If that happened, my friendship choices could be used to delegitimise the work I do, and that would be a real tragedy.
Since that argument, my parents and I have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ agreement, reaching an unspoken truce – we just never talked about it again. I am now an adult, they said, and so they leave it up to me to decide who to hang out with, knowing that I understand the implications of my choice to be with male friends – that people may think I have lost my way as a Muslim woman and that the freedom I have been allowed in choosing an unconventional path has led to me losing my values. I always knew, on some level, that my mother was only trying to protect me because she understood how quickly communities could turn on someone if they behave in a way that is perceived as not appropriate, regardless of whether or not that perception is accurate. It took honest reflection, an appreciation of my mother’s perspective and the decision to own whatever consequences occur in order for my anger to subside. It was part of becoming an adult, I suppose.
Knowing that people are watching me and judging my actions has changed my behaviour a little, but I can’t live my life in fear of what the community may think. Muslim communities as well as societies in general need to challenge the idea that a woman’s worth is based on her ‘appropriateness’. Until then, I do what I feel is comfortable and hope that, Inshallah, Allah sees my intentions fit within an Islamic framework. After all, that is the framework to which I am held to account.
Chapter 10:
On Being Strong
I’ve always been a bit obsessed with the idea of being strong. I wanted to have muscles, to be able to handle myself in any environment, to thrive in independence. Strength of character, strength in convictions, strength in faith – I’ve built my life around ensuring I’m strong enough to make the absolute most of the one life I have been given. I was also taught I needed to be strong enough to avoid sin. Growing up, there was also an understanding that we, as migrants, Muslims and people of colour, had to be resilient. My parents were incredibly resilient throughout their lives, making sacrifices and tough decisions for the sake of their children. Their fortitude was something to aspire to and I wanted to emulate that strength in any way I could, to gain that grit of character. The gym and the world of debating were the two areas where I found those values, and although they may seem like an unusual combination, both spoke to me in unique, but equally important ways. Being a good debater requires resilience and an ability to communicate your values with conviction, and developing your body at the gym requires learning the mental toughness to push yourself physically when you think you cannot keep going. The gym is also a place where you can see tangible evidence of your growth and the physical manifestation of the effort exerted. Strength of mind, strength of body.
For years, my mother, Yasseen and I would drive by a big sports centre on the way to my brother’s football training and I would stare at the building from the car window longingly. I had only ever seen gyms on TV, and the appeal was to do with what they symbolised: power and independence.
I had never considered myself as sporty; I saw myself as the girl with her nose in her books. You don’t get to be nerdy and sporty when you’re young: you’re either one or the other, right? Well, not quite. I guess I never stick to the done thing.
Sport tapped into the competitiveness that pervaded everything I did, although I competed more against myself than anyone else. There was a time when losing even a small contest felt like a personal failure but as I matured, winning became a motivator, not the main purpose. This was something I consciously worked on as I learnt that the person I became when competitiveness took over was not someone I was proud of. I reminded myself to be grateful for all opportunities that arose and that as long as I put my best foot forward, the result was what Allah desired, meaning I could learn something from the experience either way. The outcome was not a reflection of my worth as a person, but just how life worked out sometimes.
I began to mellow out when I started to get involved in collaborative spaces through community work. Striving to win was actually a disadvantage in certain sectors. This was particularly the case in the social space, where competiveness reduced the overall impact because the work was not about the individual doing it, but about improving the community and empowering others. When I started Youth Without Borders and as I went through university I worked to channel my competitiveness so that it became about finding ways to be better for the sake of better results, not for the sake of beating others. Competition became about individual capacity – it was a driver I used to push myself to find out how much I had in the tank. This is something I do regularly: try to push myself to reach the end of the tank. I like to think the tank gets bigger the more you push.
As a child I did Little Athletics, played tennis and dabbled in soccer. I was tall and strong enough that, although I was never the best, I did just well enough to be picked in teams. But this was not good enough for my own standards, as I knew that I would not be competitive enough to reach the upper levels.
I soon turned my gaze to the gym, that place where you could visibly build your strength and to which I felt I might be better suited.
Alanna of Trebond, the female knight, was responsible for the revival of my obsession with being physically powerful. She was a Tamora Pierce character from a novel assigned to me during a reading competition I’d been enrolled in at school, after someone noticed I was into books.
My pre-tween passions had been more typically girly: The Baby-Sitters Club (I loved that Claudia never wore the same outfit twice), The Saddle Club (before it became cool, naturally), Nancy Drew (she never listened to what she was told!), the Hardy Boys (the good-looking roosters that they were) and Agatha Christie (I forced my school library to buy every single book she ever wrote).
I wasn’t inspired looking at the reading list, but two books caught my eye – a book called Stormbreaker and Alanna: The First Adventure.
Alanna had a terrible cover and I immediately judged it: a worn out, old-fashioned image of a young girl holding a sword. Boring! The year of publication? 1983. Yawn.
I left it for spy heart-throb Alex Rider in Stormbreaker. A well-built blond who did missions for MI6, the CIA and ASIS, he was the teen equivalent of James Bond – he could speak several languages, was unbeatable at karate and could scuba dive. What I wouldn’t do to be a spy with his language skills, I thought, and made a mental note to investigate martial arts after I finished the book, just in case I followed in his footsteps.
