Ruck like a Girl

Women, we are not single-sided dimensional beings. Photographs of ladies being girl like, naked or in a suggestive pose invade the magazines and papers across the world. For my project presented here “Ruck like a girl” I am challenging the stereotypes of femininity and how women are represented through images. Being tough does not mean you are not an amazing mother, or a good sister, or a great friend. Working with the Beckenham ladies I found a broad range of what being a woman means and this is what I want to talk about. The Beckenham ladies are part of the Beckenham RFC club, which has been running for 125 years, situated in South London. Its history can be found proudly on display: the clubroom’s walls are filled with images of men. The only photo of a lady hanging the club is a girl that appears to be on a rugby pitch with a smile on her face, cigarette in lips, pulling her shirt off for the visual pleasure of the men next to her and the audience. The night I looked at this picture the women’s team, who played after the men’s, had won 70-0 while the men had lost that night. I wanted to be able to put another type of imagery in the club: a portrait of women’s rugby.

I photographed the team over one month, immediately they struck me with their familial sense and the powerful comradery between them. Slowly I started to get to know their members and how they expressed their femininity and live their womanhood. I decided to take a test and uploaded a picture to my Instagram feed where Lucy ‘Chas’ displays her lip wound. I got a comment “That is a man and no fucks given”. Well guess what no, she is not. I wanted to talk about how we can be everything. We can be both sexy and funny, be mothers and drink beer, tender and tough. I wanted to display another portrait of what being a woman is, far beyond just a pair of breasts on a wall. It started to grow on me when I looked for references. I found the pictures of Giovanni Capriotti who received the First Prize for stories in Sports in the World Press Photo, for his coverage of a gay men’s rugby team in 2017. A story about gay men playing a ‘male’ sport by a gay photographer. For me, it was too much. Could not the ladies have their own recognition? Just for being a woman as well? This body of work consists of 26 images taken through their training, matches and after games. The set of images selected here would work best for a magazine, where I designed them to be seen between pages, so you can slowly engage with each one of the characters as you flip through them. My photos are made for other women to be a reminder you can be everything you want. Even if that breaks the mold. I want to empower young ladies to be as tough or tender as they want. And remind the men that we are more than sexual objects.