Adulting - #20 Athletes, Influencers & The Intersection of Race with Jazmin Sawyers

Episode Date: November 18, 2018

In this weeks episode I speak to athlete, singer, presenter, law undergrad, and old friend Jazmin Sawyers. We compare and contrast our industries as well as questioning the role of race and structural racism and why more women don't play sport. https://sawyersstudio.bigcartel.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hi guys and welcome to Adulting. This is the podcast where I try to figure out what it means to be an adult in this day and age and what affects the way that we grow up as millennial women. Or just millennials. You could be a man too. And today I'm joined by Jasmine Sawyers. Hello, thank you for having me. Thank you for coming on. Jasmine is a very good friend for a very long time.

Also an Olympic athlete, lawyer, musician. What other things do you want to add to that? I'm going to retract the lawyer. I definitely only have an undergrad degree in law. Oh yeah, but I think that makes you a lawyer in my eyes. Okay, you know what? I'll take it. Yeah, I think.

What other things can we add to your long list of accolades? Aspiring presenter. Yes. I'm going to throw that in there. we've been doing a little bit recently so you do long jump but you also did bobsleigh in the winter olympics yes in the winter youth olympics in 2012 with misha mcneil who was still doing bobsleigh we won a silver medal um and then i moved back to just athletics and i've been long jumping since then you're really really accomplished person like in terms of health and fitness and sport you are pretty much the top of the game that anyone could get to. Interestingly when Jazz and I were at school together I used to be off smoking all the time when Jazz was training or off drinking and not doing anything so sitting

here now at the age we're at both in an industry that maybe from the outside looks like it should have things in common what we're kind of want to talk about today is why is it that women are so drawn to do fitness um rather than sport and why is it that women in sport perhaps don't get as much airtime as people in my industry do and what are the injustices in that I guess yeah I think it's it's going to be an interesting one um because I think social media is where it's at really because on tv sport gets shown um but you think when people that I speak to that are our kind of age what they're aspiring to it's definitely fitness they look to fitness models fitness instagrammers fitness bloggers um for inspiration rather than

sports women and it's kind of it's a question why why is that it's interesting as well because we were just saying before how i would say that social media probably was at the forefront of what made us not what made us but what has encouraged us to stay healthy and fit one because we're pressured to look a certain way but two it was the first time that we were seeing kind of women with different bodies women who are slightly musclier and I think bodybuilding or that style of training, which is what pretty much everyone does, even if you don't realise you're doing bodybuilding, that is kind of the fundamental weight training

that most people are doing, hypertrophy training kind of thing. And that's really easy to translate online. And that does really well. And people are looking to people like me who I'm literally just a personal trainer. I have no other qualifications in health and fitness, but I could reach a wider audience than jazz.

And we, I definitely feel like this is a huge injustice. And something we've been talking about before is the question of whether or not it's down to the fact that you are a woman of color. I've gone straight in there. You've gone straight for it. It's, that is an interesting one because even in athletics,

there's a disparity between the athletes that have bigger followings and smaller followings. And some of it is to do with how active you are on social media. Some of it is to do with how good your results are. But if you looked through all the athletes that you might've heard of, generally the white women have more followers

than the black women. And I just don't know why that would be that you might have heard of generally the white women have more followers than the black women and i just don't know why that would be other than yeah other than the color because there's other um women of color athlete a woman of color that i follow on instagram such as ajn who i've spoken about before with other friends who's incredible she's an adidas athlete she's beautiful and yet her following yeah and she's amazing she's a mom and she's like there's so many things about her that should make her like a go-to person to follow and i know that there's always this feeling whenever we talk about race that it's like oh

my god you can't just blame it on race or whatever but in life everything in the media and everything we see is whitewashed so i i do believe that even in the algorithm i genuinely think that women women of color or or BAME women, find it harder to get up because we just aren't, we're just used to seeing white people in every industry. We're used to it

and it's put out there as the ideal. So I don't know if when you see a woman of colour on Instagram doing the fitness thing, it thinks, oh, well, that's actually not what I'm aspiring to. Yeah. What I'm aspiring to is this sort of white ideal.

And so you go, well, I don't need to follow that because that's not what, is what's going to be motivation to me and I've been guilty of it myself as a woman of color I follow so many more well I did follow so many more white women for motivation than people that look like me going off on a tangent ever so slightly but I'll bring it back um the Kardashians very problematic they I of guess, are appropriating black women's bodies. If you think about it, they were kind of the very start of women wanting to get muscly. I do think they were the forerunners as well.

So that big bottom wanting big lips, that is a natural aesthetic of a woman of colour, isn't it? But when it's appropriated by white women or paler women, it's seen as attractive. Well, now it's desirable. Right. Women who are black often excel in athletics right yes so many black women are successful in sport and how long have those bodies which probably a bit like me are muscly and look like athletic how long have they been present and not been um glorified we've had the the big legs and the abs since sort of day one and that wasn't a

desirable thing that was something i was teased for when I was younger yeah um and I know that you know white women will have experienced who have been muscly since the start will have experienced some of that but it does make me wonder as you're saying sort of is this has it been made cool by white women I think I think when women white women co-op something it takes it into the mainstream and it makes it acceptable and it makes me wonder if like because it's on a white woman people are like oh my god it's and I know I'm saying this like probably guilty like even in the back of my own mind I think that I wouldn't necessarily register a black woman who is muscly as being as um like a big a big achievement as a white woman who is

because in a in your head you're like oh well that's just like genetic yeah I used to get that all the time even when you know I had already been training for years, it would be a case of, oh, well, it's so natural, you know, it's in your genes to be muscly. And I don't, is that true? Is that there to an extent? But does that diminish my hard work? No.

