Your piece gave me a thought. As a fat kid, i was never allowed to “play” at all. Instead, i was forced to “exercise.” And believe me, there’s a world of difference in those two words.
yes! I was a “large” kid (I remember being embarrassed by how little kid the plus size kid fashions were), and I felt like I could enjoy movement up until someone told me I had to exercise to keep my body “in check.” I just wanted to play, and my developing body needed to be soft in a world that wanted it yo be angular.
I have so much to say. My kiddo was a high level competitive gymnast, on track for division 1 college level gymnastics (that’s a really big deal). She was working out 25 hours a week. Not because we wanted her to but because she wanted to and her coaches wanted her to. Right before she turned 13 she decided to stop because it wasn’t bringing her joy (I’m so proud of her for making this decision!). Since then, her periods have normalized, she’s grown numerous inches and gone up a clothing size or 2 even though she is now doing cross country running, rock climbing, and riding her bike 2 miles (total) every day to get to and from school. We celebrate her growth every step of the way. Also? She’s turned into a different person. She used to be shy and quiet. Now she’s gregarious and outgoing. There was nothing wrong with shy and quiet and we always thought it was just her personality. This person who has time to explore new things and who isn’t exhausted all the time? Is a chatterbox who likes getting the shy kids to open up and talk. She’s now much more accepting of people and celebrates differences rather than thinking they’re “strange”. She went from telling us that she never wanted to go on a trip or to a camp without us to asking to go on a school trip to Europe for 10 days where parents aren’t allowed to chaperone (she’s going!). Some of this could be maturity but most of it we attribute to stopping gymnastics. She was at a great gym with coaches we loved who were very aware of eating disorders and always prioritized the child’s health over gymnastics. One of the coaches is a legend in gymnastics and had a very abusive parent and coach growing up. She protects those girls like a total mama bear and is hyper aware of eating issues. They gave classes on proper nutrition for their growing bodies…and still…it had a very negative impact on my kid’s body and mind. Stopping gymnastics was one of the best things my kiddo ever did.
My son is currently in swim, taught by a local swim team. I chose them for a lot of reasons, but it had little to do with the team aspect and a lot to do with the fact that they do welcome without commentary bodies of all sizes. The coaches are all ages, shapes, genders, and sizes, and they want the kids who participate to love what they’re doing, and if a kid isn’t enjoying it, they talk to the kid first to find out what’s going on so that their wishes are respected. I love that the swim shop they’re partnered with stocks - REALLY STOCKS — suits of all sizes so every Body swimming has a training suit to fit. I’ve heard a lot of body talk get addressed in healthy ways and I love seeing all the representation the club strives for.
Do I think they get it right all the time? I don’t. But as a kid who heard constantly that when someone in her family had my body type as a child they were “too big” to swim/dance/run/play, it did a lot to my psyche. Now, I work very hard to be an all foods included household. An all bodies are good bodies household. A “we don’t just live on candy because we need to poop sometimes” household (but if we want to eat all candy one weekend day, sure? Just let’s brush our teeth really well because cavities hurt)
I think coaches have to be trained but there is no real criteria/certification to prevent this type of harm. When we think about how adults influence the development of children we tend to just think about parents and immediate caregivers. So many of the clients I’ve worked with have suffered due to coaching strategies, comments, and even abuse. Kids/young adults spend so much time with them generally in a season of their lives when they want to be independent and think for themselves. If a coach says it, most kids listen like the gospel. Diet culture is the harmful macro-culture, but sport/coaching is the micro-culture where harm sticks.
Yes! One of my goals in life is to help the Positive Coaching Alliance incorporate trainings (for coaches, players, and parents) in eating disorders, body image, etc. https://positivecoach.org/
The article about injury leading to eating disorders in dancers stopped me cold. As an adult I hurt myself rock climbing, and I relapsed into the eating disorder I had as a teenager. I wasn't even anywhere close to a "competitive" climber (and have never been). I wish I could read the article without paying $25! Although I know that plenty of weight or aesthetic related sports have ED issues, I never thought that there would be a similar connection to injury and EDs that I experienced as well. I have a lot of thoughts about the association, though.
