Interview: Author Haley Shapley
Yasmine had the chance last month to interview Haley Shapley about her new book Strong Like Her. Luckily for us, Yasmine's older sister is friends with Shapley's sister, and they managed to connect them! Shapley is a freelance writer in the Seattle area who writes on numerous topics such as travel and fitness. She has also accomplished many athletic feats like summiting Mount Rainier and running a marathon. Strong Like Her is Shapley's first book and is about female athletes from the past to the present day.
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Yasmine: If you can start by telling me a little bit about your book. As I see on Instagram, you have photos of the athletes and quotes to go with them?
Haley: Yes, that is one aspect of the book. Strong Like Her is a cultural history/group biography about women and physical strength. It starts in ancient times, and it goes all the way to the present day. It makes a connection between strong women and the various ways they’ve contributed to society at different points in history. So throughout, you will see the images of the modern-day athletes; there are 23 of them. They each encapsulate different aspects of strength and are from different sports. At the end of the book, there is a bio for each of them.
Y: Is the first half of the book chapters on the cultural history followed by the photos of the athletes?
H: The book is split into chapters that tell a narrative that makes up 90% of the book; the photos are placed throughout. Each chapter starts with an image of an athlete. Then inside the chapter, there is usually another image because there are 12 chapters. After the afterword, there are the athletes’ bios.
Y: Oh, cool! What inspired you to write this book?
H: When I was growing up, a lot of girls played sports, including me, but it did not seem as anyone was actively pursuing getting stronger. Starting a few years ago, I felt like I was seeing more women lifting weights and getting involved in sports like powerlifting and CrossFit, and I started to become curious about how that evolved. I wondered whether acceptance of muscular women had been a linear thing that had been growing over time, or if it was something that ebbed and flowed over the years. So I started to read books about the history of fitness, and I realized as I was reading them that they were mostly about men. There was very little about women in these fitness history books. I knew there had to be physically strong women since the beginning of time, and I wanted to uncover their stories.
Y: How early did you start the timeline in the book?
H: The book starts in Ancient Greece. It then fast forwards quite a bit after that to the 1800s and ultimately to today.
Y: Interesting! All I know about lifting, well women lifting, is from personal experience. I have heard women say, "Oh, I don't want to lift because I don't want to become bulky." It seems like many women think to be bulky is to be masculine.
H: Right, it is a very common misconception. It is something people and even some of the women in my book grappled with until they realized that it was not a concern. So, I still think that is a stigma out there. Another influential factor for me writing this book was I signed up for a bodybuilding show, and as I was training, I was getting these interesting comments from people. Some people were excited about it, but others were saying, "don't get too big, men don't like that," or "don't do anything to become manly." I found that dichotomy interesting, where I saw women being celebrated for being strong but also being told what a woman should look like and what activities are appropriate for women to pursue.
Y: What was the journey like for you doing the bodybuilding?
H: It was an interesting journey. It is a tough sport.
Y: Do you still do it?
H: No, I am not currently training for a show. Bodybuilding requires a real lifestyle change because it is not something you can just train for a couple of hours a day; you have to change the way you eat, hydrate, and sleep. Pretty much everything you do affects your life while you are training for a show. Also, it differs for people based on what their genetics are and what point they are starting at. For me, I trained for nine months, and it was intense.
Y: What was your relationship with your body during this time? Did you ever look at yourself and question if you were looking 'manly' as you were making gains?
H: I never once thought I looked manly. I had a couple of people tell me that, I think jokingly. But I did not. I do not consider my muscles to be 'manly.' That was not an issue for me.
Y: Afterwards, when you are no longer training, and your body changes, like maybe you don't see your abs anymore, did you ever feel like 'this sucks'?
H: Yeah, I will say the transition from going to the bodybuilding show to no longer training was difficult because my body changed very quickly. That was a difficult transition, because when you work so hard for this one goal, it is mentally taxing to go through that process, and it's not right for everyone. I think that was the biggest downside of trying out the sport.
Y: That is interesting. What sports do you do now?
H: Right now, I CrossFit regularly, and that is what I do to maintain a base level of physical fitness. I am waiting for my next bolt of inspiration to come, but I have been so busy focusing on the book that I have not had the chance to set a big goal. I should also say that I belong to a bouldering gym. I just started that.
