England and Chelsea star Fran Kirby has addressed the body shaming issues that the leading lights in the women’s game have to contend with.
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Blues star is a proven winnerMajor honours with club & countryFaces battles on & off the pitchWHAT HAPPENED?
The Lionesses playmaker, who has won five WSL titles at club level and the European Championship with her country, missed the 2023 World Cup through injury. A documentary clip filmed during her recovery has gone viral, with Kirby responding to the question of why she was wearing a jacket when walking out for training: “Because I get called fat all the time so I have to cover it up.”
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Kirby has now told of the pressure that she – as well as international colleagues such as Alessia Russo – operate under when it comes to looking a certain way: “In women’s football I know nutritionists have been working so hard, because it is the case with a lot of female footballers that they don’t want to eat carbs because they are worried how their body looks. But for us to be able to play at the level we do, you need to fuel your body. I have been down similar roads as Russo in terms of weighing out your food, counting your calories. Am I eating too much of this? Am I eating too much of that? For me, it becomes something that you just obsess over and over and over about, and you are worried to have this piece of food because you have already met your daily calories – even though we should be eating more because we are training. It just becomes this thing that we are obsessed about, but it is because people comment about it on social media and if you react to that, you are obviously going to react in a way where you think: ‘I need to lose weight because I need to look good in my football kit’. When actually that’s not the priority.”
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Kirby added on building muscle and why it is so important to her game: “Everyone feels judged with what they do, what they wear, what they are eating, how they look. I probably went through different stages of my career of how my body shape looked. My body reacted in different ways each time. I got myself down to the lightest I have been in my professional career and I was struggling with muscle injuries. Now I would say my muscle capacity is the biggest it has ever been, and now I get the messages: ‘She looks like she is out of shape’. Well, no actually, I have been working really hard to get my muscles in a place where I am not going to get injured, because if I get injured then you are going to complain that I am injured again. It’s always a battle between the two – what is right for you and what is right for your body. When I lost a lot of weight, I was just getting pushed off the ball. I am 5ft 1in, 5ft 2in at a push, I need to have some sort of muscle strength behind me.”
GettyWHAT NEXT FOR KIRBY?
Kirby has earned 69 caps for England, scoring 19 goals, and is back in domestic action with Chelsea as they look to chase down another WSL crown in what will be manager Emma Hayes’ final campaign in west London before she takes charge of the USWNT.