Injury as a precipitating factor for ED has come up in my reporting a ton. If I can dig up some other research I've seen on it (that isn't paywalled), I'll post it. But there is absolutely an established relationship especially when the sport in question has become a major part of someone's identity.
Britni's my favorite sports writer, so I wanted to share their recent article in case it hadn't come across your desk (screen?) yet. I don't think it directly addresses youth sports, but it still has a lot of good points about which athletes are allowed to be fat or have bigger bodies, how society regards fat athletes from various sports, as well as how acceptance of fat athletes risks falling into the "good fatty" trope.
I think the "who doesn't get to play" question is huge, and I love the idea of bringing anti-bias training into coaching (though in my experiences being coached in public high school, coaches were largely bereft of any training or support at all--more often they were youngish teachers or else low-paid or volunteer community members appointed to coach and sent on their way with few resources and not a ton of knowledge of any kind). But I would push back on the idea that, because injuries can be incurred and eating disorders can emerge, kids' sports are "not about health." Health is complicated, of course, and different forms of health can co-exist in tension. I would have had my high school eating disorder with or without sports, I strongly believe. I know this because plenty of my friends had similar disorders without being athletes, and I wouldn't give up everything I got (and still get) from sports, mentally and physically, for anything, not even to get back the time I wasted on struggling with food and body image. I also believe pretty strongly that we should aim for a society that offers ways for people to enjoy whatever form of movement they choose--but also that there are certain people for whom the greatest joy in movement is found in intense competition--in trying to win!--and think one of the truly tough challenges is finding space in sports (and adjacent activities like dance) for people who love to excel and/or compete at a high level but don't fit the mold, body-wise. As some of the linked articles touch on, this problem is also deeply intertwined with issues around gender and ability biases and also with inequalities of access. Anyway, just one aspect of what you are studying and talking about here, I know. Great, thought-provoking roundup as always and wonderful comment thread as well; I will be musing on this for a while.
Thank you so much for this. I hear what you're saying; I guess what I'm pushing back on here is the way youth sport is so often marketed as "good for health" without any real acknowledgment of the high rates of injuries and ED. There has been a real fail to reckon with and even (in elite spaces) efforts to disguise what's going on there, which feels very counter to a goal of promoting kids' health.
And agreed, EDs are not caused by sports participation, but sports can be a triggering event, just like a fatphobic comment from a pediatrician -- so we should be working to minimize those trigger events across the board both because it's good ED prevention and because it's good for everyone if kids encounter less fatphobia!
PS. This part of your comment REALLY resonates:
"...there are certain people for whom the greatest joy in movement is found in intense competition--in trying to win!--and think one of the truly tough challenges is finding space in sports (and adjacent activities like dance) for people who love to excel and/or compete at a high level but don't fit the mold, body-wise."
I was thinking the same thing about giving coaches training. The experiences we’ve had with kid sports is that the coaches were parents rushing home from work to get to practice on time. I think the only way we’re going to get past weight stigmas in sports is if, as a society, we really decide they are bullshit.
My fiancé was a wrestler in high school, and hearing him reflect on his stories is absolutely appalling. He holds no qualms that the things they did to their bodies — starve, overexercise, sweat it out to the point of nearly passing out all to make weight, then binge on anything to bulk up after getting off the scale to be to a point of actually being able to compete — is absolutely disordered.
I hope it's ok to still contribute to this conversation. When I read your investigative piece this morning on jeans I remembered an association that I had previously forgotten between jeans and fatphobia and athletics and........summer camp. Growing up I personally did not have a good relationship with jeans. So, when I had kids, I tried to protect them from this experience and I never proactively suggested they try on or buy or go into the jean department of any store. I wanted them to have self-esteem and I just did not believe that jean design had advanced at all. We managed to avoid jeans until we the summer we tried sleepaway camp. On two different occasions - the first time with my eldest daughter who is now 18 and the second time with my son who is now 14, I signed them up for sleep away camp because I felt it would be a good experience for my "sporty" kids to get out of the city and spend a few weeks of "healthy living" - in particular trying different sports activities and hiking. On both occasions we received a mandatory packing list for camp which included "2-3" pairs of jeans. We were forced to go shopping for jeans because they were the required uniform for hikes and camping and it was seriously traumatizing. Standing outside the fitting room I blamed myself for not having built the "jean fitting" muscle over time and for not doing the research you have just done, Virginia or I might have been able to target a design that might have fit them comfortably without forcing them to try on so many pairs.