Y: I just started bouldering too! In high school, I did CrossFit, and I remember having that realization when I started to lift, how powerful you can feel from it. Especially when you see your numbers go up!
H: Yes! I think strength training is empowering, and it is exciting when you see women discover that. I think it is cool that you did it in high school. I am currently writing an article for a magazine aimed at parents of teenagers about the benefits of strength training, especially for girls. There are still these ideas that strength training is not a good idea for teens, but that is an outdated idea. There are emotional and mental benefits, in addition to the physical ones.
Y: Wow, that is cool! Do you have a female athlete that has inspired you the most, or do you have a couple?
H: That is a really tough question because so many athletes inspire me. A good one, though, is the tennis player Billie Jean King because she took a lot of pressure on her shoulders when she accepted Bobby Riggs' challenge to play in the Battle of the Sexes. She also advocated for women to make equal prize money from the start, and she has continued to fight for social justice and women's equality in the years since, so she is a great example of an athlete who used her platform to do good.
Y: Yeah, she is pretty amazing. I never heard of her, though, until that movie came out about her with Emma Stone.
H: Yeah, it is funny how that exposed her story to a younger generation, which I think is great. That is what I hope the book does — tells stories that people of different generations might not know. A lot of young athletes coming up do not know about the importance of Title IX in the ‘70s and how much that changed the landscape for women in sports. If you have grown up always having the opportunity to play a sport, it might be difficult to imagine what it was like before that, but it was not all that long ago that there were no sports in schools for girls.
Y: Exactly! Or younger generations might know who the women are who fought for that right. That is why I find the media important when telling stories or history in general through the outlet of movies, how they can make a movie about somebody, and how this new interest in that person comes along. Or like what you are doing with this book. It is a form of reinvigorating these people from history into the present day.
H: Yeah, I mean, look at Little Women! The movie came out, and now the book is on the bestseller list again.
Y: I wonder how many times that book has been on the bestseller list and who owns the author’s estate.
H: I am not sure, but it would be cool if the foundation that runs her house owns it.
Y: Another question I have is, how do you want women to receive your book?
H: I hope that women are inspired by it and that they learn something new.
Y: What was the biggest shock to you personally when you were looking at how women view strength during your research?
H: Hmm... What was I surprised by? I was surprised to find that there are still women who believe that lifting makes you bulky. There is a survey that I talk about in the book that was taken in 2009, and at that time, the majority of women thought that Jessica Biel was the definition of bulky. She did not have that much muscle mass and was not bulky at all! Most of the women in the survey said they would not want to look like her and that they would rather be overweight than muscular. I was surprised by that but also surprised by how much things have changed over time. I think that if you redid that survey today that people would no longer find Jessica Biel bulky and that they are more accepting of women who do have muscles even if it is not a look they want for themselves. So, I do think that things have changed, but there is still this idea that is unappealing to have muscles. I am not trying to convince anyone otherwise, or tell anyone what they should like or what activities they should want to do, but I hope that we have a broader, more inclusive attitude toward body types that we find acceptable.
Y: You know, I just thought that when you see health magazines for men, they always have these headlines that say 'bulk up!' and for women's magazines, it's usually 'how to get toned.' For women's magazines, they typically offer advice on how to get toned versus how to get stronger.
H: Right! I do think that is changing a little bit, but yes, there is still this idea out there that being toned is the extent you should take it to. Even in some of my training, maybe you got this too, I feel that I get a lot of warnings from people about not hurting myself, not pushing it too far. I do not think that men get nearly as many warnings when they are lifting weights.
Y: Yes, that is true. You maybe even seen that when you are doing CrossFit, how women are usually watched out more by the coaches than the men are, and they are the ones that are overdoing it.
H: Yes, I mean, I do not want to stereotype anyone, but in my personal experience, I have seen men typically trying to lift more weight than is safe for them at their current skill level, whereas women are likely to lift less weight at their skill level. So that is just an interesting thing to see.
Y: How did you select the athletes for your book, and what was it like interviewing them?
