Eat. Sweat. Play

by Anna Kessel

  Caroline believes this trend is key to preventing women from genuinely engaging in sport and exercise. Of course it is. From the very start we are limiting girls’ aspirations as to how they can get involved in sport. They are shown only marginal roles that rely on being conventionally sexy or pretty. Meanwhile boys in sport can look any way they like: no one cares. They are judged solely on their talent.

  This is the crux of the problem when it comes to getting women and girls physically active. The mainstream media perpetuates the notion that women should focus entirely on a static image of a perfect body as the end goal. There are no messages about the process, the active body, how it makes us feel in that moment. ‘That’s what I think is really missing from how sport and exercise is presented to women,’ says Caroline. ‘It’s not about being able to do really fucking cool shit with your body, it’s about do I look good in a bikini? And that’s just not inspiring! It doesn’t make you want to do it. So when you’re actually exercising all you’re thinking is, “At the end will I have a nice body?”, not, “Look at my fucking legs go as I’m running!” which actually keeps you running, and even changes the way you do the exercise. I enjoy it more when I think, “Wow, I just did that sprint, that’s awesome,” instead of, “If I do this two times a week, by the end of the summer I won’t have a massive belly.” I think we’re really missing a trick in terms of how we’re presenting it to women. Especially for women it’s something that’s so little offered to us, the opportunity to think of ourselves as powerful and strong and capable, that our bodies are tools. It’s kind of intoxicating.’

  To me, that’s a reason in itself to recognize the This Girl Can campaign as groundbreaking. Prior to its launch we had never before seen images of women being physically active on mainstream TV in that way, in prime-time advertising slots. We had never been encouraged to enjoy the movement of our bodies just as they are, without reference to whether they look good or not, or whether they are on their way to losing any weight. But watching Sport England’s campaign advert we are shown the joy and determination on the women’s faces. We see the process, not the end result. It’s a powerful message that goes against the grain of pretty much every single mainstream media campaign depicting women’s bodies.

  For Caroline, the strength part of the equation has been key. She rediscovered sport at the age of thirty after a friend wrote a blog about getting physically strong. ‘It was the first time I’d read anything like that,’ she says now. ‘Usually when women write about their body it’s always about how they hate it; only men write about getting strong.’ Inspired, she joined a gym and started lifting weights, enjoying the satisfaction of being able to measure her progress through the amount of weight she could lift. Boxing, running and climbing came into the picture and soon she was ‘addicted’. For the most part, men have been supportive; she says it’s those that are insecure, perhaps less confident in their own abilities – like the men who sent her death and rape threats around her Bank of England campaign – who get huffy, who roll their eyes or sigh impatiently as she lifts. But exercising in a public space does attract unwanted attention, and she worries particularly for younger women who may be put off by the intimidation. ‘Sometimes, I’ll box in the park with a female friend and you will get men who clearly have not boxed a day in their lives running up to you and telling you you’re doing it all wrong! It’s that sense of, “This is a male domain, and I have a sense of entitlement over it.” And that happens quite a lot. Men want to show they know more about this than you do. Guys who heckle and catcall. It’s fine for me as I’m old enough and feminist enough that it doesn’t affect me, but if I was younger I would probably feel less secure and stop doing it. What I find really interesting is that every woman I tell about my boxing says, ‘Oh my God, that’s so cool, can I come with you?’ I think there’s that untapped desire among women to be strong and be able to defend themselves and have a skill.’

  I wonder about this. As a young girl I remember wanting to be able to skateboard like the boys in my class. I also wanted to learn to juggle, to do wheelies on a bike, and I dreamed about how cool it would be to be able to run rings around the boys in the playground with a football. I never achieved any of those things. If I’m honest, I didn’t truly dare to. And so, as the teenage years quickly set in, I left those ambitions behind. It didn’t seem necessary to have those physical skills any more. But if I cast my mind back I can still remember the absolute thrill I felt daydreaming about how brilliant it would be to pull off any number of those tricks. When I think about the men I know, and the sheer pleasure they still get from doing something impressive in a game of five-a-side football, or artfully skimming a stone across water, I can’t help but feel envious. They still have that physical, playful element in their lives. And it makes them happy. Wouldn’t it be great if women and girls could have this too?