And does that mean that it's any less desirable because my skin is darker? Yeah. And I think the other question is, why is it now? So I think that white women as well are, um, at the forefront of the health and fitness thing online. That's just massive. There aren't that many.

It's just a fact that there aren't as many women of color influences, whether or not there are as many actually is wrong. There aren't that many who are with massive followings. but so what I think is really interesting is that women in sport and especially in the sport you do I mean it's incredible you are an actual athlete but this time athlete gets bandied around by brands and co-opted for people who are like me who aren't athletes when you see stuff like that does that annoy you I don't think it it doesn't annoy me it does amuse me yeah um because sometimes you see in bios you see it a lot i'm a this brand athlete i'm in that brand athlete and i've been tempted to kind of sometimes i'll scroll through the page and think maybe i'm you know thinking too fast here but are you what i would think of as an athlete what do

you one i feel like athletes compete in my mind and i know that bodybuilders compete um and that's a form of athleticism but it's not but most people aren't exactly they go to the gym and that's great and people in fitness and it's a great thing to be encouraging people to be fit and healthy but that's a different thing to being an athlete very different and I think so in as much as we're saying that like with the class and stuff and we've co-opted a body type or a body ideal and it's been bolstered to become like in the public eye and fashionable um i think in the same way weirdly the fitness industry has almost co-opted this idea of athleticism and completely taken the light away because before athletes compared to especially other sports like

rugby and and football which obviously normally quite male dominated they're obviously really widely um celebrated but people who work in my industry in the fitness industry are becoming like household names above people who are actual olympic athletes and i i really want to know what the undertones are or why is that we're so much more drawn to um getting invested in someone who's into fitness or getting invested in someone who's like an athlete is it because the fitness influencer is more palatable is it because they're managed to get a bigger following or is it some intrinsic is it to do with being a woman and not wanting to play sport what do you think i think there's an element of it where people will look at an influencer and say that's achievable right um or they'll say this is a normal person um who goes

to the gym like i go to the gym whereas people might look at my page and say this is a normal person um who goes to the gym like i go to the gym whereas people might look at my page and say this is an olympic athlete i can never do that so i'm not going to aspire to that i'm going to aspire to somebody that i think is much more like me and i know that for for some women they don't want to compete yeah and what i do is about competing it's literally pinning myself up against other women saying who is the best and not in a kind of airy fairy way it's literally who is first second third who came last and we can measure it but in fitness and with influencers that's not always the case i don't know if it's that whereas people might find okay this is more relatable to me i can do this or do they genuinely find it more impressive and therefore more inspirational that people go to

the gym and get bodies like this or are able to commit to the gym with a normal job but then also lots of influencers don't have a normal job at the same time they're just not just no I think that's their only job I was actually just about to say that it's interesting you say it's more relatable I could achieve this because what you're kind of by proxy saying that is I'm an athlete I might train six hours a day or my whole life is based around what my training I do but some influencers out there who are fitness influencers who do have incredible bodies they do spend all day every day weighing out their food training all the time and they make it relatable because they've started off as your girl next door but when their whole job is about looking that way they spend their whole

life trying to look that way. I've learned this firsthand. Like you can't stay in a certain shape without giving up everything. And I've learned that I do want to live like a normal-ish lifestyle. Prior to that, when I did compete, it was like being an athlete. I didn't go out.

I didn't have fun with my friends. I didn't go to meals. I was being really careful what I eat. To an extent, that is not the performance of an athlete, but it is the kind of lifestyle of an athlete. It's not relatable and it's not achievable by the lay person I do think that narrative's coming through a bit more I do think people are being more honest about how hard it is to achieve certain body types which I don't think people were initially but it is funny that you say on which I agree with you people think influencers are more relatable because

actually their job is or my job to a certain extent even though I've tried to change it so it's not is to look a certain way to be inspirational so it's not in either way is is relatable but the other thing is with athletics obviously you have to look a certain way by proxy of needing to be a certain weight or a certain ability or whatever but it's not focused on it's not you're not doing that just to make your body look like that it's for performance which is a much healthier mindset I think yeah I don't win or lose depending on how I look and people can debate till the cows come home that I'm too big to be an athlete I'm too small to be a long jumper I'm too this or too that and they have and they do on Twitter and

it's unpleasant but ultimately at the end of the day, the results are what matters. Yeah. I could look like anything. And if you look at the Olympic Games and even in one event, so many people, there'll be such a range of bodies. Even in my event in long jump, there's such a range of bodies. And so you can't look at that and say one body type is best for this. Yeah. So in a way, that's kind of more relatable. Yeah.

