If you thought that UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey was never bullied as a child, then you are wrong.
She said that she had a few fist fights as a result of bullying:
“It gets to a point, when someone is picking on you or bullying you, and you have done everything you can to get them to stop, where you start to lose your self-respect and self-worth if you DON’T stand up for yourself.”
In a recent interview with espnW’s Allison Glock, Rousey talked about growing up, being different from others in High School, and her cauliflower ear:
“AG: Did you ever have body image issues?
RR: Huge body image issues growing up. Big time! I absolutely loathed how I looked until I was around 22 years old.
AG: What happened at 22 that changed that trajectory?
RR: I stopped caring. I stopped looking at the scale. After the Olympics I didn’t weigh myself. I ate as much as I wanted all the time. The feeling of having my belly full was something I was compelled to do, and once I got that out of my system, I felt like I was able to break my emotional dependency on food.
AG: Conflating food with feelings is a complicated struggle for many women.
RR: Listen, there’s nothing wrong with your discipline or you just because you ate whatever. But if the best thing about your day is what you eat, there’s something wrong with your f—— day. What changed for me is I was always thinking I wanted to make my body look a certain way so I would be happy. But when I made myself happy first, then the body came after. It was a journey of self-discovery and trial and error.
AG: How was high school for you?
RR: I dropped out sophomore year. It was not cool for me. I was far from popular. I got teased a lot.
I was a muscular girl. I never wore makeup a single day. I always had my hair up, dressed in baggy clothes because I was embarrassed about how my body looked. I was shy. Having cauliflower ears and ringworm are another sure way to get teased.
AG: So you said goodbye to all that and pursued athletics?
RR: I decided to go to the Olympics instead.”