  Imagining Caroline in the park, sparring with a friend, I’m reminded of a phone call with my mum. Out of the blue she told me that she’d seen a woman boxing in her local park and she really liked the look of it. She liked the idea of being strong. This is my seventy-one-year-old mum who has never done sport in her life, outside of swimming, yoga and walking. I think about women doing these things in public spaces and how very powerful that is. How far that idea can radiate. In going out there and actually doing it, we give others permission to try it for themselves. We make it easier to change the status quo.

  But to be the person who stands out, who makes the difference, is not always easy. Annie Zaidi is a young coach from Coventry making waves in the football industry. As a woman, and as an hijab-wearing Muslim, the expectation is that she should be working with Muslim women, or coaching women’s football. Annie, though, is clear about which direction she wants to take. She doesn’t wish to be pigeonholed; she’s got her eye on a role in professional men’s football, and though it’s early days in her career she’s already starting to make an impact – working at QPR with Les Ferdinand and Chris Ramsey. I’ve met Annie quite a few times. She’s a huge character – talking about taking over from Arsène Wenger and fancying Thierry Henry. She’s feisty and jokey and outspoken and full of laughs. But when she agrees to be interviewed for this book I hear about another side of her, a young woman who has overcome extreme barriers in her life. I listen, spellbound, as she tells me her story.

  Growing up, Annie suffered from chronic eczema; she was in and out of hospital for weeks on end, covered in bandages. When the condition flared up, she says, you could hardly make out her eyes. She missed a lot of school, and was bullied for it. ‘People judge you on how you look,’ she says. ‘I’ve had suitors who refused me because of my eczema. Football became my escape from all the bullshit. I’d pull a hoodie over my face, and football was my best friend.’ But it wasn’t quite as simple as that. In organized football Annie was expected to wear shorts, which exposed her skin to grass and made her eczema worse. Then there was the routine of a traditional Muslim Pakistani background, attending mosque five days a week after school, and cooking with her mum on Saturdays. ‘I may not know how to do a Cruyff turn, but I can cook a killer chicken biryani,’ she laughs. The community didn’t like her wearing tracksuit bottoms – ‘man clothes’ – it wasn’t becoming for an Asian girl. ‘My mum’s been my biggest fan, she accepts what I do, but it’s hard to change generations, to change cultures.’

  As Annie tried to pursue a coaching career, she faced prejudice at every turn. There were those in her own community who called her ‘coconut’ or ‘Bounty’, the Muslim cleric who crossed the road to tell her she was a bad role model, and the racial slurs from white girls. And everyone had an opinion about which direction her coaching should take: some said she should coach Muslim girls only; meanwhile after the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London, a local Muslim football club said her hijab would be off-putting to prospective parents worried about Islamophobia and extremism. Annie finally found a role coaching an under-elevens boys’ team. Out of 400 managers, she was the onl
y female. On the touchline she experienced sexist and racist abuse from opposition managers and parents. If she complained, she was seen as a troublemaker. ‘You’ve got to have a thick skin to work in football,’ she says, ‘but even so I had to leave that job because it was poisoning my love for the game.’ She told her mum about the abuse. ‘My mum joked, “What do you expect? It’s a man’s world! It’s like your dad coming into the kitchen and messing things up!”’ Annie laughs.

  But she couldn’t leave coaching behind altogether; it was too important. ‘At one point I was working with victims of sexual exploitation as part of a youth community role in the West Midlands. They were from all races, and they’d never played football before. One of the girls said to me, “This is the first time I’ve ever felt empowered in my life.” I knew what she meant. The moment a football touches the soles of my feet, something comes over me. I feel protected and safe.’ I tell Annie what a powerful image she paints. She nods, sagely. ‘Well, I’m talking about the soles of my feet, but I’m also talking about my soul. It’s both.’

