“Once, I heard a phrase: “Lisa, look at yourself! Look, you’re fat! Look how your belly sticks out! It’s bigger than mine at 40!” And it’s just my uterus hurting, what can I do about it?” Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva on being a woman in professional sports
Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva on being a woman in professional sports.
original source: MatchTV
Russian ice dancer, Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva, in her column for MatchTV, reflects on how difficult it is to be a woman in professional sports. Here’s a translation of her comment.
“Today, I would like to address a pressing issue: how difficult it is to be a female athlete.
Girls are fragile princesses deserving the most tender care. That’s true, of course. But this is professional sports. Things are a bit different here. Let me lift the veil of mystery. Does women indeed have a hard time in professional sports?
In generrals, I would describe pair disciplines in figure skating as “the bloom of equality.” Women here get no indulgences. And unfortunately, the complexity is that men and women are absolutely different physically and psychologically. We can’t be equal to the opposite sex. Starting from hormonal levels to emotional aspects. But to achieve a professional environment and results, this needs to be ignored. Push-ups, running, pull-ups, skating — all must be done equivalently. Yet, it’s scientifically proven that a woman feels well only about a week per month. How about that, boys? Imagine that for the other 21 days, you’re in default mode feeling pain, anxiety, upset, sadness, or excessive happiness. But nobody should pay attention to this. Those are the rules of sport.
Competitions never adjust to your cycle. Every female skater has woken up at a competition unable to literally get up due to pain in the back, chest, or stomach. When no painkillers help, your stomach is bloated, and you need to wear a competition costume. Once, I heard a phrase: “Lisa, God, look at yourself! Look, you’re fat! Look how your belly sticks out! It’s bigger than mine at 40!” And it’s just my uterus hurting, what can I do about it?
The topic of weight is one of the scariest for any of my female colleagues. I don’t know a single female skater who has never faced problems related to diets, weight loss, and all the ‘delights’ of puberty.
It kills me when men specifically start bullying about weight. Where do you even know how a female body works? Do you think girls in puberty intentionally gain weight? Or maybe they don’t have a mirror at home? Or they don’t start eating lemon water and running from morning until night in warm clothes, but instead, they deliberately eat unhealthy food and sweets? That’s the biggest injustice in figure skating! A male partner loses 2 kg as soon as the workload increases, though he starts eating twice as much. That’s how boys are built. And the girl hasn’t gained weight in a better case. You’re different, but equal.
The next issue is sexualization. I sincerely consider this a problem. For instance, at 13, I performed with a partner who was already 18. We were moving up to juniors and had to skate in the same style as our competitors. Some of the girls, like me, were in tender teenage age, whereas some were about to prepare their university thesis. The compulsory theme that year was the blues. Just for interest, look up those routines on the internet. My dad never watched that short dance once, and I understand why.
Is there a need to explain the confusion of coaches when we started working on that dance? Could something less revealing have been done? Maybe, yes. But then it wouldn’t have worked; judges would have found it boring. I still don’t know how I feel about the coaching decision. Of course, I blame them for nothing. Everyone wanted the best. I remember it felt very strange. I had just started my dancing career and knew competition was huge, I had no experience, and there was only one chance to make the team. Therefore, I was very afraid to show any fear of trying something new and to any choreography suggestion, without flinching a muscle on my face, I would say, “Great, super, let’s do it as needed.”
Discussing relationships, I can say for sure that an 18-year-old ice dancer and an 18-year-old singles skater are two different people psychologically. When you’re a single skater, you live and work only with your own head. Generally, in an athlete’s environment, there’s only the coach, and you move towards the result together. And the girl develops as she should.
In duet types of figure skating, everything collapses at the “forming a pair” stage. From a young age, we interact with the opposite sex, befriend them, resolve conflicts, and learn early what “compromise” is. Over time, we realize that men and women are fundamentally different. Also, in dance teams, the coaching staff often includes both men and women. And that’s a story in itself… When they don’t come to a common denominator between themselves, and you need to be able to maneuver between one coach and a second female coach plus a third — the partner’s opinion. Therefore, in life, it often seems that girls are emotionally and psychologically older than their years.
Because of this, by the way, my personal life specifically suffered! I won’t speak for others, I wasn’t holding a candle. Girls turn into women earlier. And you have nothing to talk about with peers, not because they are silly or not right. No, they are just the most normal, it’s just that from the age of 13, you’ve been living and working independently, and excitedly buying an expensive set of pots and pans for home, not a new PlayStation. So, perhaps, my first relationships ended in marriage. Just kidding, but you catch my point.
Being a woman in sports is difficult. It demands great efforts and sacrifices. I hope, from what you’ve read, you realize that just “feeling like a woman” is not enough.”
Related topics: Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva Egor Bazin
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