It is called the Italian National Lush Calculator. and there will be 10 women who define themselves as “curvy”. They will take to the field in a blue shirt, and the main idea is to show that there is no body “suitable” for sports, as this is still too easy to deduce from advertisements and commercials of not very inclusive sportswear brands. Sport is about feeling good, it’s fun, it’s about healthy competition and collaboration that pushes for continuous improvement. This has (or should not) have anything to do with purely aesthetic matters.
However, the truth is that even today, bodies that don’t meet beauty standards are ridiculed in gyms, considered “clumsy” and automatically associated with laziness and poor self-care. The fatphobia inherent in our society is such that we even tend to draw automatic conclusions about the state of a person’s health (one of the most personal and intimate issues) from a simple appearance. The new team is designed to break these stereotypes. The newly formed Italian National Curvy Calcio was founded by Francesca Angelo and coach Moreno Buccianti. The first training session has already taken place in Ro the other day, and now the calendar of the team’s next meetings is being drawn up. “We want to dispel the stereotype that women with curvaceous forms do not like physical activity and do not take care of themselves” explained Angelo: “With our determination, we will show that instead we are always ready to improve. Lush yes, but healthy.
The risk, not hard to guess, is that in this way we create an additional “ghettoization” (and fetishization) of bodies that we consider “different” from the standard, and that the “before and after” model of TV weight loss programs follows “that unfortunately we know well. However, the organizers are confident that the project is going in a completely different direction. “We know perfectly well that labeling people is deeply wrong,” emphasize Angelo and Buccianti, “but our national team was born to carry a diametrically opposite message.”
The 10 players will be supporting charitable and educational initiatives for those who have been discriminated against and are currently looking forward to training. “Since I started to love myself, I love to participate and discover new sides of myself”explains one of the participants, Deborah Jessica Tufano, adding that sport “is about self-love, health and commitment.” We hope that this initiative will help, as far as possible, free the sport from an aesthetic that is still extremely difficult to give up. “The relationship with my body I would not define simply,” says another player, Flavia Gentiluomo, “When I was little, I was ashamed and I envied other girls who, from my point of view, were perfect, and I was clumsy , fat and dwarf. . So I threw myself into the sport (martial arts) in the hope of changing it, making it “better”, but suddenly I learned to know it, to appreciate its qualities regardless of form.
Source: Elle