The Thoughts of a Girl in Gym Class

In elementary school, I always looked forward to Field Day, an annual tradition that marked the beginning of June. The whole grade would take buses to a park in Red Hook and spend the day engaged in friendly athletic competitions. No one really took the competition too seriously—Field Day, more than anything else, was an opportunity to have fun and spend time with friends, a way to properly commemorate the school year’s end.

So when the occasion approached during my fifth year of schooling, I thought it was business as usual. I signed up for soccer and track and field—two of my favorite activities—like I always had, then donned both sportswear and excitement, again, like I always had. However, what was different was the fact that this year, I was the only girl on the list for soccer.

Initially, it didn’t seem like a big deal to me. My gym teacher simply moved some names around so that there would be a few more girls scheduled to play soccer. But when we got to the pitch and started playing, I saw that only boys were playing beside me. I looked around and saw that the other girls were just standing by the goalpost and talking.

During halftime, one of the boys motioned toward the other girls and declared in frustration, “I know girls can’t stop talking, but then why did they sign up for soccer? Jump ropes are right over there, people!” Wanting to fit in, I rolled my eyes and laughed in agreement, never thinking to come to their defense.

About a year after that, I attended school in Brazil for a semester. After a soccer game in gym class, one of the boys ran up to me and said, “Wow, you’re as good as the boys are!” I laughed, readily accepting the compliment. I knew what the implications of what he had said were; he meant that—in athletic terms—he regarded girls as inherently inferior. But once again, I brushed them off, choosing to ignore the implications, remaining silent and complacent.

In both instances, I had this urge to distance myself from the other girls. I knew that if the boys associated me with them, I wouldn’t be taken seriously. It felt as though I had to make a critical, mutually-exclusive decision: to choose between being one of the girls (which certainly meant not being taken seriously) and being one of the boys (which, of course, meant putting down the other girls).

In elementary and middle school, I always chose the latter, but the constant feeling that I had something to prove—to them, to myself—was exhausting. Along the way, I had been so concerned with distancing myself from the other girls that I hadn’t noticed I was growing apart from the ones I cared about most. They understandably distanced themselves when they saw that I was always ready to put them down the second a boy was in earshot.

As the years have gone by, I’ve grown not just tired of that part of me, but ashamed. During fifth grade Field Day, I shouldn’t have just laughed at that boy’s remark—I should have been infuriated, because what I didn’t realize then was that there’s really no such thing as “other girls.” When that boy was criticizing the girls for being too talkative, he was criticizing me as well. And no matter how desperate I was to separate myself from other girls, nothing was going to change. I knew I had to stop.

This realization hasn’t made P.E. class into a perfect rainbows-and-unicorns environment for me. I still feel like I have something to prove, but in a different way. No longer do I concern myself with being seen as better than the “other girls”—rather, I struggle to make it clear that girls are just as athletically competent as boys are. Now, every time I strike out in softball and see the boys on my team exchange glances of contempt that read “What can you do? We have to have them on our team…,” it feels like a judgment of girls at large, not just myself.

And it isn’t even just the students. I’ve had several male gym teachers whose comments have verged on overt sexism. During a track and field unit last year, I wanted to try the highest hurdles, but as I prepared to start running, the (male) gym teacher came up to me and asked if I was “sure I could do this.” It goes without saying that he hadn’t asked any of the guys that.

At the end of each P.E. class, that same teacher would announce that we were to compete and determine who the fastest kid in the class was. After the race was over and the winner determined, he would declare, “Now for the fastest girl in the class!” I think the instance speaks for itself.

It is undeniable that a problem exists; what remains is simply the act of acknowledging it, which my peers and teachers seldom ever do. It’s a problem that forced me to make a decision that, while seemingly small at the moment, no girl should ever have to make—the choice between sisterhood and being respected as an athlete.

It’s also a problem that speaks to a larger issue of women and girls not being taken seriously in many different environments—be it a computer science classroom, a board meeting at a private equity firm, or a field of 2020 presidential candidates, and while solving it is a monumental task, it starts now, with, say, Stuyvesant’s little sixth-floor gym.