“I didn’t know where to start,” she says. “I felt so intimidated to change my life but I desperately wanted to change. Going to the gym just felt too scary because I thought people would laugh at me. No one at the gym looked like me; everyone looked like they were already fit.”
Stacey started exercising at home using fitness DVDs. “It was the only way I could exercise and feel comfortable doing it. I just didn’t have the confidence to do it in public.”
Because of her size, Stacey didn’t feel that she belonged in a conventional gym. So she started walking on her own in her neighborhood. At first she walked ten minutes a day. She gradually worked up to twenty minutes a day and then thirty. Six months later she was walking one to two hours each day and had never felt stronger.
Stacey built her strength and her confidence up enough to join a walking group at a local club in her neighborhood; now she is training for a half-marathon walk.
I wish all gyms were welcoming places for everyone, regardless of size, but by getting out there and getting involved in fitness, wherever you feel comfortable, your participation shatters all the stereotypes that big women face.
How the Media Play a Role in Creating Stereotypes
ALTHOUGH STATISTICALLY, APPROXIMATELY 67 percent of North American women are a size 14 or larger,1 we don’t see ourselves represented in the media. Plus-size women are an invisible majority. When we don’t see ourselves, many of us conclude that we don’t belong.
By the time she is twelve, the average American girl has seen over 77,000 commercials. American teenagers consume ten hours and forty-five minutes of media every day through the Internet, television, music, movies, and magazines. What does this mean for young women? During this vital stage of life they are highly impressionable, and the impression they get isn’t good. Young girls are bombarded with images of tall, very thin girls with tanned skin and blonde hair, and if they don’t recognize themselves in these images it opens the door to feelings of failure. Our communities and families do not always provide girls their first role models; in many cases mass media have taken over. By the time they’re teenagers, if girls cannot see their likeness in this onslaught of messaging, they may begin to feel isolated and abnormal. These feelings are built on a foundation of never measuring up, failing to achieve an ideal, and not being good enough.
Until recently, mass media have rarely presented larger women in a positive way. Negative stories about larger bodies are fodder for headlines.
•“Lawyer Sues Airline for Having to Sit Next to Obese Passenger” (The Independent, September 23, 2016)
•“Obesity Rates Reach Historic Highs in Most U.S. States” (NBC News, September 4, 2014)
•“Teen Tennis Player Brings Weight to French Open” (Daily Mail, September 7, 2012)
Many publications celebrate one image of fitness rather than championing diversity in size among athletes. Not surprisingly, the population at large doesn’t associate health and athletics with larger bodies. We’ve become so used to seeing very thin bodies as the norm that it’s distorted our ideas of what is average. It’s why people like comedian Amy Schumer are labeled “plus-size” by the media when Schumer at most is a size 10.
The average size of most models featured on the cover of fitness magazines is size 2 to 4. This means that major fitness magazines do not represent nearly 70 percent of North American women; the exclusion is a social injustice.
Things are changing. I see it every day; the mere fact that this book has been published is another push back against the oppression of larger women. The fitness industry is becoming more inclusive and body positive. It has no choice: people are demanding it.
In August 2015, for the first time in its history, Women’s Running magazine made the bold move of featuring plus-size athlete Erica Schenk on its cover. In the photo, young and vibrant Schenk runs confidently down a park path looking like an experienced runner in her running tights and rose-colored athletic tank top. Her big body looks powerful as she gazes into the distance. She runs with a smile, exuding freedom. She looks like a natural-born athlete.
On the Today show, Women’s Running editor-in-chief Jessica Sebor spoke about her motive behind the cover. “There’s a stereotype that all runners are skinny,” Sebor said. “And that’s just not the case. Runners come in all shapes and sizes. You can go to any race finish line, from a 5K to a marathon, and see that. It was important for us to celebrate that.”
Sport England completed a survey of women between the ages of fourteen and forty and found that two million fewer British women play sports than British men. But 75 percent of those women want to be active but aren’t out of fear of judgment.
Based on their findings, in January 2015, Sport England launched the highly successful “This Girl Can” campaign, which beautifully showcased size diversity in fitness and sport to inspire women to “wiggle, jiggle, move, and prove that judgment is a barrier that can be overcome.” Using regular women in the campaign, they posted large ads throughout Britain showing women working out in all their “un-Photoshopped” glory. Like Women’s Running, Sport England’s campaign became an international news sensation.
When we show diversity, we get diversity. Sport England reported that since celebrating the first birthday of the “This Girl Can” campaign, women of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities are getting active in greater numbers. A study showed that 2.8 million British women have increased their physical activity since viewing the groundbreaking campaign. “This Girl Can” has sparked conversations in 110 countries worldwide, and more than 540,000 women and girls have joined their online community. The campaign’s popularity keeps growing and the videos and images have been viewed more than 40 million times through various social media.
Could this be the start of a new wave in media and advertising? Positive representation of diversely sized athletes is the key to the future of women of size in sports. When we see ourselves pictured in magazines, on television, and in advertisements, we feel invited, inspired, and motivated to join in.
Visual imagery strongly drives human thought patterns, and it currently excludes plus-size women in a big way. Media that depicts women of size is essential to changing the image of plus-size women. But there’s good news: we can create change and dictate what we want through what we choose to consume. Long ago, I decided to strip down my media consumption and avoid unhealthy images and messages of women. I removed media that portrayed women inaccurately from my newsfeed, bookmarks, and magazine racks. I started following body-positive leaders and brands that were spreading a new, positive message for women and girls. I stopped buying overly Photoshopped fashion and fitness magazines and started to invite only positive imagery into my sightline. I took control. Now, I dictate what I see. It’s not possible to hide everything that doesn’t speak to you, but if we refuse to buy in to exclusionary messaging, brands and media will be forced to change their strategies.
If we work together, we can create change. Take the healthy media pledge with me! Use the hashtag #healthymediapledge and share it with your sisters, mother, daughters, and friends.
I pledge to ditch negative media from my news feed, email inbox, and magazine stack. I will no longer consume media that doesn’t celebrate who I am. #healthymediapledge
How Athletic Branding Impacts Stereotypes
CONVENTIONAL ATHLETIC BRANDS don’t design their products for a diverse range of body sizes. Major brands steer clear of larger-bodied representatives, deepening the misconception that bigger bodies can’t be athletic or healthy.
At the height of the 2012 Summer Olympics and Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign, the activewear brand released a commercial called “The Jogger.” The commercial featured a 232-pound twelve-year-old boy named Nathan Sorrell. The ad was nicknamed “Fat Boy Running” on social media.
The commercial was powerful in its simplicity, showing uncut footage of Sorrell jogging down a long,