In her new book In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court, Brittney lays bare her story, from her family life growing up in Houston to her time at Baylor and the WNBA. The early publicity about In My Skin has focused on Brittney's struggles as a gay woman at Baylor, a Christian school, and her conflicts with Baylor's coach, Kim Mulkey. Those story lines do loom large in the text, but there is much more to Brittney's story.
On the one hand, I sympathize with Brittney and her struggle with her sexuality. She came to identify herself as a lesbian as a teen. In high school, when she finally came out to her father, he kicked her out of the house. She eventually moved back home, but their relationship was strained for years. The rejection that she felt and the anger between the two of them made me sad. On top of that, as an extraordinarily tall, athletic black girl who preferred to wear boys' clothes, she became a target for bullies throughout her school days. She became famous in college sports for punching a Texas Tech player during a game, but that was by no means her first time to throw a punch.
On the other hand, my sympathy dried up when she wrote of her time at Baylor. As a Baylor alumnus and fan, I always saw her as a likeable, fun-loving student who loved playing basketball. From all accounts I heard from campus, she was popular and well-liked. Some would even say she was treated incredibly well on campus and off. She is immediately recognizable, of course, and the Baylor and Waco community knew and embraced her.
So when she writes about the rejection and isolation she felt while at Baylor, it comes across as the ungrateful whining of an immature girl. No one at Baylor forbade her from being gay, no one told her not to hold hands with her girlfriend while on campus. But Brittney was offended that Mulkey asked her not to post about her relationships on Facebook, asked her not to speak publicly about her lesbianism, and discouraged her involvement in on-campus gay-advocacy groups.
Brittney claims ignorance about Baylor's policy when she came to school. But she is from Houston; surely she would have had some inclination that Baylor is a Christian school, a conservative campus, and might not be as open to publicly expressed lesbianism as other more liberal schools. She calls Baylor's policies and attitudes hypocritical, embracing her basketball skill while rejecting her as a lesbian. To me it sounds like Baylor embodied a pretty terrific balance: Baylor loved and supported her without condemnation in an environment where married sex between a man and a woman is held up as the ideal.
Concerning her relationship with Coach Mulkey, Brittney's comments again impressed me as one-sided and ungracious. I mentioned Brittney's punching the Texas Tech player. One reason Brittney was pushed to the point of physical retaliation was the taunting of other teams and their fans. She heard so much garbage about her sexuality and appearance at road games that I can't blame her for snapping. But who vigorously defended her every time? Coach Mulkey. She is a Mama Bear who defends her cubs, and she made it clear to the rest of the world that you don't mess with her girls. But in In My Skin, we read more about Mulkey's hypocrisy and petty criticism of Brittney's lifestyle.
As a fan of Baylor sports, the most difficult part of the book to read was the section on Baylor's loss to Louisville in the 2013 NCAA tournament. Baylor was favored to repeat as national champions, but they hit up against a Louisville team that hit an extraordinary number of 3 pointers while physically mauling the Baylor players, especially Brittney. Baylor fans will not soon forget how, in the first half of that game, Louisville committed foul after foul without getting called for them. Brittney writes, "I felt like I could have slapped half the Louisville team, because that's what they did to me the whole game, and the refs didn't call it. . . . They had two or three people hanging on me the whole time, following me everywhere I went on the floor, slapping my arms, elbowing me, pushing me."
This bullying, along with the trash talk, clearly affected her play. "The Louisville players were talking sh-- at me the whole time, and I let it get to me. . . . I spent so much energy during that Louisville game battling my own emotions, it was almost like I didn't have enough strength left to step up and dominate." I know she was young, barely past her teen years, but I and the rest of Baylor Nation sure would have loved for her to have gotten a grip on her emotions and pulled out that win. It was pretty obvious that the game was poorly officiated. Mulkey had some harsh words about the officiating after the game, harsh enough to get the attention of the NCAA and earn a one-game suspension from the first game of the 2014 tournament.
Like everyone else associated with Baylor, I wish Brittney well in her pro basketball career, and I wish her happiness and fulfillment in her personal life. Although I was not on campus with her, except for watching her play, it breaks my heart that she did not carry away more fond memories of her life at Baylor. I have to wonder if happier moments were left out of In My Skin or minimized due to the editorial choices of her co-author. I can only hope that time will heal the rifts between her and Coach Mulkey, and that she will eventually look with fondness on her time at Baylor. I think I can speak for Baylor fans and alumni everywhere that we love Brittney and we are proud to call her a fellow Baylor Bear.
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