Talk about an Olympic-class win.
In a now-viral TikTok video posted last month, U.S. women’s rugby star Ilona Maher took a fat-shaming commenter to task for betting that her body mass index is 30. “I think you were trying to roast me, but this is actually a fact,” she said at the start of her retort. “I do have a BMI of 30 – or 29.3, to be more exact.”
Maher then noted that she has been mocked and shamed for her athletic frame her entire life, sometimes to her great embarrassment. But after talking to medical professionals – “because I go off of facts, not just what pops up [in my head], like you do,” she noted to her would-be bully – she learned that the number, a calculation made using a patient’s height and weight, doesn’t actually tell us much about a person’s health.
And, “it doesn’t really tell you what I can do,” Maher added. “So, yeah … I am considered overweight. But alas, I’m going to the Olympics – and you’re not.”
Off to Paris she went after sharing that post, all 5’10” and 200 lbs. of her – on to secure a dramatic, historic victory with Team USA. Indeed, the bronze medal clinched by the women’s rugby team earlier this week in its final match against Australia is a first in the team’s history.
Maher, 27, has seen her social-media star rise amid the excitement, with her follower count exploding into the millions in a matter of weeks. All the better for disseminating the gospel of #beastbeautybrains – the hashtag she often uses when speaking out about the importance of supporting women’s sports and promoting body acceptance.
It’s a drum she beats often – and one that I especially appreciate, as someone who has tried to shrink myself countless times over, literally and spiritually, so that I’m more pleasing to be around. To make myself as small as possible, dieting and quieting myself repeatedly, so that I take up as little oxygen, as little space, as little notice as I can. To squash my plus-size body and opinionated, passionate mind down, down, down.
There is such catharsis found in seeing someone – an athletic someone, at that – use their considerable platform to negate the narrative that bigness in women is somehow shameful or scorn-worthy, inherently unhealthy, or altogether … wrong.
When speaking (tearfully) with Fan Girl Sports Network, an online hub for fans of women’s sports, Maher pushed back at those who feel women should only ever be “fragile, and petite, and quiet, and meek.” Since the Olympics kicked off, she’s seen an influx of mean-spirited comments that deem her “manly” because of her non-diminutive frame.
She asserted in response: “Women can be strong. And they can have broad shoulders. And take up space. And they can be big.”
Here’s To Becoming Elephants
While ruminating on Maher’s words this week – and admittedly taking them one step further – a vision kept popping into my head: Women becoming elephants.
The metaphorical ones, that is, from the adage about the massive land animal taking up so much of a room that its presence simply must be discussed. My ideas around this grew somewhat cartoon-ish, the more I indulged – imagining women stomping into spaces with enough oomph to shake floors and light fixtures, or crack walls; and women trumpeting their thoughts so loudly that others nearby cover their ears in shock.
But mostly, I’ve just pictured us genuinely at ease – with ample space for our bodies and ideas to breathe. Comfortable in being big and loud, in all senses, as our beings and moods dictate – perhaps even speeding headfirst into the once-dreaded territory of being “too much.”
In an especially stunning post, Maher urged her fellow broad-shouldered baddies to “walk into any room like you own the place.” Like you can no longer be owned, I’d respectfully add – too comfortable in whatever size we assume to be pressurized or contained in any way, ever again. ◼️
