Girls are always watched. But they are not only watched for how they look. They are watched for what they are capable of, how they face difficulties, how strong they are – mentally first, then physically. In high-performance sport, this gaze becomes constant. Every movement, every decision, every reaction is seen, judged, and remembered.
As a coach, I see it week after week. My players are learning not just the game, but how to live under an invisible microscope. For boys, being watched can feel like recognition. For girls, it often feels like exposure.
Last night, one of my players told me she didn’t want to join her teammates in the gym. “It would be embarrassing,” she said quietly. Embarrassing.
Not frightening, not too hard, not boring. Embarrassing.
That word stayed with me. Because it tells you everything about the messages girls still receive about strength. They are told that their bodies should be seen, but not purposefully built. They learn to occupy space beautifully, but not powerfully. When they lift, sweat, and strain, they cross into territory that still feels forbidden, wrongly.
These patterns aren’t just anecdotal — research confirms them. A report by Women in Sport found that by their mid‑teenage years, many girls disengage from sport: 68% of girls who once identified as “sporty” said a fear of feeling judged by others was a barrier, and 61% reported lacking confidence to participate. Similarly, research from the University of the West of England shows that women exercising in gyms often experience body‑image pressure and feelings of being judged for appearance and performance, highlighting how the environment itself can intensify self-consciousness.
When a teenage girl says training is “embarrassing,” she’s not talking about the weights. She’s talking about visibility. The gym, for her, is not a neutral space. It’s a stage. And she’s already been taught that on that stage, her body will be evaluated – not for what it can do, but for how it looks doing it.
Addressing the fear of – I will look like a body builder
Many girls also believe that if they train for strength, they’ll become “bulky.” That fear shows how little they understand about their own physical development. The truth is, their mothers are often stronger than they are – not because they train like athletes, but because strength comes naturally with maturity, time, and use. So why should girls wait twenty more years to discover what their bodies are already capable of? Strength training doesn’t distort femininity; it defines potential.
That’s the circle we have to break. Because performance and pressure are inseparable. Every ambitious athlete will be watched by coaches, selectors, peers, and spectators. We can’t and we won’t change that. Sometimes, we even collect money for people to watch it. On a level, it is something people want to witness! What we can change is how girls interpret that gaze. We can teach them that being seen is not a threat. It’s an opportunity to show who they are.
Who can help the change?
That starts with us – coaches, parents, and teachers. We need to talk about strength as something human, not gendered. We need to make the gym as familiar as the pitch, and failure as acceptable as progress. Also to to praise effort as loudly as outcome.
And yes, we must be mindful of the environment we create, even down to what our athletes wear. Appropriate, practical clothing should serve performance and comfort first. When athletes feel secure in what they wear, attention naturally shifts from how they look to how they move. It’s a subtle but powerful way of keeping focus where it belongs: on capability, not comparison.
Because I work with many clubs, I see how these patterns repeat across environments. I strongly believe that the physical education of girls must happen, not only to build strength but to build self-trust. Being part of a performance setting means learning to handle scrutiny, first with support, and later with independence.
Parents have a massive role in that: offering the right kind of advice, reinforcing confidence, and helping their daughters become resilient enough to keep saying to themselves, I am here to perform, and I focus on my performance.
The truth is, girls in high performance sport are watched. But our job isn’t to stop the watching. It’s to build the kind of environment where performance is valued over outlook, and build their narrative of confidence that says:
Go ahead, You’re here to perform, how badly you want it? How badly you want it?