I attended a public high school before returning to a private college. Before then, I attended a private middle school. This type of experience in education can be a challenge of morals or beliefs, but I believe that attending the school I was at helped me learn some difficult, uncomfortable life lessons. I was in my sophomore year of high school, fifteen years old. This was also towards the beginning of the year, which was still the transition stage from summer fun to homework and tests. Also, our high school was very motivated by our sports teams, specifically our football team.
On the announcements, they told every girl who was in a sport to head to the auditorium before lunch. Since I was on the soccer team at the time, I was able to go to the meeting. All women’s sports teams were waiting patiently in their seats, and several male teachers and coaches and our principal were giving out the speech. The principal starts by discussing the women’s teams and their performances from the previous year. Then he moves on to talking about the men’s teams, comparing their performances from the previous year to ours in a negative way. I thought this was a little bit strange but I continued to listen to what they had to say. The principal goes on to say that the reason that our performance was poor compared to the guys was because we aren’t physically built as well as the men. He decided that our weaknesses were in endurance and lifting and he made the decision to have all the women’s sports teams workout in the weight room twice as much as last year.
When I was sitting amongst the other girls in the auditorium, I had a lot of thoughts running through my head. Why were they comparing our body weight and strength to the football team? Does anybody else feel like this is a weird way of approaching this situation? This was probably the first time I’ve experienced this kind of situation, one in which a group of men told a group of women that it was our fault that they were not as physically built as the men were. I kept my mouth shut and just thought of all the possibilities of why I was wrong for thinking this was weird, that maybe they were right and I just didn’t understand. After the
meeting we were sent to lunch, and I sat next to a group of nice girls. I remember some of them were on the dance team and some of them were in other sports at the school. Halfway through the lunch time I decided to ask the table about the meeting and what they thought about it. As soon as I broke the ice everyone had something to say, and everyone basically said everything I was thinking before. I felt better knowing that I wasn’t crazy but it was still crazy that happened.
That experience helped me learn a lot about who I am and what I believe in. After that, I realized that the reason that we are all different is because we are born different, shaped differently, and we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. It is not fair to compare body image or body weight, considering that sometimes those are things that we simply cannot change about ourselves. I wish that more people would be able to realize that, but I am thankful that I had the experience and learned about it when I did.
