Body Culture: Is there a place for body positivity in sports?
Physicality in general is a difficult question, and in sports even more so: here the image of the body is distracted from the standard parameters adopted in society, and you need to understand this special body image differently. Moreover, the popular opinion is that sport completely contradicts the idea of body positivity (and vice versa): supposedly, only unsportsmanlike people who don’t want to “work on themselves” fall under the body-positive radar, and sports fascists who are obsessed with “banks” and “ dice. " Meanwhile, sport is not just a healthy body for the sake of a healthy spirit: it is a whole world in which a specific attitude to the body is formed not so much as an appearance, but as an instrument of self-expression, work, development and research. And in its appearance, sometimes unusual and unusual for people from far away sports, lies real beauty.
On the one hand, sport implies strict standards, on the other hand, these standards themselves are not always and not exactly about appearance: in fact, these are some generally accepted rules of the game "faster, higher, stronger." Say, if the marathon is soon to run, you adjust your diet, gradually increase the distance and connect the accompanying training. Accordingly, what is called drying occurs to the body: in other words, you lose weight and become more fit, but not for beauty, but for business. When you need to take a new value in powerlifting - it does not matter in the gym or at the Olympic Games - you gradually build up muscles and increase the load, and the opinion of others about how feminine your hands or waist are here is clearly not in the first place.
The requirements of an athlete for his body and his appearance are dictated by the characteristics of a particular sport, are associated with the physical capabilities of the body and determine different criteria for what is called performance - "skill level", "performance." Whether it is a certain weight category in a fight or the length of a sprint race, they have their physical form canons everywhere, but they have little in common with social ideals of beauty, which are not born in sports, but come from outside. Recently, the appearance of the Latin American gymnast Alexa Moreno was criticized in social networks and even compared the athlete with a pig. Moreno's powerful physique, which distinguishes her from many colleagues in the discipline, does not prevent the gymnast from showing excellent results at competitions, but it has become another reason for bodybuilding.
← Speech by Alex Moreno at the Olympics in Rio
Transformation of the body in sport is often not a goal, but a consequence, while the goal can be a high result or a challenge to oneself. In addition, sport clearly shows that in controlling your own body and strength, a person can reach an incredible level: you are standing on your hands, but you are running 25 kilometers, although you couldn’t imagine such a thing before. Sport does not end with the desire to lose weight or pump up the buttocks and is not limited to the gym. Of course, in the stubborn pursuit of an immaculate figure there is nothing worth being ashamed of: our body is our business. On the other hand, this striving often proceeds from the non-acceptance of oneself, and in this case there is a risk of going to a manic extreme.
Its victims are not only the so-called fitness geeks, but also professional athletes: eating disorders and depletion of the body by training on the verge of - the results of attempts to achieve compliance of the body with the aesthetic demands of the public. This summer, on the eve of Wimbledon, French tennis player Marion Bartoli admitted that she fears for her life: the desire to lose weight brought the athlete to anorexia and in June Bartoli weighed 44 kg with height 170 cm. Needless to say that constant shaming and ridicule from the fans does not help athletes build healthy relationships with yourself and the world.
Patriarchal bagpipes "what is good and what is bad" is firmly established in all spheres of life, including sports. If the guy has been swinging in the gym for three months now, and his muscles still don’t grow and squeeze 90 kg from his chest, he’s not working at all, he’s not a man at all. The girl, in turn, in no case should not "pump": women "cubes" in the press are not needed, developed arm muscles - even more so. Judging the boundaries of what is permitted, thus fulfilling their personal neuroses, both women and men are taken with equal readiness. In the VKontakte fitness communities, there are regular polls for the best press or buttocks of the month, where six-pack (those same “cubes”) and powerful women's quadriceps fall under the distribution. The line between the gazelle and the "manly woman" turns out to be extremely unsteady, and units fit the gold standard.
Such signs of physicality, which athletes - both amateurs and professionals - can perceive neutrally or positively, often become overgrown with judgments from the outside, and everyday fitness fascism is only one of many social markers. It is even more difficult for outsiders to understand the value system in big sports. If we talk about women's sports, for a long time it was considered a weaker version of the male, and even now it is not always taken seriously: prejudice has found a way out in the production of female sports, where the fetishism sometimes wins over practicality, and in sexism sports journalists and commentators, who case put on display the appearance, age and marital status of athletes. To some extent, such judgments are repelled by professional standards set by male athletes, and in this sense, sexism is both positive (“showed a male result”) and “classical”, such as, for example, Serena Williams regular body-styling. about the powerful physique, then on the subject of nipples, rising from under the tight fit.
As for men, stigma is directed not so much at the body, as at the spirit - or rather, at its inconsistency with the heteronormative canon. Powerful core throwers or sumoists are not sex symbols of the epoch, but no one is particularly indignant at their appearance and behavior: they do not write out flips in shiny costumes, so chauvinists don’t evoke horror, unlike figure skaters or gymnasts. Gender-colored sports are fertile ground for endlessly reproducing stereotypes from which both men and women suffer.
← Speech by Margarita Mamun at the Olympics in Rio
There are whole hit parades of the most feminine sports. In them, as a rule, rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating and athletics are leading, allowing "to develop plasticity, flexibility and elegance", as well as different activity in the fresh air, "because it has a beneficial effect on the skin." In the black list, as a rule, weightlifting, football, martial arts, marathon. In addition to the "anti-women", there are also "too feminine" disciplines: sport on the pylon, a full-fledged form of acrobatics, is still associated with sex services, undeservedly stigmatizing both types of activity.
People who come to the sport, no matter professional or amateur, regularly face condemnation and shaming, and instead of wasting time and energy on developing the capabilities of their body, they are forced to brush off the labels and steadfastly endure the inconsistency with social standards. Whatever it was, the strong and courageous were entrusted with the task of leading their inert congeners out of the darkness of prejudice, so that the political statements of famous athletes and sportswomen are always an important step, and they themselves are a powerful role model.
Teresa Almeida, the goalkeeper of the Angolan women's handball team, admits that she is satisfied with her weight, and calls to fight the prejudiced attitude of society towards non-standard appearance, and Paralympians, one after another, demonstrate incredible strength of body and spirit, recalling that everything is possible. Art projects by cross-gender artist Cassils, whose body is the object of constant experimentation at the intersection of sports, modern art and anthropology, is another proof that sports can constantly expand the boundaries of the known and the possible. The corporality in it is still a difficult social issue, but what is obvious is the fact: sport re-acquaints us with our body and allows us to make friends with it on our own terms, and therefore is inherently bodipositive.
PHOTO: Getty images
