Issue 03/2021: 2021
45
Tough Bitches Say No This July I decided to quit playing basketball. I’ve only picked up a ball a few times since. If you know me, you might think this is a bit strange because I probably mentioned my interest in exercise and basketball as soon as we met. The sport has always been a central tenet of my being and yet, when I finally had the chance to play post-pandemic, it only took six or seven games for me to call it quits. Let me explain. Growing up as a lanky brown girl in suburban Melbourne was difficult for a plethora of reasons. Pimples, racism (both external and internalised), raging hormones, a general inability to grasp mathematical concepts: these are just some of the reasons why I (like many of us) found my formative years tough. Luckily, I was able to claw through the wreckage of my adolescence by picking up a basketball.
