This Girl Can: Gemma's story
For the past three weeks television adverts, social media posts and billboards across the land have advertised Sport England’s latest campaign This Girl Can. It’s a sassy celebration of women everywhere no matter how they exercise, how they look, or how sweaty they get.
The national charity, the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) is supporting This Girl Can to ensure more disabled women can get involved in the campaign.
Last week, Sport England’s latest Active People Survey was published. It showed that 121,700 fewer disabled people and 125,000 fewer women are regularly taking part in sport. EFDS believes that the results reinforce the importance of understanding and responding to disabled people’s needs and preferences much more effectively.
Campaigns like This Girl Can will play an important role in increasing the numbers of all active women, especially those living with impairments and health conditions.
Gemma Trotter, 32, works for LimbPower, the national charity for amputees and people with limbloss. She lost her leg to amputation after a car accident when she was a teenager. After a period of inactivity she suddenly caught the fitness bug, and has been enjoying exercise ever since.
“I’m not an elite athlete,” she says. “I’m just someone who loves being active.”
Gemma – This Girl Can
Like millions of people across the country, Gemma saw the This Girl Can campaign when it arrived on our television screens in the middle of last month. As a woman who took to fitness later in life, she was delighted to see “real women” represented throughout the campaign.
“I was impressed that it wasn’t all really thin women,” Gemma told EFDS. “And I was impressed that it genuinely showed what people are. There were some overweight people, and it made me feel it was really real.
“It was lovely how it was all put together, with a focus on sweating and so on. I did feel it represented real women, not six foot tennis stars or other people that most women cannot ever aspire to be.”
A personal trainer, fitness instructor and a regular at her local gym, mother-of-one Gemma says another aspect of This Girl Can that struck a chord with her was how sport and other forms of physical activity can help form a camaraderie or team spirit between participants.
“I liked the groups, the competitions and the competitiveness within women, but it was not overdone and scary. Group sports, camaraderie and so on were shown, and that’s what sport can be. It can be social and good for you. That was well represented.
“It made me want to do stuff - it made me want to run… and I can’t even run!”
It is a far cry from teenage Gemma, who followed a car accident in 1997 at the age of 14 with 25 operations in 24 months. The repeated attempts to save her left leg proved ultimately unsuccessful, and at 16 years old she became an amputee with a prosthesis fixed above the knee.
Having been a very active child, the period following the amputation was hard, with Gemma finding it difficult to motivate herself to take up physical activity.
“Women do feel insecure, and especially as an amputee,” she admits. “I felt I’d lost all my femininity, I couldn’t walk properly, I had pain, I felt ugly, I felt I would never meet anyone.
“After becoming an amputee I didn’t really do any activity for about four years. I had that gap, and to be fair it wasn’t easy to find ways and means of exercising. It’s a bit of a journey – you have to find ways of doing things, and when you’re not that confident or a bit young you don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
It was exercise, taken against her initial instincts, that proved the turning point for Gemma.
“When I first started going to the gym I was really down. I had lost my leg but had started walking again, and then I stopped walking and put on a load of weight and I was really insecure.
“I got really down, but someone asked me if I’d ever tried going to the gym. Initially I thought it would be over my dead body, because I had one leg, everyone would stare at me, and I was fat. But I braved it, went there six days a week from then on.
However, Gemma’s motivations were as much mental and physical.
“The reason I did it was weight loss and for my mood, to reset myself. If you’re feeling down in the dumps go to the gym – it is guaranteed to perk you up.”
Having recently undergone her 40th operation since the car accident in 1997, Gemma now sees fitness as central to both her life and that of her young son, Archie.
The pair go swimming together and she takes him to softplay. Anything to avoid her five-year-old becoming the “couch potato” that she fears.
And what about Gemma, and her healthy addiction to fitness? It seems as much about enjoyment and being active as it is about meeting goals and managing her health.
“I’ve never wanted to be an elite athlete,” insists Gemma. “I’m just the person who goes to the gym because she likes it, or the person who goes for a bike ride because she loves to cycle. That, and a piece of cake, and a chat.
“Exercise, if you’re disabled, is not about becoming a Paralympian. It’s just about doing something for yourself.”
