Weighing in on women’s rosters
The other day I was chatting with my friend who used to play for the Wahine softball team, and I mentioned I had fished out an old roster from 1995 on which she was listed. It was exciting for me to see my friend’s name among the likes of Brooke Wilkins and Tia Morenz. My friend had a more practical question: “How much did I weigh back then?”
“They don’t list weights for college women,” I said.
“We don’t need any more eating disorders,” my friend half-joked.
I hadn’t really thought about why they don’t list weights for college women, but sadly I realized she had a point. Girls are taught to be embarrassed about their weight as they strive to be as light as possible. You’re never supposed to ask a woman her weight, right? Imagine the pressure on these young athletes who have been conditioned by society to be ashamed of their weight if their total pounds were listed next to their name for all the world to see?
However, not listing player weights on rosters also reinforces this shame women are conditioned to feel about their weight. It’s like the NCAA is collectively embarrassed of the mass of women athletes. In a society where women are still fighting for athletic equity, they literally have no weight in college sports.
And even without weights listed on college rosters, player’s poundage is often a favorite storyline among the media. Take Stanford’s Jayne Appel. Never mind that she was arguably the best all-around center in the nation last year (with all due respect to Courtney Paris), in every televised Cardinal game, the story on Appel was how she went on Weight Watchers last summer and lost a bunch of weight. This was the explanation for a resulting positive effect — it meant Jaynie ran the court well and didn’t tire as easily, allowing her to be a key presence longer and in more ways in such a physically intense sport. The funny thing is, these are results I associate with improved conditioning. But for all the Stanford games I watched this past season, I can’t remember anyone saying anything about Jaynie putting in extra hours in the gym or on the track. Diet Coke chicken alone will not a well-conditioned athlete make, or else all the skinny people would be running marathons.
The problem is that society associates beauty for women not with fitness but with an almost unhealthy thinness. Women are taught to take up as little space as possible, and even women who do weight-bearing exercise usually try not to get “too big.” But the purpose of exercise should be to build strength — muscular, cardiovascular, bone, emotional.
Which is why I find it exciting that the WNBA does list player weights with their profiles. A few weeks ago, I was poking around the WNBA Web site, looking up player weights, and comparing their weight-to-height ratio to mine. I found it very encouraging that Candice Wiggins, who I’ve always thought of as a skinny little thing, still weighed a healthy 154 pounds. For the 5-11 Wiggins, that’s a 2.17 pound per inch weight-to-height ratio, which is higher than my personal target of 2.0 ppi. The list of superstars who weigh in at a good strong weight goes on: Candace Parker, 175 lbs (2.30 ppi); Chamique Holdsclaw, 172 lbs (2.32 ppi); Diana Taurasi, 172 lbs (2.39 ppi); Lauren Jackson, 187 lbs (2.43 ppi); Cheryl Ford, 195 lbs (2.60 ppi). These players show you can be healthy and in exceptional shape while weighing more than the skinny sticks paraded by popular media as models. Displaying the weights of these strong women provides a much better example to aspiring young women athletes than repeating ad nauseum that a player of unknown mass is on Weight Watchers.
