‘I don’t look like everybody else, I’m not sized like everybody else’
Weightlifter Emily Campbell wants her Olympic medal to help shift attitudes on body shape, writes
Inside a garage on an industrial estate in Alfreton, about half an hour from her home town of Nottingham, Emily Campbell flicks the light switch of the dank changing room at her training gym and waits. We look at one another, motionless in the gloom. After around 10 seconds, the bare bulb finally illuminates.
We are in the male changing room because it is the biggest, and has two wooden benches to sit on; the only furniture in an otherwise bare, windowless shell. It is a reminder that away from the glamour of the red carpets and television appearances that follow winning an Olympic weightlifting silver medal, Campbell’s day-to-day life is anything but flash.
This is a key element of the message Campbell wants her recent success in Tokyo to convey: that the girl who came from little, received no funding, grafted for cash to put petrol in her car and lived with her parents because she could not afford rent was still able to prevail. It is something she is passionate about.
Every Olympian talks of being an inspiration, but it is an unspoken fact that some are just more inspirational than others. Campbell is at the very top of the list.
Winning Britain’s first Olympic female weightlifting medal is reason enough, even before you factor in the hardship she endured. But there is one subject on which she is determined not to let her newly earned pedestal go to waste.
Competing in the heaviest weightlifting category, at around 125 kilograms, to the eyes of many she does not fit the conventional image of an elite sportswoman. It is a perception she is intent on changing, every one of her social media posts littered with related hashtags: #plussizefitness, #bigisbeautiful, #girlswholift. Mention of it sparks an impassioned response from the 27-year-old that lasts 6½ unbroken minutes.
“We are all different for a reason. That is what makes the world so special,” she says. “There are so many pressures to look a certain way and be a certain weight on the scales. There are a lot of girls out there who are very slim and slender, look amazing, but they have really bad eating habits. That’s something we need to address. We live in a world where life is governed by Instagram followers and how you look. I’m not a typical female, I don’t look like everybody else and I’m not sized like everybody else.
“I’m not saying everyone should be plus-size or big. But I’m in a category where I lift against girls who are 150kg-plus, so I have to be this big. I’m naturally about 100kg, so I’ve had to put on about 25kg for weightlifting performance. As long as I stay healthy and fit, I don’t see the problem in going up in weight.
“But I’m nearly 6ft and even when I lose weight after weightlifting, I’m not going to be any smaller than a size 16 because of my body frame.”
Campbell says one of the biggest hurdles preventing bigger women from feeling like they belong in sport is the difficulty in finding sportswear to fit them.
“If a girl can’t go into a shop and buy an outfit to start their fitness journey, how do you expect them to make that journey to be healthy?” she says. “The first horrible bit about getting fit and going to the gym is walking in on that first day and getting over that fear.
“If you have to walk in wearing a men’s extra-large T-shirt that makes you look bigger than you are, and some horrible leggings that don’t fit, you’re not going to come back.
“We need to start making the fitness community for everybody. Nobody should be excluded.”
Campbell’s dream would be to link up with a sportswear brand to help them design and promote a range specifically for bigger women. For this, she is thankful that the platform she earned in Tokyo is bigger than for many of Team GB’S medallists.
Few events had as many cameras in attendance as the women’s weightlifting 87kg+ final, primarily due to the participation of New Zealand transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard. When Hubbard failed to produce a clean lift, attention in the British media swiftly turned to Campbell, who smashed her personal best to make the podium.
“The press came for a certain story, didn’t get it and I had to utilise them,” she said. “Having all those eyes on us definitely did have its positives, because we’ve gained more fans of weightlifting in Britain.”
Her exploits have already been life-changing. Not only do people recognise her daily, but she is now financially stable enough to rent her own house.
When Olympic qualification became a reality in 2018 – just three
‘Strangers were saying I’m unattractive. At 19, it was overwhelming to be shamed that way’
years after she had taken up the sport to aid her shot-put ambitions – British Weightlifting told her she would need to raise £10,000 to pay her own way to competitions.
At that stage, she was working in the pastoral care team at a special educational needs school, but she moved to become a part-time receptionist to devote more time to weightlifting. When Covid struck and she was laid off, she struggled for what little income she could muster from talks and workshops – but “essentially lived off the bank of Mum and Dad”.
That should change now, with her silver medal almost certain to yield some form of UK Sport funding heading into the Paris Olympics. It would be a welcome addition, but not so much as any shift in attitude towards bigger women in sport.
“Someone will put up a video of you competing and people will comment, ‘Did fatty win?’ or ‘Look at the state of her’,” she says.
“If you don’t bring value to my life then your opinion isn’t valid to me. I’m lucky that I know who I am, I believe in who I am and I’m confident in that. But I’m trying to be a voice for people who do get affected.”
That is the thing about Campbell’s Olympic medal – it means so much more than a piece of silver.