“… all body types can excel in martial arts”
Even though martial arts does have a lot more aspects of equality than other physical activities, there’s still work that needs to be done to progress. If you watch any compilation videos of female martial artists, most will display ladies with incredible flexibility and extremely high kicks. While this is all very impressive, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a spectacular martial artist. In fact, having this only be the main representation of female martial artists is encouraging a specific ideal body standard of them.
Just like anyone else, all body types can excel in martial arts. Not every woman has to be a lightweight high kicker to be a valid or effective martial artist, just as male martial artists don’t have to have bulging muscles and expectations of limited flexibility for themselves. This is an underrepresented population of martial artists overall: the ones without the body of Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee. Usually who’s shown in martial arts media are skinny, lean yet rather muscular men. However, one of the greatest things about martial arts is that it’s so individual to each person that joins; you measure your success by striving to be better than you were the day before. You don’t need to have a certain body type to excel, just as you don’t have to be a certain gender to find success.
For women especially, unfortunately a lot of societal expectations of personal appearance are brought into the martial arts world as well. Female practitioners usually aren’t displayed for their strength or ferocity, typically they’ll use the male martial artists/characters for that. Currently the few women martial artists who are known in somewhat popular media are all known for having ridiculous flexibility in their legs and kicks (Chloe Bruce, anyone?). Yes, there’s a lot that can be achieved with constant stretching and consistent training, but after a certain age or injury level it may not be practical or safe to have this type of flexibility. Sure it doesn’t “look” as aesthetically pleasing in the media to see low kicks, but there’s ways to display the true intensity and devastating power that comes along with center or low line techniques.
Body standards are hard to get away from anywhere, and in martial arts it is coupled with the unspoken idealized female skill standards that pose a silently discouraging atmosphere for women especially as they reach higher ranks and are expected to be at the most elite level. We need more representation of practitioners with all body types and skill sets, so people who don’t see their own, more common, body type are still inspired to achieve greatness in their own ways.