It turned out Alanna of Trebond was even cooler. A fierce young noble lady who wanted to be a knight, she switched places with her twin brother so she could pretend she was a boy while she trained. She made up for being physically weaker and smaller than the men with her absolute determination and her ability to control magic.
Alanna had her own style of femininity even though she lived in a hyper-masculine environment; she was vulnerable and had relationships even though she wanted to be tough and impenetrable. For some reason her boyish looks were attractive to all sorts of powerful men, even though she didn’t try to make herself typically good-looking. She was a formidable swordswoman, overcoming her initial weakness to claim renown throughout the lands. But it was not her swordsmanship that allowed her to connect with various different tribes, it was because she showed them due respect, learning their languages, behaviours and customs. She was disdainful of the elitist way her society functioned and she did whatever she chose to make it better. I wanted to be Alanna: doing good things for society however she wanted, while still being respectful, feminine and strong. She made sense to me.
When the reading competition ended, I signed up to the school gym. I was twelve.
How I loved being a chick who went to the gym! I worked to be strong enough to swing a sword, just like Alanna. When I first started as a young teenager, I could lift just as much as the boys. How good was that?
My desire to keep up with the boys seems to be an unconscious reacti
on to the fact that men hold the power in society. I’ve felt that to become powerful, I need to be as good or better than them at their own game. Initially this was a product of my competitiveness, then it was about proving my worth, which merged into wanting to feel like I was making the most out of what I had been given in life, physically and mentally. Drawing from interactions in the world around me, I correlated physical strength with societal power. I wanted some of that, and to be part of something bigger, so I would have the capacity to make positive changes. If I was physically strong then men would have no leverage over me. To my twelve-year-old self, physical strength was the only visible difference between men and women.
If you’re thinking this all sounds a little drastic, think about the social cues we are surrounded by as children, as a teenage girl: don’t ‘play like a girl’, ‘cry like a girl’, ‘be weak like a girl’. I didn’t want to be like a girl because, apparently, that wasn’t as good. At the time, I was too young to read between the lines, unable to see this language reinforced the system I was trying to fight.
I also liked that the gym allowed me to be mates with the boys as well as the girls – it gave me choice and varied experiences. Hanging with the boys gave me social mobility but also social capital; I was the girl who was ‘in’ with the lads. I felt like I belonged, even though technically my membership of various marginalised groups should have excluded me from this particular club. I was comfortable in the environment of banter and boys, and I used the skills my father had taught me to find my place in the world of iron and steel.
At my first gym session I was introduced to the machines I would faithfully use for the next five years, and the board that held the gym’s record results. I’d eventually take out the chest-press record for fifteen-year-old girls (ten reps of 52 kg). I met the lads who inhabited the space, white guys in rugby shorts, who looked scary with their bulging veins and sweaty muscles, but who acknowledged the brown girl in long sleeves, trackies and a head-thingy nonetheless. The gym was a leveller.
At the end of the induction, the coach wrote me up a circuit program. ‘Now, do you want to work on cardio or weights?’ he asked.
‘Oh, definitely weights!’ I said.
He paused, program held in his right hand. ‘See, the thing is, Yassmin, weights will make you quite big and a lot of girls don’t really want to be big.’
I remember thinking, Imagine not wanting to be strong so you can stay skinny! Ludicrous.
By the time I left school I could bench almost as much as the boys, and that trainer was right – doing heavy weights at an early age did change my physique. At twelve, I was as lean and wiry as the rest of my family but by the time I left school at sixteen, my body shape had made itself known – I’m the strongest and heftiest by a long shot. My size is something that has had an unusual impact. Being tall and strong means I have a larger physical presence, bestowing me extra legitimacy in male-dominated areas like boardrooms and on the rig. It also means I am less likely to cop abuse or be walked all over by others. Sometimes being an ‘intimidating Amazonian-like woman’, as I have been described, has its advantages.
My gym buddies changed: early on I hung out with two of the prettiest girls in my grade who wanted to stay fit. White girls with shiny hair and blinding smiles, they had that elusive social capital and knew how to handle boys. We became friends almost by accident, and they taught me how to hang with girls.
By the end of senior school, I went to the gym with male friends from my classes, an eclectic group of jocks and geeks. I would usually have to initiate the gym-based friendship because the guys would never have approached a girl. Working out together gave us a lot of time for one-on-one conversations, and I began to learn the value in having ‘deep dive’ chats with people in order to find out who they were. It’s a skill I still use and find invaluable, as it gives me the ability to better understand the world around me and the perspectives of those whose lives are so different to mine.
We would chill on the grass outside after our gym sessions, or lounge on the carpeted area used by gymnasts and cheerleaders, discussing topics we wouldn’t have broached at lunchtime: politics, society, economics, the meaning of life. Being away from class and the usual structure in our lives opened this beautiful window of freedom where the barriers came down and we felt at ease with each other. It was a safe space, a place where I connected with folk that I may not have otherwise.
