Regular readers here will know that I love me some Gina Carano, female MMA fighting superstar.
Well, apparently some male sports writers believe Carano needs to be “protected from herself.”
See, cutting weight is part of fighting. It’s one that I’m disgusted by, having lived with a fighter for two years and seen the battles that he–yes, he–went through with the process and the damage it did to his body image. Fighters weigh in a day or two before their fight, and the idea is to take a fight at a low weight, lose some of it off your body and sweat the rest of it out so that when you rehydrate, you weigh more–hopefully more than your opponent, and you get an advantage. So no one actually fights at their real body weight, except amateur boxers and wrestlers, who weigh in the day of the event, just hours before their bouts. And even they often sweat out a few pounds and hope to be able to hydrate and eat before their fight.
But thousands of men across the world do this regularly. Boxers, muay thai fighters, and MMA fighters, as well as even high school wrestlers “cut” weight. It’s been dramatized on shows such as The Ultimate Fighter and Fight Girls, which starred Carano.
None of them were called out by name as being in danger of injuring themselves by taking fights at weights too low to make, even though there are many who struggle with the weight-cutting process.
Instead, the writer here chose to make the female MMA star–and there is no argument that Gina Carano is the biggest female mixed martial arts star out there–the subject of his article.
Once again, the female body is there to be policed by men.
If this writer is so concerned with the health of fighters, he should have written an article exposing the entire weight-cutting process for what it is: physical damage done in the attempt to gain a somewhat unfair advantage. He could’ve written about high school coaches encouraging teenagers to go into the ring weakened and dehydrated in order to make a lower weight class.
In other words, he could’ve written this article without making it about a woman.
Instead, Carano needs to be protected from herself. She needs to be stopped from doing damage to her body. He throws in some images of naked Carano being weighed in between two towels, and jokes about internet fans hoping someone would drop the towel.
This is completely unnecessary. If he had a specific point to make about how women are more likely to be encouraged to lose weight, how the thin ideal is encouraged on women more than men, he could’ve done it. He could’ve proposed same-day or even right-before-bout weigh-ins (like jockeys on the racetrack, though they routinely go into races dehydrated and starved as well).
But he didn’t. He chose to sexualize and then scold the woman.
Having seen it first hand you yourself know that this cutting weight is not at all anorexia, bulimia, or anorexia-athletica. She is a serious athlete who takes her health seriously she counts calories in a way that many professional athletes don’t and she knows she has to make sure she cuts the right weight. She understands that a vitamin deficiency can cost her a fight. So as sad as it makes me, she isn’t going to risk her livelihood by doing something stupid.
Personally I’d like to see all of this fixed, for men and women! It is creepy. When I was in retail I had a kid who worked for me who was a wrestler that was ranked high state-wide and the things he put himself through were just not good.