Moana Hope tells of being fat shamed during her AFLW career by a coach
Moana Hope has endured a lot as one of the trailblazing players of the AFLW — but she didn’t expect to be called fat by a coach. Now, the ex-footy star has revealed just how she clapped back.
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AFLW trailblazer Moana Hope has broken her silence on being fat shamed during her AFLW career.
Hope, who has taken a year off from football to start a family with her wife, Isabella Carlstrom, revealed she had been called “fat” by a coach during her playing days.
“I have played for an AFL club where they have actually told me I was fat and I was not,” Hope told Laura Henshaw and Steph Claire Miller’s insightful KIC podcast.
“It does not matter what my body size is, all that matters is what I am doing on the footy field and if I am contributing, what does it matter what my body size is?
“Even when that particular person, who was my coach, told me I was overweight. I was actually as skinny as I had ever been and my role as a key forward is to be stronger and back then I was not even strong enough for that position.”
Hope played for Collingwood and North Melbourne in the AFLW but did not say which team she was with when the comment was made.
“It got me upset but I went back and said that is one person’s opinion so I did not care,” she said.
“He does not work in personal training, he clearly does not understand my role is in a team or what it takes to be an athlete so I am not going to listen to that one person’s opinion when it comes to my body type.”
Hope and Carlstrom posted an intimate photo of Hope hugging her wife’s pregnant belly to celebrate the pregnancy journey this week. Carlstrom is due to give birth in November.
The couple underwent several IVF treatments in order to fall pregnant and have spoken often about what having a family means to them.
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