Cathy Rigby is one of the many professional gymnasts who has suffered with eating disorders. In a competitive sport like gymnastics, girls are told at a very young age that being short and having a low percentage of body fat is the ideal body type. Cathy Rigby discussed in an interview that she was at an Olympic Team training camp when she first discovered how to make herself throw up. She was 16 years old and weighed just 89 pounds at the time. The shocking facts are that teammates have influenced their other teammates to make themselves throw up or have shared their unhealthy eating habits with them, so they could maintain their small stature. Puberty is known as the devil in gymnastics, because girls are meant to mature and develop, which naturally causes weight gain.
Gymnastic organizations need to look at the bigger picture of these issues and realize that for many years, eating disorders were not only common knowledge, but encouraged in the sport. The thought of gymnasts being weighed as much as three times per day is appalling because it would result in an inaccurate body weight. Factors such as how much water you drank that day or if you are menstruating can affect one’s weight. This would automatically have damaging effects on a young girl’s body image.
It is fair to say that eating disorders are prevalent in the world of gymnastics and should be considered a systemic problem within organizations. Between coaches and other teammates encouraging these deadly disorders, the realization needs to be made that things must change. No young girl should ever feel the need to change her body to conform to the ideals of her chosen sport.
MacDonaldM
Sport, Not Games ⚽ 