To some people, because you can go, okay, well, I can actually achieve this no matter what my body is like you know most of my competitors are have seven plus inches on me yeah and someone could look at that and go okay well i don't need to look like this person in order to achieve this but i don't think everyone's seeing it in that way unless they actually want to be a long jumper and how many people want to be a long jumper but i think the thing is with that is because with your athleticism it's about the process it's the process of the training it's putting the hard work in and it's getting to the ability of the end goal with fitness on instagram it's about getting the end goal and it doesn't really matter how you get there it doesn't matter if you get

there by killing yourself in the gym or by getting bum implants or whatever else that people are doing and so i think that's so true like any well not anyone but you could work hard to try and become the best athlete you could be from whatever starting point you're at because it's all about the work hard work you put in whereas on Instagram it's just that surface value of like what you look like I know that's a blanket statement and I'm I hope that I'm not like that as a fitness influence but I mean that on the whole if you looked at the industry they're probably the most saturated and the most the most um what's the word successful i guess influences out there are ones who have incredible body do you know what i mean but the other

interesting thing you said was it doesn't matter what you look like for how you like win in your competition yeah like it doesn't matter what you look like but you were saying that obviously if you're more attractive you'll get more followers on instagram which means you could do better in your profession because i guess athletics is not that much of a lucrative career that's it i think a lot of people see professional athlete and assume that you're like a footballer and you just have money and especially in sport like athletics it's just not like that so many people aren't even making a living um and so you have to look outside of the actual sport to make a living and sometimes that comes in form of sponsorship often it comes in the form of sponsorship and sponsors will want you these

days if you have a lot of followers online how do you get the followers online you have the body you have the look um and you know even we were talking about influencers and race and color and it's it's kind of the same in athletics and even i can in a way reap the rewards of this because even amongst the women of color it's the lighter or the closer to white of us that do better you know there are athletes that are so much better than me that are darker than me that don't get the same attention yeah and that's not right either yeah there's i think some of us feel like there's a pressure to become influencers influencers because that seems to be where the money is. That seems to be how to make a living.

And yes, our main goal here is to win medals, but winning medals isn't always enough to pay your bills. Yeah. And I think the problem is, it sounds like I'm saying, or we're saying that Instagram's a problem. The problem isn't Instagram, it's society. We were just talking about earlier how when I watch TV or when I watch a film, changing now, but mostly everyone in it was white and like British looking white not like you could

tell that they were English or American white so when I read a book now I was reading a book and one of the characters is black and the other one was like I don't know what race they are and I honestly for the life of me couldn't imagine I normally when I read I imagine kind of like a celebrity or face that I know and then it's kind of distorted in a way this isn't active this is just what my brain throws up images of people and when I was reading this book I was like I can't really think that many like ambiguous race people to put as this person so their face was just like blurry and the black person I can't think what who the actor was but that was hard the other characters that were white I had such definitive faces for them and that's because when we watch things in the media or in the news, the TV, whatever,

everything's so white that you become, you start to believe that the world around you is white. Whereas if I walk out onto the street where I live, probably 20, 30% of the faces are white faces. But in the media, the representation is white, which is why on social media that translates. Yeah, white is the norm. And so it's also what we aspire to.

Yeah. It's what we look at and say okay well this is what i should want to be this is what i should want to be like so i'm going to follow these people because they embody what i'm supposed to want yeah what i'm supposed to be aiming for so in this eight because i think we both of us came about to understanding racism and structural racism at a similar time because having been at the same school we kind of had the same background even though you're mixed race i think i've been brought up in and where i've lived in the schools that i've been to have been predominantly white um i've had a very white experience i would say um i've grown up around my mum's side of the family my mum's white my dad's black for those that don't know that um and I think my experience of of growing up I

haven't what I would always have said no no I've never experienced any racism that was what I would always say no no I've never experienced any racism at all um and then when I started to learn things I realized well things that I wouldn't have put under the quotation of racism actually completely are and it's structural it's the security guard following me around a shop after i've been training because i'm in sports kit and i'm not white so oh well she's probably going to be stealing it's people crossing the road to avoid walking next to me it's you know it's the smaller things it's people bringing up my race in conversation that has have nothing to do with my race even me at school talking about your hair like little micro not that so but like little microaggressions that are constantly pointing

out that like you aren't the same as us, why aren't you the same? Yes. And that's things, I think the microaggressions thing is a massive thing that people struggle to get around because you're like, but it's not that bigger thing. But, and I'm being nice, I just want to touch your hair. Yeah, touching your hair. That's the thing. My mum loves touching people's hair and I'm like, mum, you can't do that.

