Sports ≠ Men’s Entertainment - Bitch Media
▻https://bitchmedia.org/article/sports-%E2%89%A0-men%E2%80%99s-entertainment
Six years later, the thing that has struck me the most about playing this game was how thoroughly it has changed the way I understand my body in public space. There is no other sport that so reaffirms a woman’s strength and physicality as rugby; nowhere else that we are allowed to be the hardest, most aggressive versions of ourselves. The previous two decades of my life had been spent hearing how girls should be dainty, not take up too much space, be always, always presentable. Everything revolved around my body as something that someone else had to look at, an outer representation to be maintained. Once I learned my body could tackle someone else’s at full speed, I began to really understand what it meant to have total ownership of myself, for no one but myself. It became a thrill to watch muscle build and know strength didn’t have to be just some ethereal emotional component of stoic womanhood. This emphasis on physical strength felt like new territory.
