Under the Uniform
Let’s admit it, there’s an unrealistic expectation for women to look a certain way which has continued to evolved over time. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this expectation is often even more strict on female athletes, and athletes in general. Somehow over the course of time, it was decided that athletes are supposed to look a certain way and embody an aesthetic specific to their sport in order to be successful. As a collegiate athlete, you are viewed as the best of the best, and apparently there’s a particular body type required. An article by the NCAA described this issue perfectly by saying, “sportswomen have two body images – one within sport and one outside of sport, and disordered eating or an eating disorder can occur in either context or both.” I think this physical standard has always been in place, but over time it has become more strict and unforgiving.
If we’re being honest, we all know that social media has become the catalyst of these unspoken expectations. This phenomenon is also prevalent within the athletic community itself. During my college days I found myself comparing my body not only with those that I played next to, or against…but those that I found on social media and had zero personal connection to. I allowed surface level, “highlight reel” pictures to dictate if I was worthy or not to call myself a college volleyball player. I thought to myself, if those girls can and do look like that..shouldn’t I also look this way? Or at least do whatever it takes to try? I was longing to achieve a body that I had never seen with my own eyes, and didn’t even know if it was possible for me to obtain. I also didn’t have any idea if this desired body would be able to match my desired level of play on the court. I just knew I would look good, and then I’d figure the rest out after that.
Being an athlete not only raises body image/body dissatisfaction issues, but also places athletes at a higher risk in numerous categories. Let me put this into perspective for you. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, among female college athletes surveyed, 25.5% had a subclinical eating disorder symptom. Similarly, a study of female Division II college athletes found that 25% had disordered eating, 26% reported menstrual dysfunction, 10% had low bone mineral density, and 2.6% had all three symptoms. (This is known as the female athlete triad, and I’ve lived it). Lastly, in a study of Division 1 NCAA athletes, over one-third of female athletes reported attitudes and symptoms placing them at risk for anorexia nervosa. Didn’t know any of that? It’s because this is not something most athletes want to talk about, or might not even be aware of themselves. Heck, I still struggle talking about this because it makes me feel weak. But these statistics do not lie, and I know that because I contributed to them.
As I’ve reflected back, I believe that part of the reason for lack of discussion is that as athletes, we convince ourselves that it’s not only normal, but expected (and somewhat encouraged) to feel this way. These unspoken standards are already in place when you set foot on campus, so it’s easy to believe they just come with the collegiate athlete territory. Knowing how badly I silently struggled during college makes me wonder how many of my teammates were going through the same things. I wish it was more normalized to talk about these issues, and that I wasn’t afraid back then, because we could have worked/talked through them together, and wouldn’t have had to walk through it alone. I am not oblivious to the fact that collegiate athletes are held to a completely different standard than others for obvious and justifiable reasons. I’m not saying that athletes should just chill and not put any type of pressure on themselves in terms of training and physique, but I do believe that it should be their own standard and not society’s.
Something that I think gets lost in all of this is the fact that these problems don’t just vanish once our careers end. These issues stick with us and follow us long after sport, because they’ve become a part of our daily lives, are deeply engrained into our minds, and we don’t see how we could possibly live or think any different. Whatever you are dealing with post-career life has been molded from years of experiences and beliefs, and it’s hard to detach from those.
It’s important to know that I am not implying that every single collegiate athlete struggles with body image, eating disorders, etc. If you’re reading this as a current or former athlete, and you absolutely cannot relate to anything I have said-GOOD. Everyone has their own battles, but these are the issues I can speak on and bring awareness to based on my experience. Being an athlete is about so much more than how you look, and we need to start admiring athletes for what they can do, rather than how they look while doing it. Maybe if society stopped caring so much about the appearance of athletes, and focused more on their performance, the statistics you read above wouldn’t be as prevalent. We’ve also got to better within the athletic community itself, and stop comparing our bodies to our teammates and people we see online who are possibly struggling just as much as we are.
What you look like under the uniform is not half as important as how you feel about yourself underneath. Train for performance rather than your aesthetic, and I can almost guarantee this will bring more satisfaction and better results than the other way around.