My plan for girls’ PE: Hoodies like Beyoncé... and NO mirrors
MY OVERRIDING memory of primary school was dread that I might, at some point, have to expose a part of my anatomy. Sport was not liberating or energising, it was unkind, uncomfortable. I never had the right kit: all the other girls had plain white swimming caps, while I had to wear my mum’s far-too-large roses-bedecked horror. It would inevitably come astray and float, like a stingray, towards the other girls, who would all shriek.
I felt my body was wrong; not like other girls’ at all. I was physically timid: I would baulk at even the lowest obstacle in cross-country running; I’d cry if splashed. A forward roll was painful. I didn’t even own a pair of plimsolls; I had to borrow from the cupboard where a store of ancient, saggy shoes was kept for the poor children.
My relationship with sport didn’t really improve in high school. I felt my thighs looked fat in the navy culottes we were forced to wear for hockey. In netball, having endured the humiliation of being picked last for the team, I never took a shot at goal as I was worried my white Airtex top would ride up, and expose my tummy. I avoided swimming lessons by nurturing a verruca. PE meant pulling on that most horrendous of garments: the leotard. Changing for tennis involved a strange dance of the seven veils behind an enormous towel.
I never once washed after exercise: who on earth would install communal showers in an all-girls grammar? I had started to diet aged 11: I think part of my compulsion to lose weight was because I was horrified that any change to my body would probably, knowing my luck, make it worse. I would bulge in the wrong places. But even my Canutian halting of puberty had its drawbacks: I was never able to claim a time of the month to get me out of games. That too set me apart. The fact I was never excused caused much merriment and bullying. ‘Izzy Wizzy Lizzie is never going to get busy!’
All of which is why I wasn’t remotely surprised or shocked by the news last week (from the University of Bristol; there’s some irony in the name) that two in three girls give up on exercise by the age of nine.
The reason? Not smartphones or boxsets, but low self-esteem. It’s long been the consensus that it’s teenage girls who stop exercising, mortified by the fact their breasts are suddenly bouncing, that boys might be watching, that their make-up is running.
BUT the anxiety about your body really starts much younger than that. I remember on my first day at school, aged five, being too afraid to go across the playground, in case another child knocked me over: they were all running around.
I sat at strange angles in class, as I was convinced my profile was hideous. At playtime, we were always forced out into the playground, but I would always shiver by the door like a pony in a storm without a rug, begging to be allowed back inside.
Of course, in my late teens and early 20s, I learned to use exer- cise as a means to an end: reducing my body mass. No longer a slave to school uniform, I discovered those baggy sweats ballet dancers use to keep their limbs warm. Exercise wasn’t about fun, it was about punishing my body for not being thin enough.
We all know that a sedentary lifestyle leads to obesity and even, it’s now thought, to Alzheimer’s. But how do we get young girls to celebrate their bodies and their ability and their strength? Female sporting role models never helped me: I’d look at Olga Korbut’s breasts like mere buds, her physical bravery and think: My God, I have a long way to go, so why bother?
In primary schools, we need to ban team sports, and anything that involves mirrors or water or undressing. We should make exercise a means to an end: a hike taking in wildlife or picking up litter instead of a run.
Let’s ban leotards, and go for baggy, hip-hop Beyoncé-like hoodies and baggies. Introduce dog walking and riding. Eradicate communal showers from every school. And how about more choice? The only sport I enjoyed in high school was fencing. Even the language was empowering: En garde!