But that is like treating a person like they are different. It's, it if it's coming from the nicest place it's basically going you aren't the same as me and I want to show you why we're different it's enforcing the the whiteness is the norm yeah it's I'm normal you're abnormal let's talk about it yeah exactly thing is it can be really difficult because people that want to learn and want to understand and want to know more and expand their own knowledge about race of course they should be able to but it's it's also not on black people to have to endure that all the black and any ethnic minority people to have to endure kind of constant day-to-day you're different you're different let me show you how different you are so i was talking to florence given who's an amazing feminist she's 19 and she's fucking unbelievable and we were talking about this and

i was like every time that i understand racism a bit deeper i realize like another problematic thing that i do whether that's like me trying to bring up racism when it's not my place or me centering myself as a white woman in a conversation that isn't about me um and we were basically saying how i like even now today we're talking about it but we knew we're going to talk about it it's not our place to ask black women or men or bame anyone to um explain the problems of race because it's kind of like being a woman when a man's like but why can't i cackle you and you're like well i don't want to do your emotional labor it's not it's not anyone else's no duty to educate us I did the last podcast with Shona

I had loads of women of colour that I didn't know followed me messaged me like thank you so much that it was nice for you guys to speak about it why did I have to be why does it take a white woman talking about it for it to get heard because trust me there are women of colour talking about this yeah there are people out there and why why is it the only people that look like them not only but largely people that look like them not only but largely people that look like them are so keen to listen to them and and to hear that conversation um i don't know it's it's so difficult and it's it goes even further you know even when you have um black or people of color on panels and things it tends to be mixed race people. Yeah. There's even, I've experienced this.

More palatable than best comers. Yes, it's like, okay, well, we'll do the colour thing, but just a bit. You know, we're not going to go full black. Full black. And it's, you know, I see it amongst my friends. I see it amongst my friends that are such talented athletes. I see it amongst my competitors

who don't get the same airtime as me because they're not, well, do we know it's because they're blacker than me? No, we don't know that. But it's relatively safe to assume. Because I guess what you were saying before is, when people don't understand that there's still racism in the UK, it's because you can't imagine all those little things you just said,

being followed around a shop, people making comments to you. It's a lifetime's worth of prodding. It's not what I think people think racism is which is using very droggy words yeah yeah it's it's so much more structural than that it's kind of it's like we discussed um sort of before we started recording um like with women how you feel sometimes there's only space for one woman yes uh in any room it feels like there's no space for one person of color in any room also feels like there's no space for one person of color in any room also and once they've hit that quota it's like okay tick that's done and that

is structural racism that isn't it's not just opening up opportunity for everybody that's saying okay we need to tick a box um what we're actually now we can get back to the standard middle-aged white male and the other the other problem is you'll get people going oh but all the candidates who are better for the job were white. Now, that might be the case, but the reason that would be the case is that, like... You have to ask yourself why these candidates are better. Is it because the white candidates are white? Is it because they worked harder? You know, the amount of people of colour...

It would be because of privilege. Exactly. That's what Renée says. That's what the point. So everything about racism, it's not about racism. It's about right privilege. It's not about all the things people do it's about all the things you can't do it's all the spaces you can't access and it is and I think people need to not take that

personally yes because when people hear this they're going to be offended yeah and say but I'm not racist and I just say want to say to them well it's not about you actually it's not about you calling you personally out I'm it's this is a structural thing yeah that every individual has a part to play in it's not about you being a racist person i'm not calling any individual out here and saying this is your fault but we are all racist so like i will happily admit that i am racist in that i might be more prejudiced about seeing a man of color in the street walking behind me than I would be a white man and that is of no grounding other than the fact that we've been taught that black men

are dangerous and that's like a conditioning thing and even saying that out loud people will be like I can't believe you said that I'd never think that that's a problematic thing because like it's like the colour blind thing it's like I can't see colour the only people who can't see colour are white people because when you're white, you operate everything. No one questions you. When you're a person of color, you're constantly reminded, as Jaz has just said, that, oh, your hair's different.

Your skin's different. Do you do X, Y, Z because of X, Y, Z? Where are you from? No, where are you originally from? Oh, that's my favorite. Yeah. So where are your family from? London.

But wherever you're from. But those things haven't happened to you. So when you're white, you can say, I can't see colour. But that in of itself... Because your colour isn't factored into your life. Yeah, exactly. Because white, default white. It's the norm.

Yeah. So that's quite heavy. It's hard. It's really hard to navigate that conversation without offending people. Yeah, it's... I think sometimes people will turn. It's, um, I think sometimes people will turn around and want to say, oh,

well, can't we just forget about race and everybody get along. But when you look at the way that society is structured, society hasn't forgotten about race. No. So we can't just do that because then it's continues playing to white privilege and that's how life will continue. So no, we can't just forget.

It won't be equality until you fan duel casinos exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling winning which beats even the 27th best feeling saying i do who wants this last parachute i do enjoy the number one feeling, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. You could have a panel show of all black women and no one noticed that everyone on that panel was a black woman.

Because if there was a panel of white women, I wouldn't turn on the TV and go, oh, that's weird. But if it was a whole panel of just black women, I would probably look at the title or look to see if there was a reason why it was all black women. Just being completely honest.

Because you don't see that. You would be like, that's really strange. Or even if it was black men. Or even if it was a balance of whether there was more black people than white people, you'd a black yes yes 100 you would this must be about race that is so ridiculous isn't it that so until i think until everyone in a room is a minority and and there's one white man until that is no one blinks an eye then we haven't gone far enough yet because having one person in the room is just not good enough. Because also, I even do this with you,

but like, you shouldn't have to be the spokesperson about racism in sport. Because you're a mixed race woman who plays sport, I bet every single time someone wants to talk about race, it's like you've done a degree on it. It's like, you shouldn't have to always, just like you shouldn't always have to ask a woman, what's it like being a woman in your industry?