H: It was a big puzzle choosing the athletes. I wanted athletes from different sports, backgrounds, body types, and geographical locations. I chose them in a variety of ways and a lot of them I have known about for a long time. I was usually a fan of them already. Some of them the photographer knew, which was great. Some I came across from research; for instance, I did not know a lot about ice swimming before I started researching. I came across this article about it, and it was an article about men who are ice swimmers, and I wondered “who are the women doing this?” I found Jaimie Monahan (who’s in the book), and she is one of the best ice swimmers in the country. Something cool that Jaimie did was become the first person, man or woman, to complete the Ice Sevens Challenge. The Ice Sevens Challenge is when you swim an ice mile on all seven continents.
Y: That is very impressive. Did you meet every single one of the women in the book?
H: Yes, I met them all. I loved interviewing them all, and I was at all their photoshoots. It was a lot of fun for me! I am a storyteller at heart, so it was great to have the opportunity to meet all of them because they all have a different perspective, and there is something in each story that is valuable. I think that anyone who picks up the book will find someone to relate to, and that was important to me.
Y: Looking at your photos on your Instagram profile, I was impressed by your selection of female athletes because there is this trend where only white women are featured in certain campaigns or other media platforms. So, seeing your page, I was amazed by the fact there are so many diverse athletes because you are right, they are all strong and beautiful all in their own way.
H: Sophy Holland, who is the photographer, she and I were both very committed to trying to make this as diverse of a collection as possible. We did have challenges with logistics, and there are some athletes who we would have loved to have in the book, but it just did not work out for one reason or another. We did work hard to represent as many people as we could.
Y: That is great. I am impressed. Well, another one of the questions is what books would you recommend to readers in general. I mean, we do run a feminist book review, so if there are any books you want to shout out, books that you read in your research that others might be interested in, or maybe what is on your quarantine book pile?
H: Oh, man. I have to organize my quarantine book pile. My book does have an extensive bibliography in the back, so anyone interested in digging into this topic will find a lot of resources there. Many of the athletes that I discuss in the book have autobiographies of their own that are worth reading. One of my favorite ones is called Marathon Woman, by Kathrine Switzer, who ran the Boston Marathon in 1967 even though race organizers tried to push her off the course. I got to interview her for the book, and she was lovely. She continues to do a lot of work to help women around the world to have access to sports because there are many places in the world where girls still do not have access. Another good book from a picture perspective is called Venus with Biceps, and it has rare photographs from the 1800s to mid-1900s that show how strong women were being depicted through photography.
Y: I'll have to read that autobiography by Switzer. When did you start writing the book, when did you stop, and when is it coming out?
H: I first got the idea for the book in the Spring of 2017. I started working on getting an agent in early 2018, and by the end of the summer of 2018, we had sold the book to a publisher. So that is when I started working in earnest on the book. It was due in May 2019, then we went through a couple of months of revisions.
Y: How did it feel when you have the final product in your hands? Did you have a party or were you by yourself?
H: Ah, well, coronavirus. I just got the book a couple of weeks ago, and I had the flu at the time. So I did my little unboxing by myself with the flu, but it was incredibly exciting. It was exhilarating to see the final product and to see how beautiful it turned out, and just to kind of hold something in my hands that I created and that I conceptualized was an amazing feeling.
Y: When is the release date, or is it delayed?
H: No, not delayed at all. It is still coming out on April 7th. We did have a launch party at Elliott Bay Book Company scheduled for the 9th that will not be happening anymore, nor will I be going to New York in mid-April to promote the book. Events are on hold right now, but you can still order it and receive it! Many indie bookstores are mailing books right now.
Y: I am sorry. That must be a huge bummer, not being able to attend the events that have been scheduled to promote your book.
H: It was sad. There were a lot of logistics that go into planning these events, and it was a lot of work that's not coming to fruition. However, that does not place on the scale of bad things that are happening right now, but from just from an individual author's perspective, it's been tough. I'm hopeful that I'll at least be able to have a party in Seattle to celebrate with friends and the literary community here at some point. I'm sure that all the bookstores will be working hard to try to get those events back up and running.
You can order your copy of Strong Like Her from anywhere you buy books.
Photo by Sophy Holland. Visit her Instagram here.