This week we learned just how awesome the players who make up the US women’s soccer team are: they played with immense discipline and relentless energy throughout this year’s World Cup. The lovely star midfielder Megan Rapinoe generated headlines like “Purple-Haired Lesbian Goddess Flattens France Like a Crêpe.” She also declared that if the women’s team won, the players would not “go to the fucking White House,” and, on Twitter, accepted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s invitation for her team to visit her office instead. When they finally beat the Netherlands — also a terrific team — 2–0, a chant went up in the stands, “Equal pay!”

That was a reference to the team’s ongoing lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation, which has been paying its players less than those on the US men’s team for years, even though the women’s team is the better performer by far. It was glorious to see a group of women who have faced discrimination prove their worth before the entire world. One hopes their employer is embarrassed, and that the players will win this fight as decisively as they crushed the talented Dutch on Sunday.

The US women’s team has been amazing for years, and their experience shows that being amazing is not an effective route to equality. But women shouldn’t have to be this awesome to be paid as well as men. You may have noticed that the players on the US men’s team are not unique in their failure to be spectacular. Most men are just okay at their jobs. Women shouldn’t have to be any better. Megan Rapinoe and her teammates are inspiring examples of what some humans can achieve. But for their demands for equal pay to be taken seriously, women should not have to be the best in the world at what they do, nor must they look amazing in bathing suits. The rest of us losers deserve equal pay, too.