She walked onto the concrete ring. She was confined to less than 40 square feet for the next few minutes. She placed her size 12 1/2 feet directly under her 6-foot-2-inch frame. As soon as she was properly situated, she lifted the steel ball onto her shoulder. She pivoted one, two, three times until she finally reached the wooden arch. With all her might, she threw her hips, shoulders and then the ball forward and watched it land yards away.
She is Stephanie Horton, and she is the best female shot putter at the University of Kansas. Her freshman year of high school in Tigard, Ore., four teachers approached her and convinced her to try out for track. Unknowingly, they were persuading her to improve her negative body image.
“All the way when I was growing up girls were mean, till I started doing well,” Stephanie said.
In a culture where girls grow up seeing extremely skinny models, body image often turns negative for a woman larger than the norm. The American Psychological Association says that 75 to 80 percent of women indicate displeasure with the size or shape of their bodies. Before track and field, girls made fun of Stephanie’s size until she had little self-esteem. A successful track and field career reversed her negative body image, leading to her confidence as an athlete that pushed her to try out for the Olympics this summer and to pursue other goals.
Growing up, Stephanie was always taller and broader than other girls and often other boys. Now she is 10 inches taller than the average height for women. The girls picked on her, although not physically. They whispered behind her back and alienated her until she decided boys were more trustworthy as friends.
“That’s kind of carried on now,” she said. “I have a lot of guy friends because I don’t necessarily trust all the girls and the gossip.”
As Stephanie matured, her father said she started hanging with the wrong kind of people. She was not confident with her large size because she couldn’t see the advantages of her size. Additionally, her attention deficit disorder made school and social activities difficult.
“If it hadn’t been for track, I don’t know where she would have ended up,” her father Jim Horton said.
Stephanie’s track career began her first year of high school. Her size made her a natural favorite as a thrower, but with no real throws coach and an occasional unwelcoming attitude, it was a rocky start. Her father said she had problem with her original coaches, so her sophomore year he took over and started training with her. He spent three hours a night with her and even regulated her eating habits.
Eventually the training began to show, on and off the field. Her freshman year, she broke her high school’s shot put record. Her sophomore year she continued to improve, and teachers also started to notice a difference in her attitude at school.
“They were amazed at how much she changed. She used to always looked at the floor, and now she was always looking up and confident,” Jim said.
Her involvement in physical activity was part of the reason her body image improved, said Kathy Rose-Mockry, program director for the Emily Taylor Women’s Resource Center. Being involved in sports or excelling physically could help a girl have better body image, she said.
“Girls who have the opportunities to feel good about the bodies they have are more likely to challenge some of the current stereotypes about what it is to be attractive in our culture,” Rose-Mockry said.
Stephanie said she only recently became comfortable with her body. Her last year of high school she broke the Oregon state record with a throw of 49 feet, 8 inches. Her throws gained national attention when the University of Kansas started aggressively recruiting her and she committed to the school. That year she finally decided that being larger than other girls was OK.
“My senior year I just said ‘screw it,’ you can think what you want,” Stephanie said.
A release from negative body image constraints allowed Stephanie to excel at throwing. At the University, she consistently throws around 50 feet at track meets. The closest throw by a KU woman so far was 47 feet last year. She is friends with the other women throwers and also lifts weights next to men. In fact, she can lift more than 200 pounds, which is comparable to the male throwers.
Now that Stephanie feels comfortable with her new self, she has new goals: to qualify for the Olympics this summer and to become a zoologist when college is over. She is working to lose 50 pounds so she is the size of when she threw furthest. This throw, recorded her senior year, was 52 feet, 7 inches. She needs to improve that length by more than 7 feet to qualify for the Olympics, so she is training vigorously with cardio workouts and extra training.
Stephanie has a plan for when track and the Olympic trials are finished: working with animals. She is earning a degree in evolutionary biology and ecology, the closest degree offered to zoology. A love of animals and nature brought her and her boyfriend Rainer Schiel, Landsberg am Lech, Germany, graduate student, together. They met on dating site and eventually met in person. Rainer, who is much smaller than Stephanie, saw Stephanie as a loving person rather than just seeing her size.
“I was not really intimidated by her size,” he said. “While she is tall and muscular, her friendly character didn’t make me intimidated.”
Now they live together with their two rats and two cats and go out on dates often. While Stephanie used to be a tomboy, now she dresses up for the weekends and even makes her own jewelry to go with her outfit. Rainer sees Stephanie as a confident and beautiful woman, something she didn’t believe before her body image improved.
“She seems to be pretty comfortable with who she is and what she looks like,” Schiel said. “If you’ve ever seen her dressed up she looks really good.”
Now, whenever Stephanie starts to doubt herself, she remembers how successful she has been in track and field. Her father says that she has done many great things and he thinks they all started with throws. Sometimes when she walks on campus, she catches people staring. For that, she has one simple reply.
“I’m damn good at what I do.”