Being Both Excellent and Female

At some point, some version of a message has reached you that elite athletic excellence and being a woman exist in tension.

That the way you compete is too aggressive or not feminine enough. That the body required for your sport is at odds with what is considered attractive. That success in athletics comes at the cost of something that makes you who you are as a woman.

I want to push back on that directly.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

Clothed with strength and dignity. Both. Not one or the other. The Proverbs portrait of feminine excellence does not ask its subject to choose between strength and the other qualities that make her who she is. She is strong. She is dignified. She laughs without fear. These are not competing characteristics. They are facets of a single person who has not been split by a false choice.

The message that says female athletes have to choose — that elite competitive excellence requires the sacrifice of femininity, or that embracing femininity means softening the competitive edge — is a lie. It is told by people who have a limited imagination for what a woman can be, and it costs female athletes who believe it something real.

You are excellent and you are a woman and those two things are not in tension. The strength you bring to competition is yours. It does not come at the expense of anything that makes you who you are. The way you compete, the way you lead, the way you inhabit your athletic identity — all of it can be fully yours without apology and without the performance of a version of femininity that the outside world finds less threatening.

Be excellent. Be fully who you are. Do both at the same time. The combination is not a compromise. It is a completeness.

This question may surface significant experiences. Hold them with care.