This Girl Can — From jellyfish to jelly legs

In her first blog for the Alliance, Policy Intern, Lisa Jones, talks about overcoming your fears when it comes to exercise as part of the #thisgirlcan campaign.

There are many pressures facing females today. These are often to look or behave in certain ways. This appears to be the case in sport, where you can find yourself at your most vulnerable. The popularity of the This Girl Can Campaign by Sport England is extremely encouraging as it ultimately aims to celebrate and encourage women to get active and to show that, regardless of ability, age or size, sport can be enjoyable for all. This builds upon programmes such as I Will if You Will.

I once told one of my friends that I had an irrational fear of jellyfish and could never swim in the sea. She then decided last summer that we would go sea swimming most evenings in a very cold Pembrokeshire bay in order to overcome my fear. I can now happily confirm that I am completely un-phased by jellyfish, mainly because we never saw any, and because my fear was based on a misconception that I had created in my mind. I believe it is this fear of the unknown and raised level of self-consciousness that applies to women who are afraid of being judged in sport.

Like many girls, I have worried over negative judgment. In school I was told that I ‘run like a girl,’. However I was lucky to have positive role models like my mother who would say ‘Yes, of course you run like a girl, you are a girl, so show them how fast girls can run.’ So I did, and spurred on by my mother, I ran and won a recent 10k event. I’ll never forget the wobbly jelly-legged feeling as I staggered over the finish line. This topic was also effectively covered by the #likeagirl campaign.

From my experience, there appears to be some worrying trends emerging in social media. There is an increasing focus upon the physical appearance that can be derived from sport and exercise. It saddens me to see women and girls posting pictures of their ‘#thinspiration’(thin inspiration), which is effectively images of extremely slim and beautiful women who are usually models. I believe that this places an unnecessary pressure on women to look a certain way, and I believe it is unrealistic and removes attention from the other benefits that result from exercise.

For me, sport is about so much more than fitting in a smaller dress size, it is about getting involved, trying new things and challenging my mind and body to reach new goals both personally and within a team.

There are an array of really great sport and recreational clubs across the country and I believe it is time to be courageous and to even get friends and family involved to make a positive change and to overcome misconceptions which may prevent you from getting active.

It is an exciting time to be a woman, there are more role models than ever both in and outside of sport. For me a great example is Chrissie Wellington, who has seized every opportunity irrespective of gender and I am in complete awe of her. On another level it is about having personal role models and I’ve been lucky to be continuously inspired to be active by my friends and family.

I have never limited myself because I was a girl. The This Girl Can Campaign isn’t about becoming the next world-class athlete or about achieving the figure of a Victoria’s Secret model, it’s about being bold, healthy, taking the stairs rather than the lift and doing what you want rather than what you feel you ought to do to, in order to become a better version of you.

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