Rousey not overly comfortable with role-model status yet
Whether she wants to be or not, Ronda Rousey is a role model to a generation of young woman, a role she’s quite completely comfortable in.
Whether she wants to be or not, Ronda Rousey is a role model to a generation of young woman, a role she’s quite completely comfortable in:
Just four years after entering mixed martial arts and heading into her UFC 193 showdown with Holly Holm in Melbourne, Australia, on Nov. 14, she has become not only America’s favorite badass, but a female role model, a no-holds barred picture of authenticity.
Yet it is precisely that role, as a figure of inspiration to the young, where you spot a crack in Rousey’s confidence.
It is very flattering, Rousey said. I have tried to do my best, but sometimes I feel I am not infallible enough to really be the perfect role model for little girls. I try my best, that’s the best that I can do. I’m sure some mothers are happy about it and some don’t approve and that’s up to them and how they choose to parent.
There are different kind of role models, Rousey said. There are bodily role models and I didn’t really have any healthy bodily role models growing up. I am just trying to represent one body type that hasn’t really been shown at all in the mainstream media.
I feel like a small fraction of women’s body types are represented in the media and (as a teenager) I thought there was maybe something wrong or undesirable about me. The standard I held myself too was what the boys I had crushed on liked. When I was 13 or 14, I have a crush on this kid who had a stack of Maxims in his room, I don’t look like any of those Maxim girls. It was hard. I want to show something different.
