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 Mariah Burton Nelson on Sports
An Interview by Lynnette Lamb with Mariah Burton Nelson
Cover Story, Daughters Magazine, 2004
Q: Your latest book, We Are All Athletes, says that confidence, discipline, leadership and other vital life skills are best learned through athletics, or at least through implementing athletic essentials in our lives. Can you explain that to my audience (parents of girls 8-16)?
A. We are intellectual, emotional, and spiritual beings, but fundamentally we are physical beings. When we experience something with our bodies we experience it in a deep and enduring way. Sports participation requires girls to use their bodies to pursue specific goals, work closely with others, think on their feet, and assume leadership. All of these activities, and others, help develop discipline, teamwork, leadership, and a healthy sense of how and when to compete.
Q: Do you think that team sports or individual sports hold more lessons for girls--or does each type have its own benefits? (I'd love to have some examples from your own life here.)
Team sports teach you to rely on other people, including people who are different, distasteful, more skilled, and less skilled. Through team sports you learn how fun it can be to work with others to achieve your goals. You learn to celebrate success, sharing the credit. You share disappointments, consoling each other. You reveal your strengths and weaknesses to other people, and learn about theirs. It's intimate and rewarding in ways that can lead to lifelong friendships.
I'm still friends with girls I swam on teams with starting at age six. I'm still friends with girls I played field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse with, starting in seventh grade. I've been naked with these people -- literally, in locker rooms, but more important, figuratively. We've exposed to each other our longings, our all-out-efforts, our physical and emotional pain and joy.
Individual sports teach you to rely on your own inner resources. You learn in a visceral way that it's all up to you. This is extremely valuable later in life. At the same time, most individual sports take place a team context, so you can share the sports experience with others as well.
As a 47-year-old with damaged knees, I play individual sports now: swimming, weight-lifting, and golf. I love all of those activities. But my favorite sports are the ones where it becomes an improvisational dance -- like basketball, where you never really know what's going to happen at the other end of the floor. You run down court with plans and expectations but also a wonderful sense of anticipation because anything could happen. Individual sports don't offer quite that same experience of GAME.
Q: What can non-athletic parents do to help their daughters make a different choice?
Become an athlete yourself. Commit to an exercise program: swimming, weight-lifting, walking, dancing, martial arts, yoga, Pilates, whatever. Do something. It's almost never too late. Then call yourself an athlete. You don't need to be an Olympian or professional to use the word. Then discuss your process of becoming physically fit, and also (I hope) entering some races or competitions, with your daughter. You can put her in the role of teacher or coach, which you will both enjoy. And she'll respect you for your late-blooming efforts to discover the athlete within.
If you are physically unable to exercise at all: Then attend her games, talk with her about what she's learning, and listen.
Q: How can parents help teach those skills--endurance, competition, teamwork--to their girls OFF the playing fields?
Use sports examples off the field. A friend of mine was having trouble getting her 15-year-old to take out the trash without being nagged about it. Finally she said, "How do you feel when that girl on your relay team doesn't pull her weight? This household is a team too, and I feel that same way when you don't do your share of the work." The young athlete understood.
Q: One of your first books was The Stronger Women Get the More Men Love Football. Do you think anything has changed for the better since you wrote that book?
Title IX is still not fully enforced. Only 42% of all high school and college athletes are female, and it should be proportionate to the student body, which is 53% female. In 1994, only 6 percent of all sports media coverage was of women (except during Olympic seasons.) Now it's up to 8 percent. That's one way of looking at it: Not much has changed. On the other hand, the status of female athletes has indeed changed significantly in the past decade. In many cases, we've gone from resistance (1970s) to tolerance (1980s) to celebration (late 1990s and 2000s).
Q: Your books have gone from political to inspirational/motivational in tone. Why the switch?
Astute observation! My writing is deeply personal, so my subject matter reflects not only what I'm thinking about, but what I'm feeling, and how I'm perceiving the world. I once heard this distinction: Politics is about the differences between people, and spirituality is about our similarities. There are still a lot of differences, including inequities that need to be changed. But I'm less angry about these things than I used to be.It's not that I don't care; I do. I'm just not operating from a place of anger anymore.
About 5 years ago I had a deep spiritual experience that began when I forgave the man who molested me when I was young. He was a coach, and I in no way condone this abuse. It was a felony -- statutory rape. Unfortunately, coach-athlete is common, perhaps on the same scale as priest pedophilia.
Nevertheless, I went through a long personal, psychological, and spiritual process that resulted in my forgiving him -- and forgiving myself, and learning a lot about the power of compassion and even, if I may say so without sounding sappy, love. The experience and my subsequent study of the subject of forgiveness changed me. (I wrote about all of this in The Unburdened Heart: Five Keys to Forgiveness and Freedom.) So my books and speeches now reflect a more universal approach to sports, and an interest in leadership lessons from the playing fields. I'm still very much an advocate for the empowerment of girls through sports. I've also broadened my horizons, and am now also passionate about leadership lessons (for both genders) from the playing fields.
Q: Girls still regularly confront sexism, both as students and as athletes. Any advice for those girls?
Stand up, speak out, demand fair treatment. You'll not only be defending your own rights, you'll be helping other girls. If boys mock you for this, that's probably just a signal that you're hitting a nerve. There will always be boys who think they're superior. Don't let their opinions (or harassment) get in your way.
Q: Many female athletes allow themselves to be photographed in sexy or traditionally feminine ways, as Mary Jo Kane has so clearly pointed out in her videos. Much of this is because of the pressure on girls to be sex objects (although some of it is also due to the media seeking to undercut women's power). How can parents talk to their girls about this phenomenon?
That's a pretty good start! But boys and men are being sexualized a lot too these days, in similarly objectified ways, which makes the subject murkier. We're swimming in a sea of sexual images, and it can make it confusing to grow up and love and respect one's body and figure out how to express sexual feeling or even joie de vivre in a healthy way. I'd recommend media analysis: teaching girls how to think about images, how to ask questions, how to consider their own responses to things. Parenting (it seems to me) should not involve trying to impose your values on your children, but rather training them to think for themselves and make good decisions. Good news is they'll probably absorb a lot of your values anyway.
Q: If you had to give the parent of a 12-year-old girl one piece of advice, what would it be?
Love her as she is. (See the poem called Blessings for Parents with Imperfect Children on my website.)
Q: What is your next book project? Video project?
I'm developing a model I call The Leadership Game. It might become a book. It might include an actual game component. At the moment it's a speech I'm excited about, and enjoying. (Customized for various groups, from girls' schools to corporations). The Leadership Game is a playful, athletic approach to leadership and life in which everyone's a coach, everyone's an athlete, and everyone's a potential teammate. The goal of the game is to achieve your own goals while assisting, learning from, and inspiring others.
It's been a pleasure chatting with you. Keep up the good work for girls and their parents!
For reprint permission contact the author,
information below.
To contact Mariah about her presentations,
call 703/276-8323 or write to her at Mariah@MariahBurtonNelson.com
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