Both jean shopping experiments were horrible and because we needed the "jeans uniform" for camp I ended up buying a small pile of ill fitting jeans for both kids. They hated the jeans. They only went to camp that one summer and while I can't say the jeans alone were at fault, I absolutely think that the sleep away camp experiment was doomed to failure when it began in a really uneasy place - specifically a fitting room trying on jeans.
In short, I think camps must be a safe place where kids can be athletic and feel great about themselves and camp packing lists should clearly state that kids should be encouraged to wear clothes that enable this goal. Absolutely NO mandatory jeans. Maybe camps have evolved since my experience. I really hope so.
I am SO FASCINATED by this but mostly because WHO WANTS TO HIKE IN JEANS. Like that's the least comfortable fabric I can imagine for outdoorsy activities. Hot, heavy, bleh. Thank you for sharing, this is such an interesting set of intersections.
I know what you mean! Of course now I would say to my kids, "sorry no jeans kids let's find some pants made of comfortable fabric that you can really hike in......when they say you need jeans they can't possibly mean that!" But actually, they did really mean that everyone should happily hike in jeans. I wonder if some camp might be so invested in their "traditions" that they will not change their practices unless a parent calls attention to their outdated attitudes and screams. In general I feel this is still true of many athletics "spaces". So appreciate the dialogue and your work.
Yes, I feel like this camp just wanted the cute vintage-y Instagram pic of kids hiking in jeans. Which they did in the 1970s because we did not yet have technical fabrics! So dumb.
Your piece gave me a thought. As a fat kid, i was never allowed to “play” at all. Instead, i was forced to “exercise.” And believe me, there’s a world of difference in those two words.
HUGE DIFFERENCE.
yes! I was a “large” kid (I remember being embarrassed by how little kid the plus size kid fashions were), and I felt like I could enjoy movement up until someone told me I had to exercise to keep my body “in check.” I just wanted to play, and my developing body needed to be soft in a world that wanted it yo be angular.
I have so much to say. My kiddo was a high level competitive gymnast, on track for division 1 college level gymnastics (that’s a really big deal). She was working out 25 hours a week. Not because we wanted her to but because she wanted to and her coaches wanted her to. Right before she turned 13 she decided to stop because it wasn’t bringing her joy (I’m so proud of her for making this decision!). Since then, her periods have normalized, she’s grown numerous inches and gone up a clothing size or 2 even though she is now doing cross country running, rock climbing, and riding her bike 2 miles (total) every day to get to and from school. We celebrate her growth every step of the way. Also? She’s turned into a different person. She used to be shy and quiet. Now she’s gregarious and outgoing. There was nothing wrong with shy and quiet and we always thought it was just her personality. This person who has time to explore new things and who isn’t exhausted all the time? Is a chatterbox who likes getting the shy kids to open up and talk. She’s now much more accepting of people and celebrates differences rather than thinking they’re “strange”. She went from telling us that she never wanted to go on a trip or to a camp without us to asking to go on a school trip to Europe for 10 days where parents aren’t allowed to chaperone (she’s going!). Some of this could be maturity but most of it we attribute to stopping gymnastics. She was at a great gym with coaches we loved who were very aware of eating disorders and always prioritized the child’s health over gymnastics. One of the coaches is a legend in gymnastics and had a very abusive parent and coach growing up. She protects those girls like a total mama bear and is hyper aware of eating issues. They gave classes on proper nutrition for their growing bodies…and still…it had a very negative impact on my kid’s body and mind. Stopping gymnastics was one of the best things my kiddo ever did.
I can’t stop thinking about this. What a transformative moment for her.