It’s sad how my relationship with the gym has changed. When I was still too young to be very self-conscious, being at the gym was invigorating and imbued me with a sense of power. Today, if I’m not careful, despite my best efforts, gym visits can be infused with guilt about my worth as a woman, because I sometimes feel that by working out I’m giving in to wanting to look a certain way, when I don’t like capitulating to society’s expectations of what I ‘should’ look like. Gyms today target people with a promise of making you look good, or of fitting into a mould, rather than focusing on keeping the body and soul healthy. Fitspo fashions itself as a movement that cares about your soul, but it seems to me that it only applies if your body fits a certain norm, so once again, the focus is on the aesthetic. To me, that motivation seems warped, and it frustrates me that exercise is promoted – implicitly or explicitly – as being about how you look instead of how you feel. Society took a place I found empowering and made it a prison for our minds and souls.
I still love lifting iron, but I prefer places without wall-to-wall mirrors. For me, the gym remains a place to work on strength of body and mind, not to stare at my reflection. That, I leave for my bedroom!
When the coach suggested I take up boxing I was wary. He had also suggested I get into sprinting, and I’d joined the athletics team, but I’d been nowhere near excellent so I stopped running when I finished school. I left this boxing suggestion percolating in my mind until I graduated school in the summer of 2007. The day I received my final school grade I looked up local boxing clubs. As luck would have it, one had opened near my house called The Boxing Shop, owned and run by former rugby player, Gareth Williams. The Boxing Club was his baby, and I had joined right at the beginning of their journey.
My mother didn’t approve at all: ‘Don’t you know one punch can kill, Yassmina?’ Even my father thought it was bizarre, but I loved it. To my mind, brawling is violent – but boxing is much more than that. Boxing training is one of the most intense forms of training there is – and I revelled in the challenge, in the mix of mental and physical, in the dance. I was getting good at something that was about pure physical strength: it needed speed and stamina, strength and agility – balled fists and a brain. It was about the mind game, the shuffle around the ring, the flick off the rope, the quick 1-2-3-4-5-6 that they weren’t expecting, the right hook to catch them unawares – that was always my favourite. I also liked that I’d be more capable of handling myself if I ever encountered someone in a dark alley, the independence that confidence brought.
I met all sorts in that ring. My first real opponent at my weight looked intimidating, her jet-black hair swinging in a high ponytail. We stood at opposite ends of the ring and I slipped my headgear over my mini-hijab bandana, keeping my mouth tightly shut over my mouthguard. The black-and-red leather padding covered my entire head and face, leaving holes for my ears, eyes, nose and mouth, so I’d be protected if I got punched in the head.
I pushed my hands into my white 16 oz gloves and hopped on the spot from foot to foot, shaking out my nerves.
‘Ready?’ coach asked, motioning for us to come in close.
‘Touch gloves!’ he instructed, and we fist bumped to promise a fair fight.
‘Take it easy on Yassmin, okay? She hasn’t sparred in a while; just go light!’
The timer beeped and the punches came almost immediately. My hands weren’t fast enough to understand what was happening. A left-right to the face, followed by a few body shots and a finishing hook – she wasn’t holding back.
I threw a standard left-left-r
ight in response, but I hardly got a look in the entire three minutes. I was stalked around the ring, punches raining down at every possible opening; blows with weight behind them I had never experienced before. She knew what she was doing, efficiently breaking down my defences in a clinical and professional manner but I couldn’t recover fast enough to think let alone respond. My muscle memory resorted to defence mode, hands up in front of my face, protecting my body with my elbows as I walked backwards, skipping at times, trying to avoid the ropes.
It was three minutes that lasted a lifetime.
The beep called time and I collapsed against the ropes. She retreated to her corner, the way she strolled betraying her self-assurance in her utter domination.
‘Are you okay?’ Coach approached me from the other side of the ring, his face concerned. I pushed myself off the ropes and turned to him, puffing. After my weary nod, he then turned his attention to my defeater.
‘Hey! I said go softly! What was that?’
I saw her shrug.
‘I tried to hold back, but ya know …’
For the first time in my life, I realised that having the ultimate strength didn’t always garner the respect of your opponent. Rather, I resented the arrogance that had led her to hurt me unnecessarily. It was a training spar, not a fight, and my coach had warned her to go light. Instead of respecting that and my more junior level of ability, she chose to show off, a selfish act of aggression that belied the collaborative nature of training.
Although we may have strength, the use and display of it should be commensurate to the situation. I had thought the way to earn respect, particularly in the ring, was to go as hard as possible, to show my opponent and coach all the strength I could muster – demanding respect.
Instead, I learnt that sometimes the best way to build allies is by showing how you control the power you have, bringing the right amount to the situation. Where is the strength and nobility in beating down a weak opponent, when you know they will be unable to retaliate? Sometimes you can gain respect by simply meeting people where they are at, dancing the dance, and holding fire until they can meet you in the middle. If my opponent had reined it in that day, I would probably have enjoyed the spar and found an ally. Instead, I was bruised, literally and metaphorically, and chose to never train with her again.
Yassmin’s Story Page 14