Dogged bodies

Being a female athlete is a game of composure and comparison, where crossing the finish line or scoring a goal is a proof of self as much as a proof of strength. A late bloomer with a knack for competition, I struggled from an early age with my girlishness, and later on with my womanhood. As a high school runner, I always worried that my thighs looked too thick in my spandex, or my shoulders too broad in uniform. No matter how many reps I did with the smallest weights, no matter how many miles I clocked alongside my distance-running peers, I was never as lean as the girl next to me on the start line. Bogged down by my pointed workout regiments and clichéd insecurities, I relegated my spikes to the closet. When I arrived on campus as a freshman, I was determined to shed my frustration towards exercise by trying something new. So I booted up and went to my first rugby practice.  

When I first encountered Susan Sontag’s 1972 essay “The Double Standard of Aging,” I was finally able to name the flavor of femininity I had resented for so long. In the piece she writes that “boys are encouraged to develop their bodies, to regard the body as an instrument to be improved,” while “girls are not particularly encouraged to develop their bodies through any activity, strenuous or not; and physical strength and endurance are hardly valued at all.” Instead, we come up relating to our bodies in terms of how they look. Sontag argues that this makes women compulsively vain, always stuck in the hall of mirrors—and of appearances. 

Women’s collegiate rugby teams across the country seem to be united by a unanimous memo: every body is a rugby body. Former cheerleaders and ex-wrestlers alike unite to lift heavy things and beat the shit out of each other. It is a sport that demands athletic diversity and welcomes bodies that don’t fit some patriarchal feminine mold. The rugby pitch offers a liberatory space built around a queer image of female strength, one that prioritizes fortitude over figure. There is an inherent, exhilarating feeling of liberation that accompanies the act of finally being able to do something your body once rendered impossible. Understanding it first for its capacity—to slice up an opponent, plow through contact, or leap towards the try line—claims a level of athletic development rarely inhabited by women.