Well, it's like being a man in my industry, I'm just doing my job. But there is- Except there's a whole load of things that I have to deal with it the man doesn't have yeah exactly so that's that's another problem it's like it shouldn't always have to be brought up and and if this is triggering you and trust me I get it because when I first read Rennie's blog before I read her book which was a few years ago now I really had to sit with it for a bit and I felt fucked off because I was like I'm not racist though I'm not racist I'm not racist I'm not racist and then I then it sunk in I was annoyed about it I felt really attacked this is like the honest reaction especially when you're somebody that um may pride yourself on being no no no I'm I you know I treat everybody

the same yeah um you know there's sometimes people have me at events or at panels and say you know isn't it great how diverse this panel is as if they want my approval and that's not my job to approve of you and and you shouldn't need to seek it you shouldn't be proud of yourself for including you know that's not exactly you haven't won there you're just being a decent person that's not something you get to shout about that's the conundrum is that um in order to to speak out about these things it's we have to give it to the people that have the something you get to shout about. That's the conundrum is that in order to speak out about these things, we have to give it to the people that have the platform in order to change that. And it feels counterintuitive, but it's kind of the only way that we have to do it right now

because nobody's listening to the small voice, the voices that are smaller. Yeah, because you just can't, it doesn't go beyond the scope of like... Where do you find them? You know, if I was trying to look for more um influences of color for example i wouldn't know where to go because everyone that i follow they all follow more white people yeah and i think it's the same in a lot of industries like it's not even if you were looking for this where do you find it so we have to put it in a place where people can find it definitely i completely agree and back to quick because i think we haven't talked about it

good enough but with sport i was saying to Jazz earlier I'd absolutely love to be trained like an athlete I think there's nothing cooler than being that physically fit and conditioned and by proxy automatically you would get the body of an athlete if you were eating right and doing that training fuck me it'd be so hard why is there not a demand why is there not why do you think people don't realize how amazing athletes are like what is it I don't know I don't know if it really does seem that unattainable um but but even just the style of training because you didn't have to you don't necessarily have to do it like yeah but like some of the moves and things you do i'm i like will want to copy like the thing we did today earlier like step ups with the jump like all these kind of plyometric works i do add a few

things in that are like athletic space they're so incredible for building muscle or for doing achieving things that lots of people on Instagram is trying to achieve but for some reason we're really like pigeonholed or like tunnel vision to thinking that there's only one way of doing things I'm not sure it's such a it's such a strange one because I'm sure athletes in so many different sports will look at fitness and go oh I have with the fitness industry and say I have a better way to do that I have a better way to do the exercise and I can get you improving on it so much faster but I don't know if people look at training and necessarily want to get better at a certain thing or if they're just going okay well I know this will make my bum bigger and so I'm happy to do this or do people want to do an exercise that's a bit more functional and say

I'm going to get so much better at people want to do an exercise that's a bit more functional and say, I'm going to get so much better at doing this exercise or not even necessarily that because most of the exercise that I do isn't to get me good at that exercise, it's to get me good at long jump. And, you know, people will train for a marathon, but nobody will train to do a sprint race. Yeah. And so, but would it be fun for people? I think it would.

I think so much fun. Athletics training is so much fun. I think if I said to somebody, okay, I'm going to take a group and I'm going to train you more and your 100 meter time is going to come down by two seconds by the time we finish this eight week program wouldn't that be fun i don't know do people want that cool i think so i do think it's changing i think i'm being a bit cynical i'm talking about it and i am part of this problem i won't deny it and when i came in i was like that but even in my own journey i would love to do that now so i think that's so much more fun i'd love you to train me

to do um 100 meters i think you just set it up after this So I think that's so much more fun. I'd love you to train me to do 100 meters. I think we can just set it up after this podcast. I think there is a desire to do this because I think we've shifted. I think we went through a huge thing where health and fitness was literally about being shredded and then everyone's realized that's not actually healthy. And I think there is now,

especially with the younger generation, a real desire to actually be really healthy. And to achieve things and to improve. I'm seeing that being championed online a lot more. And I like it. I like when people are celebrating the things that their bodies can do. And I think to have good mental health,

you need to exercise. But in order to, you need to exercise in a way that is about being healthy rather than about being fit. And I think they're two very mutually exclusive things because a lot of the fitness and vertical fitness influences that you see won't be very healthy because they are doing extreme things to get to the place that they're at that's true and to be

honest i have to be fair i think there's a lot of athletes that may not be healthy because we're doing extreme things i don't think everything that i do would be recommended i think my knees would be shot by the time that i'm 40 uh maybe sooner but I'm hoping they'll hold out till then um and I think that some athletes will go to extreme lengths again to get the results that they want and it's in every industry but I now that I've seen the shift in people wanting to improve um for the sake of improving they want to be better not just want to look great I don't know why that hasn't shifted into sport I think there needs to be and i know you've said i remember you saying this to me maybe like two years ago you're like i want to bridge the gap between sport

and fitness online and i think that it is happening but i don't i just don't know why i think we need to platform more women in sport i think we need to turn up to more women in sport matches i think it's ridiculous how well sport does, especially in the UK for men. Like rugby matches are massive. Football players are household names and it's absolute stars. And women's sport gets put on random channels at random times.

