Megan Rapinoe: “Being True to Yourself Is A Beautiful Thing”
Image by KKimPhotography. Click here for licensing information.
A star of women’s professional soccer on the national and global stage, Megan Rapinoe can now add “magazine editor” to her many accomplishments. Megan was the guest editor of the second annual Washington Blade Sports Issue, which featured content by or about a number of Athlete Ally supporters. In an interview with Justin Peligri, Megan spoke about her coming out experience.
“Coming out is something Megan Rapinoe hasn’t regretted for a minute.
The professional soccer player and Olympic gold medalist announced to the world that she’s gay shortly before the 2012 London Olympic Games. She’d been out to her family and team members for years, but decided to come out publicly after a yearlong thought process because concealing a central part of her identity seemed “weird” and “not authentic.”
“It started to feel like something was being omitted purposefully from my life and my public image,” says Rapinoe, a midfielder for Seattle Reign FC in the National Women’s Soccer League, who prides herself on being open with her personal life. Before coming out, she hated dodging questions about what it was like to have a large LGBT fan base by providing impersonal answers like “Well, yeah, we need diversity in the sport.”
“For me to not be able to say ‘I’m gay, and that’s why it means a lot to me to have my community supporting our team,’ that didn’t feel right to me,” Rapinoe, the 29-year-old guest editor of this sports edition, says.”
You can read the full article here.