Bill Martha Saint Michael in the book ‘A form of permanence’ (Illustrated Hooligans, KO Books) that one day she stopped being a soccer player. It was during one of those games that were played in the school recess, surrounded by suddenly thick beards. That day a ball came straight at her, she controlled it and perched on her chest as if she were a pillow, with a newly bought non-wired bra under her. Soccer changed that day for her, it became more uncomfortable. She was no longer a girl with a ball.
Reading this excerpt reminded me of a classmate who used to wear a swimsuit under her workout clothes so her chest wouldn’t show when running during gym class. One day, when she was shedding her capes in her locker room, she told me that the boys teased her by playing the sound of a ball every time she trotted across the floor: “Boing, boing, boing.”
Marta’s episode happened more than 20 years ago, just like my classmate’s, but things don’t seem to have changed much since then. recently published a study of ‘Women in Sport‘ which concludes that more than a million girls in United Kingdom who considered themselves athletes in elementary school lose interest in physical activity during adolescence. Fear of being judged and lack of confidence are the main reasons for this loss of interest. In short, adolescents do not abandon sports simply because their priorities change, they also do so out of modesty or lack of information about managing puberty. Information is often lacking, for example, on whether exercise is beneficial during menstrual pain (which you begin to live with at that age) or which exercises are best suited to the different stages of the cycle. And there is one last factor: trust is also directly related to representation, and female representation continues to be lower than male representation.
It would be necessary to ensure that young girls want to continue competing, even if they do not have a natural talent for sport, without fear of being judged, without external emphasis on the search for excellence, with information, stimuli and references. Simply, that the patio continues to belong to everyone when bodies change.