  Annie’s message of empowerment through sport is vital for all girls to hear. I want to send her into schools with a megaphone, spreading the word. There is something intensely therapeutic about simply playing with a ball, having a run, focusing on something physical. As a modern society we are obsessed with achieving this kind of mental state – there are even mindfulness and Zen colouring books – but how amazing if we could just give everyone a ball to play with?

  Annie says she is lucky enough to have been mentored by some amazing men and women who want to see her succeed: Chris Ramsey, Les Ferdinand, Wallace Hermit (who co-founded the Black and Asian Coaches’ Association), and England Women’s assistant manager Marieanne Spacey. But there are those who do her down, or tell her she’s a tick box and that’s the only reason why she gets opportunities. She faces a dilemma that all women can relate to – should we tell our stories? Reveal our challenges? Speak out against prejudice, and risk being cast as the victim? Or do we keep quiet and soldier on, leaving others to wonder forever if they are the only ones who experience this stuff? Personally, I respect Annie for sharing her experiences, for telling it like it is, for standing up for what she believes in. I don’t see her as a victim; I see her as a strong woman, leading the way for others, making their paths that little bit easier. ‘Women need other women,’ Annie says plainly. ‘It’s good getting support from the men, but they don’t go through the BS we go through as women. Women are a team, we support each other, and women in football have been my greatest teammates, my left back and right back, my centre forwards and centre halves.’

  This is exactly why Women in Football came about, the network of women employed in the football industry that I co-founded with Shelley Alexander in 2006. We exist to give other women a voice when they don’t always feel they can speak out. Or to back them when they do. We exist to tell the football industry that women should not be sexually harassed in the workplace, or sacked because they’ve had a child, or paid less, or talked down to, or denied job opportunities, or subjected to comments about being a lesbian, or asked to hoover the carpet or serve tea in the boardroom instead of doing the roles they are qualified to do. Over the years women have come forward to tell us about their experiences in the industry – and we have been horrified by the abuse they have faced, and amazed at their incredible stoicism.

  Because while there have been high-profile male-orientated campaigns around racism and homophobia in football – which has helped to improve the atmosphere at many football grounds – incredibly, nothing significant has ever been done to tackle sexism in the stands. Women make up 51 per cent of the national population, and 25 per cent of the Premier League match day revenue. If for no other reason than pure economics, why would you ignore half the population by not including sexism in the equality equation?

  Sometimes I wonder whether football even understands the basics of sexism. Having a conversation about sexism with the football authorities is often like banging your head against a wall. While other industries – including construction – have been forced to change their ways, football is still holding on to an idea of life that belongs in the 1970s. And so while my local police force recently encouraged women to call if they experience harassment on the street such as catcalling or wolf-whistling, football says it can do nothing about thousands of fans wolf-whistling a female medic running onto a pitch to assist an injured player. And it’s not just wolf whistles. Chants can range from the ubiquitous ‘She’s a whore,’ to ‘Get back in the kitchen,’ ‘Tits and fanny,’ and ‘Does she take it up the arse?’ TV presenter Gabby Logan was a well-known recipient of ‘Get your tits out for the lads,’ though her blushes were spared when Sir Bobby Charlton gallantly got his out and jiggled them about a bit. If only we all had an England World Cup-winning legend in our corner.

