There’s a rumble in the jungle as Rebecca Adlington lets it all out. But why are sportswomen becoming the victims of low body confidence? Lauren Carbran investigates…
The hare and the bear in the John Lewis advert make me well up like a kid; tissues everywhere, mascara going crazy. I even get a tad emotional during the key changes in X factor sing-offs (Why?). But no piece of TV touched me more than Rebecca Adlington’s breakdown last Thursday on I’m a Celebrity. More than 10 million viewers watched the Olympian run off and cry about her lack of body self-confidence.
Adlington has won two gold medals, two bronze and been awarded an OBE. But has sport affected Adlington’s self-confidence? It evidently has, and sadly so. On the show, she admitted to insecurities about her muscular build and looks, as well as being a victim of Twitter trolls.
She said: “It makes me very, very insecure that I have to look a certain way. For me, I was an athlete, I wasn’t trying to be a model, but pretty much every single week on Twitter I get somebody commenting on the way I look.”
Another prey for sport bullies has been Fatima Whitbread – former World and Olympic javelin thrower. Sport has meant that Fatima’s body overdeveloped into a medal winning muscular machine. But she too became the ultimate victim in the Twitter playground.
When you look at Fatima, though, have you ever thought about the effort and work it must have taken to achieve such an athlete’s body? It’s sad that our focus is naturally on the athletes’ outer appearance rather than their utmost achievements for their country.
But to me, Rebecca IS beautiful, inside and out. Yes, she may not be a size 8 or 10, but who cares? Rebecca’s situation suggests that achieving the most ideal sporting body isn’t asking the public to rate you on an Abercrombie scale of beauty. Her body is unique to her, not forgetting that it’s won her the title of Britain’s most successful ever swimmer.
What is clear is that in both cases, lack of body confidence has derived from the jungle animals of social media who bite and rip their confidence apart. The ‘perfect body’ scale really deserves to be crunched up and thrown into the fires of Mount Doom.
So all has been let out in the jungle (the mighty jungle) this week and I think we can learn a thing or two from it. Whatever sport you do, your body is perfect because it is working and trying its best. Society will always have a front row seat with its’ intimidating and judgmental manner, but in sport, the more you try and the more you achieve is the ultimate perfection.
Edited by Caroline Chan