My whole life, I could not catch a ball, hit a birdie with a racket, or care enough to go after the soccer ball. But what I could do was dance, flip and jump everywhere I went. I was as ungraceful as an untrained dancer with unchecked energy could be until I spent ages three to 17 devoting myself to dance, gymnastics and cheerleading. Being an athlete in a performance sport is a tough feeling to describe. When there is no ball to throw or hurdle to jump, your body has a very clear purpose. That purpose is to look as perfect as possible while moving your body as impressively as possible. It seems pretty impossible, does it not? Being in a ballet studio, a gymnastics arena, or a cheer gym means you are constantly training your body, assessing it, comparing it and correcting it. That correction does not end at pointed toes.
“Well, You Don’t have to dance?”
So what happens if you do quit? I realized that all-star cheerleading was destroying me when I was 17 after quitting ballet and then gymnastics, so I quit that too. I had come to accept that being judged for my body’s performance was never going to be healthy for me. I figured, I am no longer being screamed at or being told I am lazy or being told to tighten up my gut at home; I can finally give myself a break! And I did for a while, but the lessons aesthetic sports teach you stick around for longer than the leotard does.
correlation between aesthetic sports and self-esteem
My general definition of an aesthetic sport is any sport that combines appearance and performance-related activities, where body form, grace, and visual presentation carry significant weight in competition. The National Library of Medicine says, “Among adolescent girls and women, research shows that participation in sports that promote leanness for aesthetic reasons…is associated with an increased risk of eating disorders and factors associated with eating disorders including elevated weight concerns, body dissatisfaction, and excessive dieting.”
The Journal of Sports Sciences says, “For athletes, the stress of constantly denying hunger, obsession about food, agonizing over body weight, and fearing high body weight is mentally exhausting,” highlighting how this can last well past your last cheer practice. It is worth noting though many of these studies are mainly focused on young girls, as that is the majority group participating in aesthetic sports, this can become an issue for anyone regardless of age, gender, etc. That being said, the NCAA reported in a study that 53% of male student-athletes were content with their weight and 35% of female student-athletes were content with their weight. It is worth asking: why is it that the size and shape of a woman is so heavily weighted when evaluating her athletic abilities, that girls are significantly more likely than men to have poor body image?
what is my body for if not performance?
Aesthetic sports create unusually specific and rigid expectations for how girls’ bodies should look. There is an undeniably powerful emphasis on being as skinny, tight, toned, and clean as possible. Quitting a sport that forces you to monitor your body so closely, and that often has others doing it for you, can be incredibly liberating. However, it is a struggle to adjust to having a body that doesn’t have a secondary purpose to be judged. Suddenly there is no upcoming competition to require a perfect body, but self-criticism is not something you can erase from your calendar. Quitting can feel conflicting for a lot of people and leave them with one question: “Who am I when I’m not constantly criticizing myself?” Being externally criticized for the purpose of a sport can quickly become internalized after quitting. The emotional consequences are not discussed as much as the onset of back pain, but they are arguably more painful.
There is a future where you love your body
Sports can inspire incredible skills like discipline, strength, confidence, teamwork and more. But they can also teach a young person that their body is an ongoing project that may never be finished. Learning to have a healthy relationship with your body may mean unlearning what a coach said to you at eight years old. But at the end of the day, whether you have quit aesthetic sports, you are still doing them, you never did, or you never will, you should not have to earn the right to be kind to your body with medals. Being yourself, even with Converse instead of ballet slippers, is more than enough.
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