Best Kept Secret by Debra Moffitt Page A

right,” she said, and did.
    The title crawled across the screen: “The Past Is Pink: What Happened to the Pink Locker Ladies?”
    â€œThose girls from Yale. Talk about in your face,” Patricia told Bet. She was still speaking in that altered voice, and her face was obscured by shadows.
    Patricia said it was 1976 and “the girls from Yale” were on the female rowing team, also called “crew.” Because women’s sports were just getting started at the university, they didn’t have their own showers or bathrooms at the boathouse. So both the men’s and women’s teams practiced about a half hour from campus, but only the men could clean up and warm up after practice. The women waited on the bus for the men in the dead of winter, ice crystals clinging to their wet hair.
    â€œOne of those girls ended up going to the Olympics and won a gold medal,” Patricia said. “But I’m getting ahead of myself.
    â€œThe female rowers had complained and asked for a locker room, but they kind of got the brush-off,” Patricia said. “That was until they decided to protest the situation in an unforgettable way.
    â€œSo Title IX had been passed four years before,” Patricia said. “Remember, Title IX was the federal law that said girls and boys should have equal opportunities in school. That included sports.”
    I flashed a look at Bet. She had told me two weeks ago this had something to do with Title IX, back when I thought “Title 9” was only a cute clothing catalog.
    â€œSo the nineteen female rowers decided they’d march into the office of the woman who was in charge of Yale’s women’s sports program. That would have had some impact, right? But then—you won’t believe this—they decided to write Title IX in blue marker on their bare chests and backs. They would go into the meeting wearing their Yale women’s crew sweat suits. But once they were in that woman’s office, they’d take off their shirts to reveal their statement. Which is exactly what they did.”
    Bet had not told me this part in advance. I was stunned and speechless. I didn’t even like to get changed in the girls’ locker room, and I was always wearing a bra. These girls went in a group and took off their tops in a school official’s office?
    Ms. Russo raised her eyebrows. Kate looked at Piper and me, and we just started laughing.
    â€œShhh! Shhh! You’ll miss the best part,” Bet said.
    â€œA brilliant bit of civil disobedience,” Patricia said. “The girls read a statement that detailed their complaints. But here’s the clincher. We would not be sitting here today except for this, the pièce de résistance. The team invited a New York Times reporter to the meeting.”
    Bet elbowed me, pumped her fist in the air, and whisper-yelled, “Journalism!”
    We shook our heads at her and then turned back to the laptop screen. Her report cut to images of black-and-white newspaper clips from that time.
    Bet, in voice-over, said, “The team had found a way to spread the word. It was the very thing the Pink Locker Ladies were about to lose.”
    â€œWe read the news stories just like everyone else,” Patricia said. “Some people thought it was unladylike to do such a thing. Other people thought they were heroes. But lots of people didn’t know what to think.”
    It was then that Bet cut away to a faded, bluish document that said “The Pink Paper” at the top. Then she zoomed in on The Pink Paper to a headline that read: THE PINK LOCKER LADIES SUPPORT THE WOMEN OF YALE!
    Below it was a column describing the event and saying, “We simply must support these brave women. Disagree if you will with their tactics, but they were brave and deserve an equal chance to excel in their sport!”
    â€œThat was ‘all she wrote,’ as the saying goes,” Patricia said.