07/01/2020
Someone may need to see this right now.
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When I became a college athlete, the new muscles and weight on my body were not welcomed... and my freshman year I did everything to try and fix it: I dieted, I counted calories, I cried, I binge ate, I avoided lifting heavy, and I even went and ran on the tread mill after our three hour practice. Nobody knew how unhappy I was or what was going on.
Then during my sophomore year, I was asked by a professor to write an article for her magazine about Title IX. I said yes, but as I sat down at my computer that night to write about female athletes in sports, I couldn’t silence a different story that was dying to be told. So on February 2nd, 2017, and for the very first time, I came forward about my body-image issues.
Today, the student-athlete organization I founded , has republished the article and it has me feeling very nostalgic. This paragraph in particular still gets me.
“Excited to have the day off from volleyball, I went shopping. I wanted to buy something that would make me feel girly & pretty, because sweating in a gym every day and max-squatting 220 pounds isn’t girly and pretty, right? After grabbing a pile of clothes to try on, I headed into a changing room not knowing that the next 10 minutes would turn me against myself. The first pair of jeans wouldn’t pull past my thighs. The next shirt I tried was too tight on my arms. The dress I loved on the mannequin wasn’t zipping up my back. Piece after piece, nothing fit. I wondered anxiously, “Is it me? Is this marked wrong?!” As I squeezed out of the dress, my eyes welled with tears. After a few more attempts to make anything work, I could no longer hold in my emotions. Behind the curtains of a 5-by-5-foot changing room, I silently began to cry.”
My full “How I Learned To Love My Body As A Female Athlete,” article is at the link in my bio. It’s pretty cool to sit here now and know how far I have come. To all the female athletes out there who might be struggling with their image, please remember this: If you are strong enough to get where you are today on the court, you are strong enough to fight this battle for yourself.