It does. It goes all the way through though. So men will go and watch other men play rugby, but they'll also have a rugby team that they play for at the weekend casually. How many women do you know that play? You're so right. You know, that wanna, they'll go and watch, I many women do you know that play, you know, that want to they'll go and watch, I don't know, women's football

but they'll go for a kick around with their mates in the park. We don't do that. We don't have posters of like female athletes in our bedrooms when we're little and then try and like do, that is so true, even at school and this is really sad, but we went to a really sporty school and I never did any sport because I genuinely thought I was too fat for sport and I don't know where I got this idea from

it was really sporty, I wasn't fat though but I wasn't You were never fat. But I guess I wasn't skinny like the other guys And I don't know where I got this idea from. It was really sporty. I wasn't fat though, but I wasn't. You were never fat. But I guess I wasn't skinny like the other guys. I don't know. But in my head, I was like, I can't, I'm not good enough to do sport. I was intimidated by it. And if you were a sporty girl, that had to be your whole identity as well. Yes.

Whereas with boys. Yeah. All the boys played sport. Doesn't matter if you're fat. Most of the boys played sport. Yeah. And it was never, oh, well, he's a sporty guy, so he can't do other things. You actually did everything, so you've always done done everything but that wasn't a normal thing right

no you did everything the girl that did everything and yeah and that became an identity yes like oh she does more than oh gosh you did everything i mean maybe maybe a little too much maybe wouldn't advocate but that is so true i was like oh i can't do sports i'll do drama and then you were like in the drama singing crew or whatever and you did and women do get pigeonholed like it's but men have been going to the gym for years as well as having a life when women go to the gym they're like oh you're like you're a gymnast yeah but every man every guy that i know started going to the gym like 14 yeah and it was very normal i had to at school i had to join him with the boys gym session no there was no for pe or for games there was a boys weight session there just was not I wonder if I would have gotten weightlifting if I had the

ability to do it when I was younger I think this is part of the problem is that why we don't watch women's sport it's because we don't give girls young girls the opportunity to play it in the same way that we do boys we don't normalize it we kind of I think it's getting better and you know my aunt is a PE teacher I know that the girls and the boys play all the same sports at school that's really good different to when we and I think with athletics um it's a really interesting one because athletics is one of the only sports where I think men and women get the same sort of airtime yeah but it's because you don't have a choice yeah you don't get to watch men's athletics it's all on the same day it's all happening at the same time you watch athletics whereas in the sports where men and women are separate in team sports it's the men's sports that um that are pushed forward whereas

gymnastics that kind of happens at the same time it's all it's different but equal and it's all going on there and then you don't oh i like men's gymnastics i like women's gymnastics no you'd like gymnastics that's a whole other conversation athletics has a marketing problem with with football if you have if you have a favorite footballer you can go and buy their shirt with their name on the back yeah the athletics if you have a favorite athlete what what do you do yeah that's so true so you know you can buy jazz pins oh you can you can buy little little long jump pins if you if you like so studio.bigcartel.com that's cool i'll put a link below so yeah so what do you think first of all let's let's go break it down why is it i want to hear your opinion on

like what are the benefits for women doing sport like why do we why should we encourage women to do sports i've genuinely i wish i'd done sports school i'd never done it i went and played netball a couple of times so the girls in school now and i love it and i wish that i'd had that yeah what kind of thing would you say to women you like, where do you think the merit is in it? First of all, I think this is a really interesting question because men all, not all, but a lot of men just play sport and we never ask, why should we encourage boys to do sport? Yes.

We just do because we know it's good for them. And I think this is the answer we need to have is we know it's good for us. Yeah. It builds, with young girls, it's about being in a team, it's about staying fit, which obviously is a positive thing, it's about being healthy, it's um about being in a team it's about staying fit which obviously is a positive thing it's about being healthy it's about having fun half the reason i went to athletics when i was in my early teens was because all my mates were there yeah it's a social activity and it's a

healthy social activity and that can continue into adulthood and you know there's so many men that play on sunday league football teams and where are the sunday league women's football teams i'm sure they exist but they're nothing like the men's. That is such a good point. Men are taught, and I have to say, boys do go to the gym when they're younger to put on muscle. I know that loads of boys in our school did that, but they play sport because it's a fun time

with their friends. Girls don't start exercising until they want to lose weight. But that was my gateway as well. The reason I got into fitness was so that I could lose weight, fundamentally. Why have we programmed women to think that exercise has only got a merit if it's for some aesthetic gain and i think you're right i think that people don't want to play sport or

don't we're not conditioned as little girls it's ungainly it's unattractive when we were younger you might become muscly was probably the worst thing i remember when i first got into training my mum was like you're going to be so muscly which i am now and she loves but if she'd seen what i look like now four years ago she would have been like you can't look like this but now it's really normal but even when i first got into training a lot of people were like what the fuck are you doing so i put on muscle still makes it about what we look like exactly why are we so so focused on that so true and i you know i'm not in schools at the moment so i don't know if this is getting better and i I really hope that it is. But I really would love to see people who are currently 10, 11, 12 coming through and having women's sports leagues.

