‘I was once ashamed of my body but now I want to show it off’
➤ The England Sevens player Abi Burton was diagnosed with body dysmorphia and now aims to help fellow sufferers
Abi Burton is very specific about what she wants to wear for the portraits that will accompany this interview. Often, sportspeople will want to make sure that they are showing off the logo of a sponsor, but Burton’s choice has a much deeper meaning.
She is keen to wear a crop top decorated with Japanese cherry blossom. The pattern symbolises what she hopes will be her journey to the Tokyo Olympics with Great Britain Sevens, but of more significance is how much of herself the garment reveals, while she stands outside on a chilly, blustery morning in Acton, west London.
Burton, 21, wants to show that after years of suffering from body dysmorphia and crippling selfdoubt she is ready to demonstrate to the world how proud she is of her body – a professional rugby player’s body.
It was not always this way. Burton had a happy childhood growing up in the rugby league heartland of Castleford, where it was clear she and her younger twin brothers Joe and Oliver were destined to take after their father, Danny, formerly of Halifax and Bradford Bulls. However, after ditching league for gymnastics, athletics and swimming, Burton decided to return to her rugby roots as puberty hit.
This is where her problems began. “I had inherited my dad’s muscular genes,” she says. “In sport, people would absolutely love to have the ability to put on muscle mass so easily. But as a young girl going through high school and puberty, it wasn’t something I was very proud of. It was something I wanted to hide from the ages of 13 to this day.”
Burton has decided to speak out on what were torrid teenage years, in the hope that her revelations will help others. Hence, her decision to have her photo taken looking exactly as she does in training – no airbrushing and no doctoring.
Rugby was her escape while she was tormented about her appearance in school. “I didn’t hate how I looked on a rugby pitch, but I hated how I looked in normal clothes,” she says. “I could not cope with how l looked in a dress.
“I didn’t fit in at all. I stuck out like a sore thumb! I had bleachblonde hair and was 5ft 7in at the age of 13, with muscles bigger than the majority of the boys in my high school. I got picked on because of it.
“And it wasn’t by other girls – it was by boys, and that shocked me a little bit more that the boys would feel that way. I was more broad, I looked bigger in a school shirt and from that I got comments like, ‘She looks like a man’, ‘flabby Abi’, ‘she’s a bloke’, ‘why is she going in the girls changing rooms because she looks like a bloke?’”
Burton is part of Generation Z, a cohort who seem even more comfortable than their millennial predecessors with talking about societal issues, but these taunts still cut to the quick.
“It may sound really superficial, but between the ages of 13 and 18, you feel really selfconscious but you just want to fit in and be liked by the boys if you are straight. All I wanted was to be liked by the boys,” she says. “Now that I look back on it, it is what society instils into us to be approved by males, that is what you’re taught between 13 to 18.
“I have come away from it and grown up
and realised it is a product of society. All I wanted was to be liked, and when people are constantly bashing your appearance it has a negative effect on you mentally.”
Burton was desperate to hide her pain, with only her mother knowing the depth of her anguish. Shopping trips to the White Rose centre in Leeds seem to have caused much more stress than representing her country.
“My mum used to take me out shopping to buy me a whole new outfit, so I would feel confident enough going to a party. On the day of the party I would be really upset, saying I didn’t want to go because ‘I look fat, all the other girls are tiny, they have thigh gaps, no one looks like me’.
“I would just cry in my bedroom. My mum did everything that she could; we used to spend so long trying to find me a new outfit to try to make me feel better. And then sometimes, I still wouldn’t be able to go.”
But this was only the surface of Burton’s anguish. Her voice breaks as she begins to describe how she used binge-eating as a coping mechanism. This led to occasional purging, which she has never spoken publicly about before.
“When I was at my most down, I would eat and eat and eat and eat. And then I would feel sick and I would make myself throw up,” she says, her voice breaking. “At the time, I didn’t think it was much of an issue, but it probably was a big issue. I don’t feel that way anymore, because I don’t go down a binge-eat spiral very often – sometimes when I don’t get selected. The last time I properly binge-ate was when I didn’t get selected for the Olympic qualifiers in 2019. I went home and ate my feelings and then pulled myself together.”
A turning point for Burton was joining the England sevens programme in 2018, and she credits the support of World Cup winner Natasha Hunt with guiding her towards her journey to body positivity.
“I wore a swimming costume while all the other girls wore bikinis and I remember Ellie Kildunne, who is a close friend, telling me to wear a bikini. I told her I didn’t feel comfortable. She said no one would care. I sheepishly walked downstairs in my bikini. No one cared. I then spoke to Natasha Hunt and told her I felt self-conscious because my skin folds were higher than everybody else’s. She told me that no one cared what I looked like as long as I performed well on the pitch. For her to say that to me was everything I needed. From that moment I decided to share my story.”
So, Burton went on Instagram and set up a page showing what the body of a real athlete looks like, eschewing social media norms of
‘I want to feel like I am liberating women so they can be open and honest about their body’
filtered and posed photos. She also credits the story of her maternal great-grandfather, who fought in the British Army during the Second World War, as providing inspiration through his experience as a Jewish prisoner of war.
Many of her former bullies are now her friends and are proud to have gone to school with a potential Olympian. One ally is Leeds United player and former classmate Jamie Shackleton, who has been a huge source of strength. “Jamie never said anything cruel, he was always a good mate. It is brilliant to have a friend who is also trying to make it to the top in sport, it is great having him there, as he gets it.”
There is no doubt Burton has a bright future, but she wants her purpose to be more than just that of a rugby player.
“Someone can tell you how great you look, but unless you believe them, then it doesn’t matter what other people say. There are still days when I don’t believe people when they tell me I look well. I felt I was in a place where I could talk about my body. I know I am not the finished article. I know I am still going through my journey, but I needed to get it out there because of the amount of girls out there who feel the same way I felt.
“My page isn’t for me to show off my body, I just want to feel like I am liberating women so they can be open and honest about their body.”