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US Women\u2019s World Cup player Alex Morgan can easily rattle off the colours of the headbands worn by her teammates. She wears pink, as does Rose Lavelle. Sophia Smith likes black. Julie Ertz prefers a shade closer to Tiffany blue. Lindsey Horan wears red, mostly because Morgan doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the first times I wore pink, someone said I\u2019m trying to copy Alex Morgan,\u201d Horan says.<\/p>\n
Morgan laughed. \u201cI never knew that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
From what we\u2019ve seen during Matildas\u2019 games in the tournament, most of the Australian headband-wearing players favour a bright blue.<\/p>\n
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Headbands worn by soccer players, including Australia\u2019s Ellie Carpenter, are actually medical gauze.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Getty<\/cite><\/p>\n Soccer\u2019s favourite headband, though, isn\u2019t a headband at all. The sheer coloured strips keeping some of the world\u2019s best athletes\u2019 hair in place is actually what is known as pre-wrap \u2013 a thin, stretchy medical gauze intended to be wrapped around injured knees or ankles before they are taped, in part to protect the skin.<\/p>\n And while both men and women long ago co-opted the athletic dressing for a more prominent purpose in their hair, Morgan and other women\u2019s soccer players, including Australia\u2019s Ellie Carpenter, have turned pre-wrap into a symbol of women\u2019s sports \u2013 and soccer in particular \u2013 to accent their team kits and express individuality on the field.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a kind of unique, almost strategic use of pre-wrap in women\u2019s soccer,\u201d says Rachel Allison, a sociology professor at Mississippi State who has studied how the sport has marketed itself. \u201cObviously, wearing the headband can be functional in terms of holding your hair back while you\u2019re playing the sport, but I think it\u2019s become far more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n Morgan, for example, began wearing pink pre-wrap so that her parents could pick her out in a sea of ponytails on the soccer field, and later chose the colour to honour her mother-in-law, who is a breast cancer survivor. Morgan is now even sponsored by one of the primary manufacturers of pre-wrap, Mueller Sports Medicine.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are forms of individual self-expression, but they\u2019re also really important to how we\u2019re marketing women\u2019s sport,\u201d Allison says. \u201cThey become part of the storytelling that we do around who these women are, not only as players, but also people in ways that help to connect to the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n Brett Mueller, the chief executive of Mueller Sports Medicine, says the US company originally began producing pre-wrap in the 1970s for use in the NFL and NBA, but it became popular as a hair accessory for women and girls after referees said they couldn\u2019t wear hard plastic barrettes or clips because of injury risks. Quickly, he says, his company had to expand its colour offerings from the original tan, first to popular school colours and then to a brighter, wider range \u2013 including pink.<\/p>\n Alanna Kennedy (left) and Ellie Carpenter (right) wearing pre-wrap headbands during the Women\u2019s World Cup.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Getty<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s exciting that these athletes \u2013 and our [US] team is so good, too \u2013 are using our product,\u201d Mueller says, adding: \u201cBut we didn\u2019t design it for that\u201d.<\/p>\n Allison says that when she played college soccer at Grinnell College in Iowa, where she graduated in 2007, a couple of her teammates wore the gauzy headbands. Many more people do now, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon to see other people, especially girls or young women, wearing pre-wrap when they\u2019re in the stands watching,\u201d Allison says. \u201cIt\u2019s a way for them to symbolise their fandom.\u201d<\/p>\n There are two camps of pre-wrap headbands: those who roll it into thin, tubular strands that stand up slightly on their heads, like Alanna Kennedy, and those who spread it flat on top of their hair, like Carpenter.<\/p>\n And while it\u2019s most obvious in the players\u2019 hair, Morgan says the team also uses pre-wrap for its originally intended purpose: underneath their shin guards and also to tape up ankles.<\/p>\n \u201cPre-wrap is everywhere,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cYou look in the bins, and it\u2019s endless pre-wrap.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n