Bailey, Ashley-Jones speak out on body shaming

Many female athletes get ripped abs and toned muscles to be at their physical best for competitions, but they also have to strengthen their minds to ward off the body-shaming they receive for looking too muscular.

Gold medallist in the Women’s 4x100m Relay at the 2004 Olympics, Aleen Bailey, and former body builder and president of the Jamaica Fitness Association (JamFit) Karelle Ashley-Jones told The Gleaner how they coped with being body shamed for being fit.

Bailey and Ashley-Jones said one of the hardest things to deal with was the notion that being muscular makes a woman less of a female.

But they say this is far from the truth as keeping fit helped them in many ways.

“Running was therapy for me,” Bailey said. “I have asthma, and staying fit keeps my lungs healthy.”

Ashley-Jones, on the other hand was overweight as a child, but after some aerobic exercise classes in college, she later became a fitness instructor.

“It has helped me in so many ways,” she said. “Physically, I was able to get stronger and develop my muscle tone. I rarely ever get sick. I never had menstrual pains. I was able to have my first child at 42, and I am able to keep up with her,” Ashley-Jones said. “It has made me mentally stronger and given me the ability to be disciplined and focus on my goals and achieve them.”

They say that although exercising has been positive for them, they continued to receive negative remarks.

“Kids in high school used to say I was tough, but I used to beat them up,” Bailey said. “It never [bothered me] because I was winning and making my family proud — I just focused on the good that was going on.”

“When I was bodybuilding, especially when I was training for my first competition, (people said) that I looked ‘too tough’ –like a man and needed some flesh on my body,” Ashley-Jones said. “It (body shaming) didn’t really affect me because so many other persons around me were so supportive of the way I looked and what I was trying to accomplish that it outweighed the critical comments. I don’t really entertain negativity in my life,” Ashley-Jones said.

A survey by BT Sport says 80 per cent of female athletes feel pressured to conform to a certain look and body type.

But Bailey and Ashley-Jones encourage athletes to love themselves despite what others think.

“Ignore the noise and embrace your beauty because people only hate what they can’t become,” Bailey said. “Dem just jealous because your body stay good.”

“Female athletes must always be proud and confident in the way they look because to me, it is a look of pure female perfection,” Ashley-Jones said.

But Bailey says those who continue to criticise should “get therapy for [your] insecurities and stop projecting it on to others”.

– Sharla Williams