Yeah. You know, I think other countries do it well. In Germany, I know adults in general play sport. Yes. Women and men. And most people are a member of one or two sports clubs. How many women are raged? You know, that are a member of actual sports clubs and go and play games the only people that i know that play sports women is

normally very affluent middle-aged middle-class women who play tennis at sports clubs yeah or go and play netball but it's again it's a very and it's weird because sport should be cheap it should be something that's made available to everyone you don't need it is if you take a ball to the park yeah exactly but girls would never say no let's go for a kick about why didn't we do that that is so much fun i honestly i wish that i we did more sport things like i do i now obviously go to the gym it's my form of fun but like i do really wish as a child that i'd had that i mean again i don't know because i don't go into schools but i wonder what the people i mean p also was just very i hated it why do we hate it

what do we need to do with it so much is it because you know we have to put the shorts on and I think for a lot of people it is that it's how I look like you said you didn't want to do sport yeah I thought you were too fat and I remember I had hairy legs this is at prep school my mum wouldn't let me shave my legs and I was so pissed off they were really I don't even shave my legs now I can't be arsed but back then they were like really long hair I remember all the boys were like and then I went on the Spanishanish trip and one of the girls sent me her razor and then i showed my legs but that put me off periods i remember getting my period we had white shorts at prep school yeah got my first period in a pair of white shorts so that's humiliating particularly

easy for girls yeah i just think that there's i think actually also you should mpe everyone should be wearing the same stuff. Yeah. I think we maybe did at prep school. But I guess, I used to worry about that so much, what we were looking like. I was so conscious of my body, my legs moving when I ran. And that conditioning has had to have come from, that's not programmed within me. That must have come from magazines. It's got to be conditioned. Because at some point, I know when you're really young, all kids seem to be happy to compete against each other.

Even kids that aren't that competitive will compete against each other. Because it's just fun. It gets to a certain age where, for a girl, that stops being cool. Yeah. And if you decide to take on the identity of somebody that wants to win in sport, then okay, well that's who you are now. Yeah. And you're going to be out on your own with that.

Because every other girl, it's cool to be bad at PE. It's cool to kind of trail at the back. Yeah. It's not cool to put all your effort in, in PE when you're sort of 13. This was me. So I used to think I'd much rather not try because then if I fail, but I did this with everything.

If I fail, then it doesn't matter because everyone's seen me being the class clown at the back, not doing it. So it doesn't matter. Whereas if I actually tried and I failed, the humiliation of that for me was like too much, but I never tried. So I never knew if I would do well.

But in my head, I was like, there there's no I had no confidence within sport but you think that's a female thing I think it is because I think guys don't give a fuck if they lose I think boys obviously this isn't universally but I would say that the grand portion of guys will put themselves forward like I said we had fatter boys playing sport no one about all the boys would encourage them they'd be like come on mate let's go play like it would be great whereas girls because it is so much about how you look I really do think that and like I think I remember reading all these magazines where they'd show you all the worst summer bodies on the beach from all the celebrities and they'd be like so-and-so's put on weight and I honestly couldn't in my head see myself imagining my legs running would say like I

was like 12 of course I didn't have that but I think I thought I'd and even if you did doesn't mean anything um but I think that was a massive part of my conditioning and I don't think that was exclusive to me I do think other girls feel so intimidated by entering those spaces because you just don't believe that exercise is for everyone when you're a woman when you're a man exercise is for anyone that's so true and I think I had managed to kind of get past that because I'd been in competitive sports since I was five years old yeah you know I started competing in gymnastics when I was five and I decided I'd taken on that identity and I mean it's a bit different because I wanted to be an Olympic athlete since I was six

yeah so slightly different but even then that to a lot of people in school that became my whole identity yeah I was the competitive sporty one but I think being competitive is a really interesting thing that you talk about as well because I'm not very competitive and I think that's taught behavior I'm also worried about um saying that I ever want to earn money I'm worried about being competitive in my industry because I know you do that I undervalue myself and those are all things that I do because society's told you that to be a woman you should be gentle to be kind happy with your lot be very grateful at which I am because you should be but um and that competitive that non-competitiveness i actually have no like if i think someone's gonna do something better than me i do and i used to be

proud of that when i was younger and that's because that's a very feminine trait to not be competitive yeah that well no it's not feminine trait it's a taught ideal and i wish i was more competitive now i actually want to go out and get stuff because it's good you should because we're not born to have a man to look after us you need to be competitive we're taught that men go out and get shit done you sit at home and wait for it to and I think part of that feeds into what you were saying about being afraid to fail if you tried whereas a man I think with um I've read this so many times about uh men asking for raises oh my god yeah they don't care if they get told no they will ask for ridiculous money for their work yeah and just either get it sometimes or be told no and they'll just move on otherwise women are told you're pushy you're bossy and also men will apply for jobs um i think it's

like with 60 percent like like qualifications for it women will not apply unless they're 99.9% sure they could get that job and even then they would take it at a lower pay grade because they think that they should be lucky so lucky to get a job been in there and this plays into all of these things and also when we look at that when i say women that is white women it then gets worse if you're a woman of color so every single time we have that degradation of like the disparity between men and women there's disparity between white men and white women and then disparity between white men and black men and that needs to be acknowledged especially within feminism we need to see that it's not an equal fight it's not equal so it's not all women because all white women are treated different from all women who

