On the 28th June, American Games-bound athlete, Jamie Hagiya, posted a pretty powerful message to her Instagram page. Dressed in a bikini, Jamie sported a healthy, fit and powerful body yet here she was sharing the story of her personal struggle with body image because, unlike many of the other Games athletes, she did not have a ripped six-pack and zero body fat, nor was she completely shredded. And yet her body did incredibly amazing things. She had achieved what many of us can only wish for – to be a Games level athlete. It saddened me to think that not even working at such a high level was she immune to what I call social conditioning.
I can’t worry about trying to look like a “Games” athlete because having a six pack doesn’t always make for the best athlete – Jamie Hagiya. (Facebook)
The post provoked a lot of thought about the social conditioning and expectations we regularly face that greatly impact not only on our relationships with our bodies but our ability to achieve or to take risks or to flip the finger at external expectations and do the stuff that makes us happy.
At one point or other in my life, I’ve been at either end of the body weight spectrum. And at both ends, I have been sucker punched and bound by what everyone else perceived I should look like. In my teenage years, I was what you would call obese. And as some of you, too, may have experienced, being a fat teenager isn’t really all that much chop. I remember the taunting bus rides and ‘hoochie mama’ jokes from the school jocks like they were fresh wounds from yesterday. I learned very early on in life to hate my body on the deepest level because in everyone else’s eyes I was fat, and fat in our society was considered ugly.
In the many years that followed, I did what everyone expected me to. I tried not to be ‘too fat’ and did my darn hardest to look like everyone else. I obsessed over my weight. Constantly and painfully. I did every crash diet and fitness regime you could imagine. I did every low-carb diet, low-eating diet and even the party-for-four-nights-a-week-and-not-eat-diet. I would agonise over the scales every morning and every night, only happy if the number had shifted. Over the years, in between unmotivated fluctuations, the weight slowly melted away until I finally arrived at half of the body weight I had started.
I remember thinking about that moment for ages, that moment when I would finally be skinny. I would obsess as much about this as I would over the scales, wasted hours thinking about how happy I would be when I could just be skinny. And I was, fleetingly. I stepped on the scales and weighed in at 58kg. And for the first time in my life I finally thought I was not too much of anything. I was skinny and my clothes hung off me and this is what I was told pretty was. This was what pretty and skinny was meant to feel like. For the briefest moment I felt happy.
But getting there, to that place I had longed for, was not a journey undertaken out of happiness. I had arrived there in my darkest hour. And I had hit a weight that was not just skinny, but now underneath the lowest end of a healthy weight range for my height. People around me noticed. On the night of my 29th birthday, a friend took hold of my arm and gave me a pained, worried look. “Is everything okay? You’re looking a bit too skinny. Are you eating? Healthy?” There was that word again, the word I never thought I would hear again in my life, gnawing at my ears like a monster I’d never escape.
I had gone from too fat to too skinny and all the happiness I had harvested in my desperate focus on what I looked like, burst.
I had nowhere to go from that place. And in the years that followed, I continued to run down the painful road of trying to find a love for my body that didn’t exist within these prescribed dialogues that whispered to me that I was always "too" something.
Three years later, I discovered Crossfit. It was an instant and deep love. But it was a love that turned my perceptions upside down and made me confront everything I had perceived about my body. The diverse representation of strength and beauty was a stark contrast to what I had grown up believing. I trained with women from all walks of life, with all different body types and with all different goals. Every single one of them redefined the mono perspective and horseshit we are fed about what it means to be beautiful. The more I immersed myself in the world of Crossfit, the more I started to see my body as something that I, alone, owned. Nobody else. Just me. I started to see it more as an incredible beast that could do things I never would’ve dreamed of; something that worked for me and not just some ghastly lump that was always against me in my fight to be what everyone else thought was beautiful.
But social conditioning lurks in the waters. From the outside looking in, many perceive the world of Crossfit to be filled with bulky women who have too much muscle. We’ve all, against our better judgment, stupidly read the comments below the line on social media, the ones that audaciously and unwelcomingly tell Crossfit women that they look too manly or that their body isn’t right in some way or another. These comments from other people, who are socially conditioned themselves - about what our bodies should look like, do very little to quell the demons many of us may face.
The monsters in my head certainly haven’t been put to sleep. And I’m sure I’m not alone in the shitty conversations I’ve had with this body of mine. Over the past two years, watching my body change as I grow stronger, I hear that voice sneak in at any opportunity I give it. I listen to its nasty voice as I put on a skirt that bares my thicker thighs and visibly bulgier bum and self-consciousness creeps in. Or when some guy makes a point of saying something about my more muscular arms when we are out and I start to question the way I look. Or when I put on a shirt and feel it pull a little tighter across my back. Or even simply when I look around at other athletes and feel painful pangs because I probably won’t ever be that girl who wears booty shorts and bares a six-pack in a crop top because my stomach is etched with stretch marks and wounds of this life-long battle with my body.
I have to take a big breath and remind myself that this is all part of the same, complex problem. Social conditioning.
And you know what, I’m done with it!
Because no matter what my body or yours looks like, there’s always going to be someway that we are too much of this or too little of that. And if we are ever going to find that love with our bodies and let them work for us, or if we ever truly want to taste that slice of real happiness, we’re going to have to let go of it all at some point. And we are going to have to give ourselves the permission that no one else will or can – to let our bodies be exactly as they need to be. If we don’t, we are letting social conditioning win, and we are boxing ourselves into a limited life where fear of what others think or of what society expects will control what we do and how we live.
We will forever be the too much of this or too little of that women.
So, if you’re the woman who has wanted to try Crossfit but never do because you’re worried you’ll bulk up (because it’s been put in your head that women shouldn’t have too much muscle)…flip it the bird and get down to your local box. Aside from there being physiological reasons as to why you’re more likely to tone than bulk up, don’t let anyone dictate to you that there’s anything wrong with having muscle.
Or if you’re the woman that sees all the elite athletes and freaks out because you’re worried your body is too far away from that to try Crossfit... flip it the bird and get down to your local box. In the heart of the Crossfit community you’ll find a bunch of strong, amazing women who look nothing like the elite athletes either. Just like all of these women you’ll find your body will do exactly what it needs to do to not only cope, but to grow.
Or if you find yourself reading this and already prefacing your ability to do something with that little sucker of a word – too – then flip the bird at it and go out there and see what you’re really capable of if you do away with the conditioning and expectations.
It’s time to reclaim our bodies and our minds. Now is the time to be you without the "too".
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.