The color of money

Paris Saint-Germain reportedly offered Kylian Mbappe a 10-year contract worth $1.11 billion. If the football superstar collars the billion-dollar deal, it will be the highest-paid sports contract in history, and the 24-year-old will be the highest paid athlete in the world.

The money is gigantic it dwarfs even the increased prize pool of $110 million for this year’s World Cup that a team of not so Filipino Filipinas is surprisingly contested. But while the prize money for women almost quadrupled from 2019, it is just a quarter of the $440 million awarded to the men’s cup last year.

Accordingly, the men are paid bigger for their better skills and larger viewership that draws sponsorship. Sport is business, money its lifeblood. Bottom line. That men have better skills may be true, but probably because they have been playing the sport longer than the women. But in reality, the difference in skills is illusory. Also known as stereotype.

That more people watch the men’s cup is not entirely true either. FIFA estimated 1.12 billion people watched the last women’s cup. This year, 2 billion are expected, with more Filipinos who watched their non-team making history.

The governing body of soccer however aims to equalize pay to trap gender gap in the next cycle. Not yet, not now. Welcome still, even if too late in the day, or decade. Tennis did it long ago even if the men play best of five sets and the women best of three. In the name of equal pay for equal play, Martina Navratilova was willing to play five sets. The woman who raised the level of women’s tennis challenged other women to treat the first set their warm-up, the rest the real test.

While women athletes fight for pay equity, Mbappe is poised to earn a billion dollars and join the elite club of sports billionaires LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. But another woman plays for glory, not for money, of which she has plenty. Tennis player Jessica Pegula is willing to leave her family’s billion-dollar sports empire just to win Wimbledon. Also known as passion. To which teachers easily relate. They even call teaching a vocation, not complaining even if paid with almost nothing. Also known as exploitation.

Conspicuously though, the American beauty did not tinker with her face or body, despite her money. On court she is raw, but doesn’t look bad either. Also known as natural beauty. Here is a woman who has the money to perfect her physical appearance, but instead works hard to perfect her physical performance. She’d rather be athletic than aesthetic. Or worse, synthetic. Many who brave the knife to look better end up bitter. Also known as botched.

That’s why no one should envy, much less copy, how celebrities look like. Fire their stylists, disband their glam teams, remove their make-up and they’d look just like us. Or one of us. Even worse. Exactly why it is called make-up, it makes up beauty, and success stories.