This is going to sit with me all day. Thank you for sharing
My son is currently in swim, taught by a local swim team. I chose them for a lot of reasons, but it had little to do with the team aspect and a lot to do with the fact that they do welcome without commentary bodies of all sizes. The coaches are all ages, shapes, genders, and sizes, and they want the kids who participate to love what they’re doing, and if a kid isn’t enjoying it, they talk to the kid first to find out what’s going on so that their wishes are respected. I love that the swim shop they’re partnered with stocks - REALLY STOCKS — suits of all sizes so every Body swimming has a training suit to fit. I’ve heard a lot of body talk get addressed in healthy ways and I love seeing all the representation the club strives for.
Do I think they get it right all the time? I don’t. But as a kid who heard constantly that when someone in her family had my body type as a child they were “too big” to swim/dance/run/play, it did a lot to my psyche. Now, I work very hard to be an all foods included household. An all bodies are good bodies household. A “we don’t just live on candy because we need to poop sometimes” household (but if we want to eat all candy one weekend day, sure? Just let’s brush our teeth really well because cavities hurt)
Finding a program like that is GOLD.
I think coaches have to be trained but there is no real criteria/certification to prevent this type of harm. When we think about how adults influence the development of children we tend to just think about parents and immediate caregivers. So many of the clients I’ve worked with have suffered due to coaching strategies, comments, and even abuse. Kids/young adults spend so much time with them generally in a season of their lives when they want to be independent and think for themselves. If a coach says it, most kids listen like the gospel. Diet culture is the harmful macro-culture, but sport/coaching is the micro-culture where harm sticks.
Such a helpful framing, thank you Leslie! It sounds like there is a real opportunity for some evidence-based training or certification process…
Yes! One of my goals in life is to help the Positive Coaching Alliance incorporate trainings (for coaches, players, and parents) in eating disorders, body image, etc. https://positivecoach.org/
The article about injury leading to eating disorders in dancers stopped me cold. As an adult I hurt myself rock climbing, and I relapsed into the eating disorder I had as a teenager. I wasn't even anywhere close to a "competitive" climber (and have never been). I wish I could read the article without paying $25! Although I know that plenty of weight or aesthetic related sports have ED issues, I never thought that there would be a similar connection to injury and EDs that I experienced as well. I have a lot of thoughts about the association, though.
Injury as a precipitating factor for ED has come up in my reporting a ton. If I can dig up some other research I've seen on it (that isn't paywalled), I'll post it. But there is absolutely an established relationship especially when the sport in question has become a major part of someone's identity.
That’s really fascinating. I’d love to read whatever you can find.
Britni's my favorite sports writer, so I wanted to share their recent article in case it hadn't come across your desk (screen?) yet. I don't think it directly addresses youth sports, but it still has a lot of good points about which athletes are allowed to be fat or have bigger bodies, how society regards fat athletes from various sports, as well as how acceptance of fat athletes risks falling into the "good fatty" trope.
https://globalsportmatters.com/culture/2022/02/22/creating-positive-spaces-fat-athletes/
Thank you! Their work is new to me and so excellent!
I think the "who doesn't get to play" question is huge, and I love the idea of bringing anti-bias training into coaching (though in my experiences being coached in public high school, coaches were largely bereft of any training or support at all--more often they were youngish teachers or else low-paid or volunteer community members appointed to coach and sent on their way with few resources and not a ton of knowledge of any kind). But I would push back on the idea that, because injuries can be incurred and eating disorders can emerge, kids' sports are "not about health." Health is complicated, of course, and different forms of health can co-exist in tension. I would have had my high school eating disorder with or without sports, I strongly believe. I know this because plenty of my friends had similar disorders without being athletes, and I wouldn't give up everything I got (and still get) from sports, mentally and physically, for anything, not even to get back the time I wasted on struggling with food and body image. I also believe pretty strongly that we should aim for a society that offers ways for people to enjoy whatever form of movement they choose--but also that there are certain people for whom the greatest joy in movement is found in intense competition--in trying to win!--and think one of the truly tough challenges is finding space in sports (and adjacent activities like dance) for people who love to excel and/or compete at a high level but don't fit the mold, body-wise. As some of the linked articles touch on, this problem is also deeply intertwined with issues around gender and ability biases and also with inequalities of access. Anyway, just one aspect of what you are studying and talking about here, I know. Great, thought-provoking roundup as always and wonderful comment thread as well; I will be musing on this for a while.