  Sometimes the abuse takes on a darker tone. If you’re a Coventry fan you may remember the chants commemorating striker Marlon King’s conviction for sexual assault: ‘She said yes, Marlon,’ and ‘She’s a ho, Marlon.’ Then there’s the section of Sheffield United fans who sang ‘She’s a whore,’ about the woman who was raped by footballer Ched Evans. Or simply, ‘He shags who he wants.’ Or the Arsenal fans who vented their frustration at Robin Van Persie’s move to Manchester United by referencing his arrest for rape in 2005 (sung to the tune of Craig David’s ‘Rewind’): ‘Van Per-sie, when a girl says no – molest her.’ Inevitably the fans’ forums frequently brush off all this stuff as ‘banter’, advising ‘If you don’t like it, don’t come to football’ – a line that would rarely now be considered an adequate response to racism. But these are not isolated incidents. One season ticket holder told me about a man shouting, ‘When I get home the wife’s going to get a fucking kicking,’ because their team had lost. A TV reporter had to endure the word ‘slut’ being chanted at her during a live broadcast. And former Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro was roundly abused by opposition fans during the 2014/15 season, with comments such as, ‘Show us where you piss from, you slag.’ The clubs responsible faced no sanctions from the governing bodies.

  The age-old defence for this stuff is that football is a sport for working-class men to enjoy. The one day of the week they get to relax. They’ve paid for their seat, they should be able to shout whatever they want. And anyway, it’s all just a laugh. But football, to its credit, is evolving beyond that. It has rejected the hooligan-tarred image of fans from the 1980s, and instead embraced community schemes and family enclosures. The sport is starting to make the right noises about being inclusive. But there remains a long way to go yet.

  Even if you take away the overtly offensive stuff, you’re still left with a lot of assumptive football songs where men are the default and it’s uncomfortable to join in if you’re female. A quick survey of my football-going female friends revealed that most of them don’t sing the songs about being one of the ‘Tottenham boys making all the noise’, or the ‘Shoreham boys at Bramall Lane’, because the songs don’t include them.

  Lifelong Tottenham fan and co-chair of Proud Lilywhites Chris Paouros tells me she physically bristles every time White Hart Lane launches into that chant. ‘I don’t sing it because it’s predicated on you being a man,’ she says, exasperated. ‘It’s like, well, we’re not all boys, so think about that for a moment. I hardly go to away games now, because the levels of casual racism, sexism and homophobia are so horrendous. I’m quite mouthy so I usually say something, especially if it’s a home game because I do feel that Tottenham is my home now – I’ve turned up without my season ticket before and still been let in because they know me there. But you can see it in people’s eyes when they’re thinking, “If I’d wanted a woman to moan at me I’d have stayed at home.”’

  Despite that, Chris and every other female fan I know still loves football. They endure the challenges, and keep going to the games. Why? Supporting Tottenham has been a constant in Chris’s family life for over forty years. ‘My grann
y couldn’t read or write when she came to North London from Cyprus, but she taught herself to recognize the word “Tottenham” on the telly so she could understand the football scores and know if her son would come home happy or not.’ Football became ingrained in her family – FA Cup days were a tradition, with ‘posh’ smoked salmon bridge rolls served in the front room so three generations could all sit around the TV. Football meant becoming part of British culture, making North London a home for future generations. That is no small detail. As an adult, White Hart Lane has become home to Chris. She has sat next to the same people for years. ‘I know their routines intimately. At forty-two minutes one of them always gets up and says, “Do you want lager or bitter, John?” And the other says, “I don’t know, Danny, what you having?” For fifteen years my wife, Monica, and I went to football together, and sat alongside these guys. I never saw them outside of football. But when Mon died, every single one of them came to her funeral.’

  Chris ruminates on the inherent contradictions of our national game, how it can be a home, a constant – even though stadiums, players, kit, managers all change. And how it can be a comforting place, despite some of the worst forms of abuse. For a lesbian, in particular, men’s football isn’t an obvious place to find a home – all the homophobic abuse, for one thing – but Chris thinks it’s something to do with having an identity. ‘We joke about things being a bit “Spurs-y”, that element of bonkers pride in finishing fourth and still not getting into the Champions League – who the fuck else does that? That’s Spurs-y.’