I TRIED BEING SMALLER. IT WASN'T MY SIZE.
Death to Stock
By Hannah Mooney Mack
5 Minute Read
Existing within a woman's body can be a political act. Boxing helped me find my strength— and made me more of who I always was.
Note: This essay alludes to discussion of ED, SA
Before I got punched in the face for the first time, my boxing coach told me “There are only two ways this goes: you either cry and then say ‘this shit isn’t for me’ or you pause, see red, and beat the shit out of someone as payback.” I had a sneaking suspicion which type of person I’d be, and I was right. The first time I got hit, I took a split second and then went to town—so much so that my coach had to grab me by the headgear and scream “YOU’RE DONE!” because I hadn’t heard the bell. It’s safe to say I’ve always had that in me.
There’s this story from my childhood lore where I was in a dance troupe (age four) and a little girl got the dance moves wrong at a recital, and I pushed her off stage. As a high schooler, my nickname was Moondog in softball because I’d scream and bark through the fence when an umpire made a bad call. As an adult, a woman who reported into me in my last corporate role once told me I was a nightmare to work with because I held her to my “insanely high standards.” I’ve never not been a little too much.
While I’ve always been this way—intense—I’ve always also had the fear of being too big—either in my personality or my body, so I fought it tooth and nail. But every woman I know has thoughts about her body because how could we not? We’re either too bulky or too skinny-fat or too focused on cardio or not eating enough carbs or eating too many carbs. There are so many rules that, after 37 years on this floating rock, I’m convinced are made up to get us to spend money to un-hate ourselves. The reality is this, though: all we have to do is get to know ourselves. This way, we can become our own best company. That part always eluded me though, and it took a long time to make it where I am today.
I didn’t like the body I grew up in. I was told I was built like my dad (read: college football player), had a “bigger build,” and was “big boned.” Boys in grade school wrote “TOL” on my notebook—early 2000s shorthand for Tub Of Lard. I played softball, where bodies came in all shapes and sizes, and volleyball, where long and lean was the name of the game; the latter wasn’t and still isn’t my body type. The distinction between the sports felt like a conflict, between who I was, how I looked, and where I was showing up. I felt like I was Princess Fiona most of the time.
"The only way I know how to get a hold of myself is to move my body and remember: this body kept me safe. This body defended itself… my body is a weapon.”
I started to feel more connected to my body when I discovered fitness after college. I’d moved to D.C. and I didn’t know anyone, so I decided to join a gym to create plans for myself after work. Cycling classes were my thing because the room was dark, and I didn’t feel lonely there with the music and the beat. Boxing class only happened because I had a crush on the instructor—a total babe—but eventually, I realized something profound: this is what my body has been meant to do all along.
Saying I’m built for the sport is an understatement. I’m left-handed and look at a piece of protein and am able to build muscle. I have the perfect amount of latent anger (shout out Irish Catholic roots!). I’m quick and smart, and I love the technicalities of boxing. It’s also helped me mentally. I’m a classic overthinker, but if I overthink in boxing, I get bopped, and it hurts like hell. It’s a sport that has forced me to Men In Black my brain and stay present. I’ve been doing it on and off for almost 15 years, but it has a special place in my heart because it saved my life.
Boxing is especially meaningful to me because in 2012, I went out with friends for St. Patrick’s Day, and it turned out to be the worst night of my life where I was taken from a bar by two men I didn’t know. I never got a report on whether I was drugged, but I only have memories of it in fits and spurts, and my body remembers something I don’t. And sometimes that can get the best of me. I don’t have an interest in unpacking what my body put in a box so I didn’t have to remember it, but when news cycles like the Cornell Seven almost giddily reopen the box, the only way I know how to get a hold of myself is to move my body and remember: this body kept me safe. This body defended itself. I am the sort of person who wasn’t scared to punch someone to survive. I am the sort of person whose body is a weapon.
“Every time I picked smallness, I lost. Every time I expanded, it was because I was becoming more me.”
Since 2012, moving my body has been the only practice to ever make me feel as safe as I do now. I grew up scared of my body, ashamed of it, hearing how much hating it would fix it. Training course-corrected that for me. Boxing gave me an outlet. It taught me that you need tremendous force and force requires mass, and without mass, you’re a weak fighter. That made my goals for my body about performance and capability instead of size or physique—those came as natural byproducts of the work. I realized that reps and rounds in the ring made me a kind of happy exhausted—where I could prove to myself that my body could do things I was proud of, and because of that, I could be proud to exist within it. Nearly 20 years of disordered eating will do a lot to recalibrate what it means to love your body; being a person who recovered from that is something I am so proud of.
I realize now that I have gone all-in on being strong because I spent three decades trying to run away from who I am. Every time I picked smallness, I lost. Every time I expanded—i.e., quitting my job and starting my consulting firm; tackling racial equity in boutique fitness through my foundation; training for a boxing match; choosing a partner who was an equal—it was because I was becoming more me. I was making right-sized bets on who I actually was because I was in there the whole time. I just had to get back to basics, and ask “does this fit me?” Boxing not only saved my life one time, but my training is what keeps me sure of who I am—someone strong and capable, someone with a lot of force behind her, and someone who won’t give up.
Today, as women confront a news cycle riddled with horrific stories of sexual and interpersonal violence going unchecked, our physical and mental safety is top of mind. Choosing strength is one of the few things I’ve found I can actually control, and allows me to have the confidence in myself to know I can take care of myself should the need ever arise again.
All of us have been told at some point to take up less space. We hear it from every direction: lift, but don’t get bulky. Speak up, but watch your tone. Be strong, but not too strong. I’m so tired of that. If your body wants to be big and powerful, let it. If you’ve been one foot in and one foot out for years, training hard but still following the old rules, I encourage you to lean all the way in. Go all in on who you are, and if you don’t know, get curious enough to find out. There’s a lot more YOU on the other side, and for me, it was me in a body I trust to take care of me no matter what.
