The Silent and Toxic Culture of Body Shaming in Sport

I recently saw a photo of my younger 17-year-old self after winning a State 800m athletics event. I was struck by how lean I was and yet at the time I remember being told that my quads were too big and that I needed to ‘trim down’ to succeed as a middle distance runner. These messages were not unusual at the time. They were very much ingrained as part of my belief system of what it took to be a distance runner. These were the messages validated by coaches, elite athletes I looked up to and my junior peers. Fast forward to 2019 and not a whole lot has changed in women’s sport in Australia.

Women’s sport has made many great strides in recent years. In the sport of athletics, however, the female athlete remains the seemingly legitimate target of insidious and widespread body shaming. For many of us, our worth on the track is contingent upon the verdict of the scales.

We know that these practices are the norm at the top level of the sport, at the grassroots, and everywhere in between. Mary Cain, a former world junior champion and elite distance runner recently released a piece and video about her experiences at the Nike Oregon Project in the United States (US) under former coach and doping offender, Alberto Salazar. Cain described being under the influence of a male dominated team who promoted the toxic messaging; “the thinner you are, the faster you’re going to run.” Salazar publicly weighed her, made arbitrary weight goals and blamed any dip in her performance on her body, including in front of other competitors at track meets. Body shaming is not just an issue for athletics in the US. It is happening in our own backyard.

I’m angry that this happened to individuals under the power of people who we’ve entrusted to guide us on our journey as female athletes. And sadly, I’m not surprised, because I know from my own research and personal experience that this is a widespread problem. Yet as Cain observed, the stories of women who have experienced body shaming are often lost to silence and obscurity:

“We don’t typically hear from the casualties of these systems — the girls who tried to make their way in this system until their bodies broke down and they left the sport. It’s easier to focus on bright new stars, while forgetting about those who faded away.”

Since Cain bravely shared her story, I have also been contacted by other female athletes wanting to share their own experiences and response. One woman reflected on her own running career, “Girls sport has the potential to do so much good, but it’s broken and it’s creating broken adult women.” Another spoke about how she’s still trying to heal from her sport, years after she stepped away due to body shaming. In my work as both an eating disorder dietitian and doctoral researcher, these messages are widespread. A recent study I conducted exploring the culture of distance running further affirmed these messages of the culture that, “lighter is definitely better, no matter what.”

This issue has been going on for decades, often explained away by coaches and training partners as “the norm.” As Alberto Salazar stated in his response to Cain’s allegations, “runner weight is inherently tied to performance for elite runners … That’s part of elite sport.” Former training partners have acknowledged that they knew Salazar and his support staff were “obsessed” with Cain’s weight loss “because they spoke of it openly among other athletes.”

I know what it’s like to have your body spoken about by others as though it’s an object for performance and measurement rather than one part of a larger whole: a diverse human being with many different identities just trying to do their best. I remember being weighed publicly on camps, being encouraged to ‘eat less carbs and more vegetables’, to lose 4kg in a month and to ‘walk more’ on top of my already maxed out training program. As a distance runner throughout adolescence and some of my adult life, I never acknowledged that my experiences of body shaming were worth challenging. After all, they weren’t ‘the worst’ I had heard of. Just like Cain, it was hard to see the larger pattern and situate my experiences along the spectrum of behaviours, norms and beliefs that comprise the body shaming culture of my sport.

Supporting female athletes to speak out is critical, but change is a collective effort. Coverage of Cain’s story has sparked global outcry in the sporting industry. However, it’s easy to blame a character like Salazar who has already been branded as one of ‘the bad guys’ from doping allegations, or to slam a capitalist corporation who doesn’t support women athletes during pregnancy and maternity. Yet this is not a story of a single bad egg or events occurring in isolation. The harder task it to look inwards and see how we all contribute to normalising practices of body shaming in sport.

I invite you to imagine you’re watching the first round of AFLW in 2020. Are you commenting on how these women look?

If you’re watching the Melbourne Marathon, do you find yourself noticing whether the female athletes are ‘too skinny’ or ‘too large’ to be a runner?

If a retired female athlete appears on TV, does it feel normal to comment on any changes in her body? Does it preoccupy you to the same degree in the case of former male athletes turned television personalities?

These situations are common and constitute very real occurrences of body shaming. The person being shamed may not hear the comment about themselves directly, but anyone in earshot will internalise the underlying message that women’s bodies are there to be judged, objectified and there to take up less space. These small occurrences give the green light to people like Alberto Salazar and other coaches, professionals, supporters and athletes to continue reducing female athletes—and all that they bring to their sport and their communities—to their weight.

This is not an issue exclusive to female athletes.

Eating disorders in male athletes are also on the rise. In my work as an eating disorder dietitian, we are getting better at detecting these cases, but we have a long way to go: there is still an immense amount of stigma attached to eating disorders, body image and athletes, arguably even more so for men. We can’t keep turning a blind eye to disordered eating in male or female athletes as “normal” and acceptable behaviour. As I’ve published elsewhere, retired athletes’ relationship with food and body is also important as these are the athletes that carry their struggle beyond their sporting careers.

What can we do to create this change that our sport so desperately needs to see?

1. Ask the people in your life if this message resonates with them? The biggest gift you can give to someone is to listen.

2. Check yourself when commenting about peoples’ bodies. Why is this necessary? Does this discourage participation or promote the belief that this person’s body is not enough as it is?

3. Advocate for professional support in athletes of all abilities. Many elite sporting teams do not allocate funding for their athletes to seek out help for eating disorders, nutrition, body image or mental health.

Movements like #MeToo engage the voices of those who have been silenced. Is this the #MeToo moment in women’s sport? We need to listen. We need to make it safe for other athletes to share their experiences. It matters that they be heard. We need to look inward, just as much as we critique high profile perpetrators of body shaming. We need to recognise those moments where it’s possible to change the practices that we choose to participate in. We need to act. This is a moment where women’s sport can become a real agent of social change.

Author: Georgie Buckley - Nov 2019