Thank you so much for this. I hear what you're saying; I guess what I'm pushing back on here is the way youth sport is so often marketed as "good for health" without any real acknowledgment of the high rates of injuries and ED. There has been a real fail to reckon with and even (in elite spaces) efforts to disguise what's going on there, which feels very counter to a goal of promoting kids' health.
And agreed, EDs are not caused by sports participation, but sports can be a triggering event, just like a fatphobic comment from a pediatrician -- so we should be working to minimize those trigger events across the board both because it's good ED prevention and because it's good for everyone if kids encounter less fatphobia!
PS. This part of your comment REALLY resonates:
"...there are certain people for whom the greatest joy in movement is found in intense competition--in trying to win!--and think one of the truly tough challenges is finding space in sports (and adjacent activities like dance) for people who love to excel and/or compete at a high level but don't fit the mold, body-wise."
I was thinking the same thing about giving coaches training. The experiences we’ve had with kid sports is that the coaches were parents rushing home from work to get to practice on time. I think the only way we’re going to get past weight stigmas in sports is if, as a society, we really decide they are bullshit.
That’s a really important point. I think coach training happens at like, very elite levels. But not so much in the after school sports space. Bleh.
My fiancé was a wrestler in high school, and hearing him reflect on his stories is absolutely appalling. He holds no qualms that the things they did to their bodies — starve, overexercise, sweat it out to the point of nearly passing out all to make weight, then binge on anything to bulk up after getting off the scale to be to a point of actually being able to compete — is absolutely disordered.
I hope it's ok to still contribute to this conversation. When I read your investigative piece this morning on jeans I remembered an association that I had previously forgotten between jeans and fatphobia and athletics and........summer camp. Growing up I personally did not have a good relationship with jeans. So, when I had kids, I tried to protect them from this experience and I never proactively suggested they try on or buy or go into the jean department of any store. I wanted them to have self-esteem and I just did not believe that jean design had advanced at all. We managed to avoid jeans until we the summer we tried sleepaway camp. On two different occasions - the first time with my eldest daughter who is now 18 and the second time with my son who is now 14, I signed them up for sleep away camp because I felt it would be a good experience for my "sporty" kids to get out of the city and spend a few weeks of "healthy living" - in particular trying different sports activities and hiking. On both occasions we received a mandatory packing list for camp which included "2-3" pairs of jeans. We were forced to go shopping for jeans because they were the required uniform for hikes and camping and it was seriously traumatizing. Standing outside the fitting room I blamed myself for not having built the "jean fitting" muscle over time and for not doing the research you have just done, Virginia or I might have been able to target a design that might have fit them comfortably without forcing them to try on so many pairs.
Both jean shopping experiments were horrible and because we needed the "jeans uniform" for camp I ended up buying a small pile of ill fitting jeans for both kids. They hated the jeans. They only went to camp that one summer and while I can't say the jeans alone were at fault, I absolutely think that the sleep away camp experiment was doomed to failure when it began in a really uneasy place - specifically a fitting room trying on jeans.
In short, I think camps must be a safe place where kids can be athletic and feel great about themselves and camp packing lists should clearly state that kids should be encouraged to wear clothes that enable this goal. Absolutely NO mandatory jeans. Maybe camps have evolved since my experience. I really hope so.
I am SO FASCINATED by this but mostly because WHO WANTS TO HIKE IN JEANS. Like that's the least comfortable fabric I can imagine for outdoorsy activities. Hot, heavy, bleh. Thank you for sharing, this is such an interesting set of intersections.
I know what you mean! Of course now I would say to my kids, "sorry no jeans kids let's find some pants made of comfortable fabric that you can really hike in......when they say you need jeans they can't possibly mean that!" But actually, they did really mean that everyone should happily hike in jeans. I wonder if some camp might be so invested in their "traditions" that they will not change their practices unless a parent calls attention to their outdated attitudes and screams. In general I feel this is still true of many athletics "spaces". So appreciate the dialogue and your work.
Yes, I feel like this camp just wanted the cute vintage-y Instagram pic of kids hiking in jeans. Which they did in the 1970s because we did not yet have technical fabrics! So dumb.