 1999

Briana Scurry and Carla Overbeck of the World Champion US Soccer Team chat about the conflicts between beauty and brawn, and what they think about femininity and strength joining forces.

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Lucy.com: Welcome to Lucy.com! We're chatting with Carla Overbeck and Briana Scurry key members of the 1999 World Cup champion women's soccer team. (Carla played defense, while Briana tended goal.) The Women's World Cup this past July marked a major turning point for women in sports. For the first time, women's sports hit the big leagues -- drawing capacity-crowds at major venues, attracting the highest attendance of any women's sporting event in history (90,185 spirited, screaming, soccer-loving, face-painted fans), and gracing the covers of the 'Big Three' weekly magazines - Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. No longer just about soccer, the World Cup ushered in widespread acceptance of strong, dominant, muscular female athletes. All the while, though, thin is still 'in' in our media-dominated society. Eating disorders are on the rise, younger and younger women are dieting and worrying about body size, and women everywhere struggle to conform to ideals of femininity and beauty. Women we meet on the fields, in the gym, and on the running paths consistently tell us they want to be strong, but not 'too strong' -- toned, but not muscular. What does all of this mean for active women today? We're here today in the lucy.com locker room with Briana and Carla to chat about the conflicts between beauty and brawn, and what these players think about femininity and strength joining forces. Welcome, Briana, and welcome, Carla! We're happy to have you with us.

Briana Scurry: I think one of the myths that a lot of women have about weight training is that women get big or large. It's not possible for the majority of women who weight train to get bigger. I weight train and have been for at least 7 years, and didn't get much bigger. I gained a bit of weight, but it's muscular. A bit of weight isn't always a negative thing, and the positives of weight training outweigh the myths of getting too big.

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