SAN NICOLáS DE LOS GARZA, Mexico — There was a time not long ago when Luna Roque dreamed of becoming an influencer, like Kimberly Loaiza. The glamorous Mexican singer — she could be a fourth Kardashian sister — got her start as a teenager doing viral challenges and producing makeup videos on YouTube; she now has more than 160 million followers across her social media platforms.

       Then Luna’s parents took her to see the Tigres Femenil. The women’s soccer team, one of two based here in the Monterrey metropolitan area, is the most successful team in the seven-year history of the Liga MX Femenil, Mexico’s first professional women’s soccer league. The Tigres have won six of the league’s 13 titles; they’ve opened the current season with nine wins and a draw for a share of the league lead.

       It took Luna, 8, just one game with Las Amazonas, as the Tigres are known, to ditch her dream of influencing for a new one. Now she’s training to be a professional soccer player.

       The rise of the women’s game in soccer-mad Mexico is challenging traditional notions of gender in a country captured by machismo with a new kind of female role model: The athlete influencer, the strong, skilled woman who posts more about her feats on the field than her fashion choices off it.

       The players, who are mostly in their 20s and 30s, are attracting millions of followers on social media with a clear message of empowerment — and turning the image of female celebrity here on its head.

       The stereotypical Monterrey influencer is a light-skinned, thin and wealthy woman “who makes makeup tutorials or videos of her closet and of the jewelry she buys,” local journalist Carolina Solís says. “It’s a very aspirational thing.”

       Las Amazonas, in contrast, challenge gender norms. They flex their muscles in the locker room and the practice pitch. They pose in sweat-soaked jerseys, show off tattoos, and lift trophies.

       The club has nearly half a million followers on Instagram; players such as recent acquisition Jennifer Hermoso of Spain, winner of the 2023 World Cup and the tournament’s Silver Ball, have more than 1 million.

       Stephany Mayor and Bianca Sierra, Tigres teammates who have played on Mexico’s national team, have a combined social media presence of about 200,000 followers and a YouTube channel on which they post videos of their lives as a couple, their fertility treatment and as mothers of twins.

       “Before, I would consider myself a role model more directed to young girls,” says Sierra, 32. Now, she says, she also wants to be a role model for women who want to be athletes and mothers at the same time.

       Mayor says many Mexicans still don’t take women’s soccer seriously. “They think it’s a hobby,” she says. The challenge ahead, she says, is not so much on growing the sport but on normalizing it. “Equality will come at some point,” she says. “And I hope it’s soon, so that these generations that are coming behind us can benefit from it.”

       In the players’ successes both on the field and online, Barbara Arredondo sees a larger movement that’s transforming Mexico. Arredondo, a producer and women’s rights advocate from Monterrey, sees women increasingly moving into leadership roles that had long been closed to them — not only in the inauguration next month of Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s first female president, but in activism and other venues.

       “They are being more and more vocal about injustices and becoming a reference in their fields like never before,” she says. Arredondo believes the players are not only influencers but agents of change. The game, she says, “is where the worlds of activism, sport and leadership collide.”

       The Monterrey metropolitan area, the country’s second-largest after Mexico City, loves its fútbol. Since 1960, fans of the men’s game here have been divided between C.F. Monterrey, winner of five first division titles, and Tigres UANL, winner of eight.

       Laiza Onofre grew up watching the Tigres with her brother, father and grandfather while her mom did house chores. “Soccer is one of the few things that tie you to the men in your family in this city,” the 37-year-old illustrator says.

       Then came the Liga MX Femenil, which began play in 2017, and the local clubs each fielded a women’s team. Now she’s a bigger fan of Las Amazonas than the men’s team. “For me,” she says, “the issue of representation is very potent.”

       At University Stadium, the 42,000-seat venue where both editions of the Tigres play home games, Onofre sees a more diverse crowd for the women than the men: Families, same-sex couples, older people. When she watches with her 90-year-old grandfather, she sees their potential to bring change. He knows their names and has his favorite: Belén Cruz.

       “He is open and passionate about the game regardless of whether they are men or women,” she says. “It’s revolutionary.”

       Social media has been a part of Liga MX Femenil’s growth plan since its inception. “We were invisible,” says Mariana Gutiérrez, the league’s director. “It was the tool for the players to become visible.” Attendance has grown at rate of 11 percent annually. Nearly 11 million viewers tuned in to games last season.

       Sofía Portales, 18, follows Las Amazonas not only because she plays and loves the game, but for what the women represent in a male-dominated sphere. “When you see women killing it in whatever they do, that inspires us women to believe we can also kill it in our fields,” she says. Portales has won a scholarship to play soccer at Monterrey University.

       Mexico launched its first professional women’s soccer league 16 years after the United States, and it continues to lag behind the United States and other nations on equal pay and the resources it devotes to the game.

       Still, the country is catching up. In February, the national team defeated the powerhouse U.S. side for the first time in 14 years in group play at the CONCACAF Women’s Gold Cup, the premiere tournament in the Americas.

       In March, the Mexican Senate approved a reform that would require sports clubs to establish an equal base salary for men and women.

       After watching her first Amazonas game last year, Luna, the 8-year-old, began to play. During recess at school, she says, only boys play soccer — but they’ve made an exception: “I am the only girl they will let play.”

       At school, she says, there are no girls with whom she can talk soccer. At the soccer academy where she trains, it’s different.

       Alejandra Montserrat Varela, the 26-year-old owner of a soccer academy for girls affiliated with the Tigres, didn’t grow up successful with female players to look up to. That’s changing, she says, but Luna is likely still to hear from men who say woman shouldn’t or can’t play the game.

       “Soccer empowers girls,” she says. “We are showing them that we can also play.”