While she is able to work almost year-round at the park, she says she is “the exception, one of the few.” Most concession workers are seasonal and while their hourly wages may be some of the highest in the country, the average pay is $11,000 a year, below the poverty line. Many of the concession workers live in low-income housing, they can travel up to two hours each direction in order to work an event, and they have multiple jobs to supplement their income. Their job with the Giants, though, gives them the healthcare insurance they otherwise would not have.

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Unlike in our everyday sports experience where men are the assumed participants unless otherwise specified, in the Olympics, events are tagged “men’s” and “women’s” equally. For once, “men’s” is not the default. Instead, pop culture at large invites us to learn these women’s stories, trace their journeys, and praise their accomplishments.

Women’s visibility in the Olympics is a double-edged sword, though.

The Olympics is an event predicated on nationalism, a manufactured collective “us.” People compete as part of a nation and, in turn, the nation embraces those athletes in ways that it fails to do in the day-to-day. The same belief that leads people to desire border fences, to malign immigrants, and to justify preemptive wars is the one that creates a metaphorical umbrella under which all athletes, male and female, find themselves during the Olympic games. Women’s efforts on the pitch or in the pool matter because they help fulfill the uncomfortable need for “us” to be better than “them.”

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