This weekend the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team nabbed their second consecutive World Cup—their fourth overall—making them the team with the most FIFA Women’s World Cup wins in history. It was truly a monumental day, but queer eyes were glued to the screen for other reasons too: namely, postgame celebratory kisses.

It’s no secret that the USWNT is spilling over with queerness. Cocaptain Megan Rapinoe's relationship with WNBA star Sue Bird has made headlines; teammates Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger are engaged; Jill Ellis, the team’s out lesbian coach, just became the first to win two World Cup titles. Yet with all this incredible visibility both on and off the field, one narrative struck me in a way I didn’t expect: Kelley O’Hara’s.

By now you may have seen the image of O’Hara—the team's defender and a Georgia native—kissing her girlfriend in the stands moments after her World Cup win:

Daniela Porcelli/Getty Images

This stirred me for a few reasons. Mainly, O’Hara wasn’t publicly out before the World Cup the way Rapinoe, Harris, or Krieger were. Which means that moment served as her official coming-out, and a pretty nontraditional one. What really made my eyes run like a leaky faucet, though, was the deeper implication here. As long as I’ve been alive—and way before that—romance has been defined by heterosexual love. When I, a lesbian, think of iconic romantic kisses, a few images race through my mind: “VJ Day in Times Square,” the Vancouver riot’s kissing couple, Titanic, The Notebook, Sleeping Beauty. Hell, even those spaghetti-loving dogs are heterosexual in Lady & the Tramp.

As far as iconic kisses go, queer women don’t have many main-stage, historic moments.

Of course, I have my own manifesto of queer images stowed away in my brain: the Imagine Me & You kiss set to the Turtles’ “Happy Together,” the moment Alice and Dana dance together at the Planet in The L Word, the paparazzi photos of Cara Delevingne and Michelle Rodriguez drinking courtside at a Lakers game. But as far as iconic kisses go, queer women don’t have many main-stage, historic moments. And if we do, they’re not necessarily romantic even if they’re memorable for other reasons (see: Britney and Madonna, 2003 VMAs—a kiss that undoubtedly slaps).

This isn't just about media representation, which GLAAD reports is better than ever for LGBTQ+ storytelling on TV. I’m talking about the ways in which we’ve come to understand and learn about romance, which has throughout history been rooted in heterosexual love and gender roles. Even the way we think about a romantic kiss boils down to positioning and physicality—the height differences between a man and a woman, his ability to dip her, the way we picture her chin cocked upward or the way he wraps his arms around her waist.

I’ve always longed for the day when queer people didn’t have to unfurl a scroll, explaining when and where they realized they were queer.

When I saw the image of O’Hara, 30, kissing her girlfriend, it rocked me. This isn’t the first same-sex kiss on a world stage, but to know the story behind it is to understand its inherent romance. O’Hara had just won her second consecutive World Cup title—and just as we’ve seen male sports players do countless times, she ran to the sideline and kissed her girlfriend. The way her girlfriend held O’Hara’s face just about melted me into a pile of molten lesbian lava. What a uniquely 2019 way to come out as queer: to win your second consecutive World Cup title and kiss your girlfriend in front of all the cameras and screaming fans as though it was as matter-of-fact as any male athlete kissing his partner after a win. To me, that's a victory for queer women.