aren't white i don't know if that's the right way of saying i think that does make sense to me and that's and it's the perfect demonstration of why feminism has to be intersectional because you're just not solving anything yeah because otherwise you're still propping up those power dynamics deborah francis white put it really well she was like the way that privilege works is the guy that at the top of the pyramid is the one that raped pillaged and stole years ago who's a white heterosexual rich cisgendered man so if you have anything of his quality you have a bit of privilege so i'm heterosexual i'm white i'm cisgendered so i've got three out of however many privileges he has if you're a black gay transgender man you are at the like uh woman rather you are at the bottom of the pile so oh

yeah so he's a man he's white he's cisgendered he's heterosexual able-bodied able-bodied so he's created the world so that everything in the world works i'm saying he imagining but this is this is how it works these are people at the top they made the world so everything is accessible to them so they have all the things that they could need in the world and it's not that they've on purpose been like well it kind of is but basically if you have any of those privileges the world will say yes to you in certain instances so the more privileges of those you have the more you get away with am i saying that right does that make sense that makes sense it makes sense too because every single

one of those that you don't have you get pushed further yes you get pushed further down so then eventually you'll get the world's built for you no exactly literally it isn't built for you so if you ever tried i talk about this with henry fraser on the podcast but if you ever tried to get around lond London on a wheelchair, there's like things where you can do it for like a day to see. It will take you hours. There are barely any tube stations with disabled access. There are shopping malls that only open there.

Like you can borrow a wheelchair, but you can only borrow between 11 and 3, which is making the assumption that disabled people don't work or are available at off-peak times. The world only functions for people. Disabled toilets are sometimes filled with um like chairs they'll use it as a storage room or the disabled changing room in a shop because people you don't you think you don't see disabled people around because the world isn't made accessible to them it's really difficult if you can't walk or if you have some kind of disability to actually get around the world and that is what that's that's a really good example to explain why

colorblindness isn't a thing we're i think all of us who are able-bodied can register that we don't realize when something doesn't work for someone who's disabled you've never had because you've never had it and it's quite easy for you to go oh actually yeah i never really thought that the fact that i live actually my flat's got left but say you live three stories up you didn't really think someone couldn't get in if they're in a wheelchair it's the same with people of color it's just because race has been an argument that's silenced and it's not silenced because it's awkward to talk about race or because you shouldn't talk about it it's because if we don't talk about it it keeps the structures in place it keeps white people in power and it keeps people who aren't white bane people i don't know what to say i never know the

right language around this um keeps them in their position because if they if BAME people, I don't know what to say, I never know the right language around this, keeps them in their position because if we don't talk about race, they definitely can't talk about it because even my friend Shona said when she brought up race on a panel, she was like, ugh, the first thought was

all the white people and everyone was white there are just going to look at me and be like, oh, she's talking about race. Yeah, you get a label straight away

and it's a sign, it's, ugh, do we really have to discuss race again? And it's, well, it's not an issue for you in your daily life but it is for me exactly well okay I think I think we've covered a good amount I think we have I've literally loved this conversation actually I've learned quite a lot I I think I have you know and I think it's a constant learning yeah um and you were saying to me once you've once you've started you kind of can't stop because you're constantly uncovering different things you just become really aware of

it it does it's funny it does make life harder which is good it helps it actually i think the more aware you get the more it when you become aware of your privilege you stop using it if that makes sense you once you become slightly aware of the privileges that you have you stop profiting off them as much automatically by proxy the fact that you know they're there, whereas when you're blind to everything, it's very easy to say yes, to every job you get offered, yes to every opportunity, it can be painful,

when you start to recognise, yes, why how much you get, yeah, just from being, how you were born, even just being pretty, we've spoken about this before,

but like when people think, you're in vertical, it's pretty, how much easier life is, people trust attractive people more yeah people are nicer to attractive people somebody that has and not even necessarily just you know a big facial disfigurement somebody that is less attractive i think will report a different experience in life you know i've read so much about people who either got surgery or lost a load of weight yeah and

suddenly the world treats the world changed i've read lots of people where they were like i was a really fat person like very overweight and they were like i thought the world was horrible and i lost weight and she was like people held doors open for me i would sometimes get like discount on coffee people smiled at me and i was like oh that is my everyday people not i'm not saying i'm pretty by the way because this is another thing people don't get i'm saying i'm conventionally socially acceptably look like in westernized society people look at my face and they're like oh we like that that's a face we can accept yes i mean a man did tell me once on the bus that i'm pretty for a colored girl so you know oh yeah that's nice that was a lovely compliment and he

really truly thought he was giving me a compliment and that's part of the problem i just think you're beautiful as a i think you're beautiful and your brain is beautiful too this is a beautiful way to wrap up isn't it yes it is thank you so much for joining me. I've really enjoyed this. Thank you for having me. Where can everyone find you? Everyone needs to go follow you now. Yes, I am at Jasmine Sawyers on Twitter and on Instagram. Jasmine's with a Z and no E because my parents are difficult.

And I'm Jasmine Sawyers on YouTube as well. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. And I will see you guys soon. Bye. Thanks, Bye. 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.

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