Review: Eat Sweat Play by Anna Kessell

Image Credit: Yvonne Dey

I wish this book had been available when I was 3 years old, minus the complex words, plus beautiful illustrations. I am imagining a book like Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls. It would be called “When I grow up, I want to play”. Then, I want a more elaborate book written for teenagers called “Sweating is cool”. The information found in Eat Sweat Play definitely needs to be shared with everyone, starting with toddlers.

I heard about this book over a year ago. The title deterred me at first, even though I love sports. I thought it was about running. I can wrap my head around running after a ball, but running for the sake of running is not for me. All this to say, it wasn’t high on my reading list. I bought it for myself as a Christmas present these past holidays and simply devoured it. The book included all of my favourite things: feminism, sports, and jaw-dropping historical facts. To top it off, it’s recounted with humour. You’ll discover that it has been really, really rough for women in sports, but you’ll be filled with passion and hope by the last page.

When I was 16, my PE class was packed with fifty teenagers; only eight of us were girls. I told myself it was fine because I was “one of the guys”. Except I wasn’t. I was a good basketball player, much better than some of the boys, but still needed a boy to vouch that I was “good” so another boy would pick me to be on their team. Girls were always picked last. I doubt that has changed much in the past 15 years.

The author, Anna Kessel, is a sports writer and journalist. She’s also the co-founder of Women in Football. She is one of my new role models. I love the way she wrote this book. Her journalism also bleeds through; the book is filled with well-researched facts, real stories, and personal experiences. She was inclusive in her research and writing; although the book does focus on the UK, Kessel tries to give a global view of women and their relationship with sport. She shows how sport can change our lives, but also gives you a glimpse of how sport has already done so.

You will not believe the reasons used to keep women from watching or playing sports. Did you know that ski-jumping could damage your reproductive organs and render you infertile? Oh, wait. It can’t. And even if it did, the choice should be yours. If you prefer to jump off a 90m slope in lieu of pushing out a baby, it’s your right, your body. Men, please stop protecting us “for our own good”. The only thing you’re protecting is your pride while simultaneously preventing us from growing.

This book taught me that it’s not enough to ‘work out’, but there is apparently such a thing as being too buff. I learned that olympic athletes are body shamed. What? Jessica Ennis-Hill is considered ‘fat’? All I see is a strong, amazing athlete. This deters us from wanting to be anything but skinny and powerless. It undermines our mental health and discourages us from doing sports, one of the things that actually improves our mental health!

I love sports. I always have, but I don’t play anymore. This book made want to play again. It made me want to help all women find their literal and metaphorical sport voices. Most of all, this book made me proud. Proud to be a woman. Proud of the badass athletes, coaches, and writers fighting for women’s equality in sports. If you read one book in 2018, make it Eat, Sweat, Play.

Roxanne Joncas reads and writes whenever she gets a moment to herself. She is into feminism, veganism, minimalism and a few other “-isms”. By day, she’s a marketing specialist for the Eclipse Foundation, an open source software company, and is chief editor of the Eclipse Newsletter.

Yvonne Dey is a traveller-adventurer, photographer, trail-runner and all-round Fearless Femme who has battled and survived post-traumatic grief and PTSD.