Watching a Test match at Lord’s this year, I found myself sitting in front of a middle-aged gent delivering a devastatingly boring monologue about his summer house on a Scottish isle. For 20 minutes, I tried to block out its sheer awfulness (“we keep it rough and ready so we don’t have to yell at the kids to get off the Aubusson”) by concentrating on the action on the pitch. In the end – worn down by every new boast about the malt whiskies he’d tasted – the only way to salvage my enjoyment of the game was to move. As I left, he announced to his companions: “I don’t think she’s even looked at the cricket … ”
These are the kind of casual remarks you get used to when you’re a woman who follows sport. None, however, beats the question that seems to be asked whenever you mention you write about cricket, rugby, gymnastics et al for a living: “Do you actually like sport, then?” The assumption that you don’t – that you’ve somehow been dragooned into reporting on a football game, while carefully hiding your ignorance of the offside rule – is, of course, never made of men.
The well-meaning could argue, with a fair amount of accuracy, that fewer women do care about sport. That indulging in a kickabout, arranging your social life around the big game, or making small talk with a stranger about last night’s result are all largely the preserve of guys, and it’s hardly sexist to say so. But what if that very attitude is what keeps women out of sport in the first place? What if half the population is missing out on one of life’s great joys?
This is the premise of Anna Kessel’s book, a manifesto for sporting equality. It’s a cause Kessel was championing long before the #thisgirlcan campaign made us misty-eyed with its cinema adverts. Her call for more women extends to every aspect of sport, from fans to coaches and commentators to administrators. It could seem counterintuitive to reveal, as she does early on, that she has never been sporty herself. But this is the crux of her case.
Like many schoolgirls, Kessel had seen her male peers playing football and assumed that kicking a ball was something they instinctively knew how to do. Discouraged by PE teachers with no interest in any but the talented few, she understood that playing sport was simply not for her. This book is a plea to reclaim tracks, pitches and pools for women, and to ensure that the next generation grows up appreciating – and enjoying – all that their bodies are capable of.
Through a series of essay-style chapters, Kessel uncovers the reasons behind women’s reluctance to join in, while building her case for why women need sport (and indeed why sport needs women). Her opening description of why she used to hate swimming lessons is some of the most evocative writing in the book as she recalls “scrambling for our towels, struggling with sticky skin catching on our clothes while our PE teachers yelled at us to hurry up. Piling back on to the school bus, we yanked brushes through dripping-wet hair, and shifted uncomfortably as drops pooled on the back of our necks … Swimming was humiliating.”
Shame is a recurring theme – from bunking PE because you’re on your period, to fear of looking fat at the gym, to overblown fears about exercise during pregnancy – as Kessel tackles the factors that rob women of the fun of being active. (A pause while we remember all the guys we’ve seen playing five-a-side in the park, joyously free from any sense of embarrassment.) Possibly the strongest chapter is the one in which she directs her anger against the insidious sexism that dogs elite sportswomen – when even history-makers such as Serena Williams are judged on how they look before they’re credited for their talent – and shows how such cultural expectations are reflected at every level of participation. Hence the #fitspo generation sees exercise as a means to achieve a better body – a self-inflicted corporal punishment – rather than simply an enjoyable thing to do.
Alongside the polemic are accounts of encounters with sporting champions from Martina Navratilova to Marilyn Okoro, and sporty celebrities from Gladiators’ Jet to Mel C. Some stories make you boggle – the discovery, for instance, that England midfielder Katie Chapman had to miss out on the World Cup because she couldn’t afford childcare and the FA refused to help. Others make you cheer, such as the wonderful Glenda Trott, who took up cycling for her health and set such an example for her family that her daughter Laura went on to become an Olympic champion.
I couldn’t avoid a stab of guilt as I read about athletes Roberta Gibb and Kathrine Switzer – women who risked abuse in the 1960s by running marathons when women were still banned from competing. In my early days as a sportswriter I would balk when asked to cover women’s cricket, worried that I was being taken less seriously than my male peers. Kessel not only interviewed many star athletes long before women’s sport was fashionable, (she first met a teenage Jessica Ennis-Hill over a panini in a sandwich shop) but she is also the kind of woman who quietly lobbied the 2015 Rugby World Cup organisers until they stopped charging full price tickets for babes-in-arms.
It is almost unfathomable that one of the most lucrative industries of the current age should have been so slow to welcome half of the human race. We live in a world saturated with advertising, wall-to-wall tournaments and Sky Sports channels that now carry competitive angling. Star athletes are afforded ludicrous levels of privilege and sporting headlines regularly reveal a snake pit of cheats, liars and dopers. And you wonder: will women be the ones to help shape a new culture? One that is, in Kessel’s words: “more generous, more compassionate, but no less fun”?
• Emma John’s Following On: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket is published by Wisden. To order Eat Sweat Play for £10.39 (RRP £12.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
