This just in from HorseChannel.com, guys.
A trainer is speaking out against the jerktacular horse show attendants making cracks about competitive riders who weigh more. The last time we talked about horses and body shaming it was because people pointed out that Vogue had actually photoshopped a champion horse to have more visible bones, and that was a real blow to our horse body image issues. But this isn’t about the horses. It’s about the people who ride them.
Clarissa Cupolo, told HorseCountry all about the “Horse Show Body Shaming,” (her term) that competitive riders deal with.
“It’s not so much that a larger person cannot compete, it’s hearing the comments from the other riders and from the audience saying that larger riders shouldn’t even be there,” Cupolo says. “It comes from the sidelines and it’s discouraging.”
We also find it discouraging that a human can’t be an athlete SLASH do anything without someone criticizing them for their bodies, and so of course it’s happening in a ring. Somewhere Nathan Fielder is smirking because he’s fought the specific kind of size discrimination that keeps people of size from riding horses already.
According to Cupolo, the body shaming targets are “likely to have shorter legs and a heavier torso and upper body. Some of those riders are young people, others are women who come to the sport later in life, or after a long layoff.” Totally.
HorseChannel also talked to Natalie P. Lamping about the realities and difficulties women who aren’t “leaner” face, and how it keeps them from having an easier time.
“There’s no question that a leaner person has an easier time because they tend to have longer legs and and tend to be lighter on top. The larger women are heavier on top so they have to work harder on their posture and balance, and they cannot roll their thighs enough in order to sit deep on the horse.”
Lamping also said that judges make gross comments on rider size, but that it doesn’t affect the results. K.
So congratulations as always to slim people. BUT luckily a doctor, Dr. Naomi Betesh, told HC that size doesn’t matter when it comes to slaying the horsie game.
She said:
“It shouldn’t even be an issue because you can be a smaller size or a larger size and still have a weak core. The question is about how strong you are, not how much you weigh.”
We’ll take it. At least they didn’t propose that a rider of size use weather balloons, protected by a scarecrow to alleviate the burden on the horse.
