The Big, Unnecessary Numbers Behind the Little King of Spain and Barcelona

Xavi doesn’t look like your traditional athlete, Elliot Turner writes, but that doesn’t make him any less of one. Sounds familiar, no?

This piece is part of a special series on the End of Gender. This series includes bloggers from Role/Reboot, Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, Salon, HyperVocal, Ms. Magazine, YourTango, Psychology Today, Princess Free Zone, The Next Great Generation, and Man-Making.

Sometimes you only need one glance to recognize genius. In the painting, a landscape will surround you. In writing, a sentence jumps off the page. Sport is no different, yet the physical component clouds the view. Yes, sport requires athleticism. But our own societal prejudices—classifying a gender’s physical trait as desirable or discard-able—also cast a fog over our own eyes. Broad shoulders, bulging biceps, thunder thighs, Xavi Hernandez has none of these. He would never be confused with Mark McGuire or another juiced-up home-run hitter from baseball’s Steroid Era. He’s just the essential soccer player to Spain’s dominance of Europe and the World.