Asha De­Fre­itas-Mose­ley

The world to­day is full of im­ages that are beau­ti­ful and en­tic­ing large­ly be­cause hu­mans are very vi­su­al­ly stim­u­lat­ed crea­tures.

Ad­ver­tise­ments have be­come more than a way of build­ing pub­lic aware­ness. They have be­come more than just bait to fish. Ad­ver­tise­ments have come to de­fine so­cial norms par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to the way they de­fine beau­ty. One way that this has be­come par­tic­u­lar­ly true is with ref­er­ence to the fe­male per­cep­tion of their phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance.

As young girls, the fe­male gen­der be­comes very pre-oc­cu­pied with their ap­pear­ance, the im­age they project and how this rep­re­sents who they are (or think they are) and this pre-oc­cu­pa­tion of­ten con­tin­ues in­to wom­an­hood. The goal is al­ways to fit the de­f­i­n­i­tion of what is "beau­ti­ful" or "at­trac­tive" as it is rep­re­sent­ed in the glossy mag­a­zines and re­al­i­ty shows, even if it means squeez­ing their way in­to a size too small, or a style that doesn't suit their body type, or starve them­selves; surg­eries to nip, tuck, aug­ment, re­move... all in the name of "beau­ty."

In my re­search, I learned that there are sev­er­al fac­tors that af­fect the way a crea­ture re­sponds to their re­flec­tion. In­ter­est­ing­ly, they in­clude species, sex, age, eth­nic group, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, mood, eat­ing dis­or­ders, what they've been watch­ing on TV, what mag­a­zines they read, whether they're mar­ried or sin­gle, what kind of child­hood they had, whether they take part in sports, what phase of the men­stru­al cy­cle they're in, whether they are preg­nant, where they've been shop­ping-and even what they had for lunch. Think about it. As ridicu­lous as some of those things might seem, it's true!

So, the me­dia takes con­trol of the minds of our beau­ti­ful young daugh­ters, shape the ex­pec­ta­tions of our sons how­ev­er ridicu­lous... But then there is sports!

Ti­tle IX, in the 1970s, great­ly in­flu­enced the op­por­tu­ni­ties for women at the col­le­giate lev­el to play com­pet­i­tive sport, start­ing a new wave of con­sid­er­a­tion to­wards putting daugh­ters through uni­ver­si­ty, of young girls view­ing the longevi­ty of their ath­let­ic ca­reers, which has led to a greater pres­ence of women in elite sports. The fe­male head count on the Great Britain team at the Lon­don Olympics that con­clud­ed just a few months ago was the high­est ever, while Sau­di Ara­bia, Qatar and Brunei all en­tered fe­male ath­letes for the first time ever. While women of the free world al­low them­selves to be en­slaved by false pro­jec­tions of what de­fines a woman, there are oth­ers liv­ing in a vast­ly dif­fer­ent world try­ing to break free of such im­po­si­tions.

Whether it is be­cause of per­form­ing well in some­thing they en­joy, be­ing amongst like-mind­ed piers, or just pur­su­ing a hob­by, some­thing they en­joy do­ing in a con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment with­out hav­ing to feel awk­ward, the self-es­teem of young girls when they are in­volved in sport is high­er than girls not ath­let­i­cal­ly in­volved. The rea­son? Be­cause ath­let­ic con­quest is not about point­less aes­thet­ics but about per­for­mance. It is about set­ting out on a path to achieve a par­tic­u­lar goal be it the world record or a per­son­al best, and achiev­ing it.

At the 33rd An­nu­al Salute to Women in Sport, host­ed by the Women's Sports Foun­da­tion, the fe­male sports stars ad­dressed the is­sue of body im­age with the young and still in­flu­en­tial minds of lit­tle girls as­pir­ing to be their fa­vorite ath­lete. They high­light the many shapes and sizes fe­male ath­letes come in. They high­light the false rep­re­sen­ta­tions in the mag­a­zines of pho­to­shopped, air­brushed women. Amer­i­can soc­cer play­er, Alex Mor­gan en­cour­aged the young ladies who at­tend­ed, to love their bod­ies, "no mat­ter what." Oth­ers gave their sto­ries of how awk­ward it was for them grow­ing up, be­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly taller than their oth­er class­mates, or short­er, or big­ger boned. In most cas­es, those fea­tures that seemed so odd in one set­ting, turned out to be their as­set when placed in a dif­fer­ent set­ting, sport re­lat­ed. This is what it is about.

Take the time to ex­pose your daugh­ters to dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ments. The tele­vi­sion and me­dia do a good job of show­ing the su­per­fi­cial and usu­al­ly less prac­ti­cal, less healthy state of be­ing, thus be­com­ing how many de­fine "beau­ty." Let sport help them see that there are a great many oth­er ways that beau­ty can be de­fined so that they re­al­ize that this re­al­i­ty is their own, no one else's, with­in which they can ex­ist.

Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley is a cer­ti­fied ath­let­ic train­er with the Na­tion­al Ath­let­ic Train­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion of the USA. Ath­let­ic train­ing is prac­ticed by ath­let­ic train­ers, health care pro­fes­sion­als who col­lab­o­rate with physi­cians to op­ti­mize ac­tiv­i­ty and par­tic­i­pa­tion of pa­tients and clients. Ath­let­ic train­ing en­com­pass­es the pre­ven­tion, di­ag­no­sis, and in­ter­ven­tion of emer­gency, acute, and chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions in­volv­ing im­pair­ment, func­tion­al lim­i­ta­tions, and dis­abil­i­ties(www.na­ta.org).