Body image is something that lots of us spend our lifetimes grappling with, and once you’re an athlete it may well often add a fancy layer to the already about-to-burst can of worms. Sports and movement allow our bodies to develop into the doer, taking us farther from being the inanimate, disempowered subject that our image-obsessed culture can often make us feel like. Nevertheless it’s a double-edged sword, with sports making us much more aware of our body’s limits and hyper-focused on its function and appearance. While you’re knowledgeable football star that is further intensified, as self-scrutiny is magnified by the general public eye, and sometimes even the coaching team around you.

In June last yr, former England midfielder Fara Williams opened up concerning the culture of fat shaming and the resultant eating disorders at national training camps and in Women’s Super League clubs. “I felt as if I couldn’t eat certain foods because I used to be being watched,” she said, describing how players could be tested and put into “fat club” in the event that they weren’t under a certain fat percentage. Alternatively, Lioness captain and Arsenal defender Leah Williamson has shared how football “saved” her from developing body image issues as a teen.

“Female athletes, typically, have higher body perceptions and better body satisfaction than non-athletes,” a 2021 study by the University of Grenada looking into these dual points of being a female athlete found. Nevertheless, “sportswomen, along with the strict societal canons of feminine beauty, also experience specific body-focused pressures as a result of the game they practise”. Last yr, research by Loughborough University found that 36 per cent of England’s top female players displayed eating disorders symptoms.

“I believe [body image] is a very essential topic”, says Mary Earps, goalkeeper for Manchester United and the England national team who won the UEFA Women’s Euros last yr. “Most individuals I do know have had a journey with body image, all women typically. But I believe as an athlete, it’s so intense. Because you already know, especially now we’ve won the Euros, you’re happening the front of magazines… you’re open to critique from the masses. Also, with the expansion of social media, I believe there’s more pressure than ever before to look a certain way, which portrays this unrealistic version of what society views to be attractive.”

Away from the glare of the general public eye, there’s also a deal with nutrition and body composition. The boys’s game is analogous, says Earps, even though it is less publicly spoken about. “In the lads’s game, players have been fined in the event that they are available after preseason and their skinfold measurements [a body fat indicator] have gone up. In the ladies’s game, there are things which have happened which might be just like that, but not in the identical capability because we don’t earn anything like [what they do]. But there’s a definite pressure to look a certain way.”

The best way we experience our bodies will all the time relate to each our comfort in an area, in addition to how much we’re being included in it. With women’s football having only recently begun to be taken seriously as knowledgeable sport (it was banned from 1921 and 1971), for years women were playing in kits designed for men that didn’t fit them or their bodies. It’s something that continues to this present day.

“I believe certainly one of the important differences I’ve seen over the past couple of seasons is that the clubs have began to do women’s-fit kits, which has helped massively,” says Siobhan Wilson, defender for Birmingham City. “It’s only recently that I’ve began wearing women’s-fit kits, and it just makes you’re feeling rather a lot more comfortable in your individual skin. I remember having to wear men’s shorts and having to roll them up about five times because they’re too big.” Last season, when Wilson was playing for Crystal Palace, she says they only had the ladies’s fit for the away kit. “Obviously we were going to wear the house one rather a lot more. I believe the brand new kits have just helped women typically just feel rather a lot more confident playing football.”

On the query of how we define our image in sport, Earps describes a sense of conflict. “Often taking a look at yourself as a lady and feeling like a human being, after which taking a look at yourself as an athlete, they don’t mix thoroughly. It’s like oil and water. Sometimes you may’t see each, you simply have to simply accept that there’s going to be some things you can’t do.” 

Because the University of Grenada’s study describes, that is the paradox of the feminine athlete. “Female athletes in sports similar to soccer navigate two opposed realities of their day-to-day lives, one wherein their bodies are perceived as too large and muscular for the sociocultural standards of female beauty,” the study states “and one other one wherein their bodies should not cultivated or powerful enough and might be much more big and muscular for performance enhancement.” 

“After all,” Earps says, “all of us look within the mirror and need we could change some things. But I don’t think in looking for that perfection. I believe that’s what we should always be encouraging people to try to search out, is that security and happiness inside themselves. (..) I just attempt to have fun the incontrovertible fact that my body can do incredible things and I attempt to set an example for young girls watching me. I believe what we should always be encouraging people to attempt to find is that security and happiness inside themselves that they don’t seem to be desperately trying to vary things on a regular basis, reasonably than attempting to fit into what society says we should always appear to be.”

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