An exploration of Poorna Bell’s Stronger by Georgie Hamilton-James
I went from being a girl who ran in the wind and the sun and felt the sheer pleasure of being an animal, to a creature trapped in a cage designed to keep me as small as possible.
This is how Poorna Bell describes the transition from being a child to being a young girl at school in her book Stronger. Now a successful powerlifter who competes at high level, Bell examines her early years to identify how and where things went so wrong to the point where she, “felt a sense of disconnection, shame and distrust around my own body.”
Lack of Confidence is a Barrier for Girls in Sport
Combining her life experience with studies she’s read and her survey of 1,043 women and girls, Bell identifies that a lack of confidence is one of the biggest drivers behind girls not exercising, which is consistent with recent data. Of the 1,043 women interviewed, 9% said they did not exercise at all.
When asked why, 41% of these said they did not exercise because they felt self-conscious. When Bell dug deeper, many of these said they had stopped either because of a bad experience at school, comments made about their bodies, or a combination of these.
One woman called Beth who took part in Bell’s survey explains how she was picked on by the sporty girls at school because she developed early and was a bit ‘chubby’. She told Bell, “I carried all that bullshit with me until I was nearly 30!”
The Girls Active National Reports 2025 by the Youth Sports Trust found that girls are over three times more likely than boys to feel unconfident when taking part in physical activity. They also found that girls are nearly four times more likely than boys to not like taking part in PE.
According to UK national statistics from the ONS, between 8–15 years old, boys spend twice as much time doing physical activities as girls. While Bell’s book acknowledges that lack of confidence can affect men’s participation in sport, the book is very much about the female experience.
Closing the Confidence Gap in Girls’ Sport
In order to drive change, we must look at the different ways in which girls’ confidence is being damaged. As Bell points out, this is very evident within the education system and what we learn in these transformative years is crucial as it provides us with the ‘scripts’ which we act upon in our adult lives.
She writes, “A lot of the baggage and hang-ups we have as adults can be traced back to that time and/or the things we heard about our or other women’s bodies whilst growing up.”
This means that if girls develop a negative relationship to exercise in school they are likely to carry that forward into their adult lives. But worryingly, research shows that confidence levels in girls can start to drop even before school.
Bell recalls how she was an active child and talks about fond memories of running around and playing with other children and her love of playing tennis. She was often called a ‘tomboy’ because she hung around with groups of boys, but thought nothing of it until one day when she was 10 years old. She was hiding up on a roof and everything changed. When the boys found her, they crowded below her and one of them shouted, “I bet you can see her knickers.”
Bell describes this event as “a flicker of something that would be the beginning of the end of this kind of innocence.” Aged just 10, for the first time she had a feeling that because she was a girl things were different for her. She goes on to explain about the gender gap or “whistling void” that she fell into and believes that a lot of girls fall into.
She describes this gap as, “the point between which they (girls) believe they can do anything, be anything regardless of gender, and when they stop believing it.” She writes that, “when this happens, we start to see things like self-esteem and confidence levels drop.”
Mattel, the owners of Barbie, ran a piece of research exploring this theory and coined it the ‘Dream Gap’. They found that it could start as early as 5 or 6 years-of-age and described it as a period when girls start to think they are not smart enough or capable enough to engage in certain activities.
Dr Jennifer Harstien (a child psychologist in the USA) found that when girls begin to think they cannot do something, very often they will stop doing it. She also claims that when girls hear that something is for boys, they internalise that, creating a narrative of not being as good or capable as their male counterparts.
The Role of the PE Curriculum in Building Girls’ Sporting Confidence
Instead of building girls’ confidence and encouraging girls to be active, the current English PE curriculum is outdated, prioritising competitive sports over encouraging every child to participate in movement in a way which is enjoyable to them. Bell explains that she was not naturally good at team sports such as hockey, and hated the unrealistic tasks they were forced to do like rope-climbing and javelin – things which are intense and difficult even for those who strength-train regularly.
The system lets children who are not naturally good at sport fail, unnoticed and uncared about.
Consistently failing at these physical challenges, Bell describes how she felt let down by her body. She believes her school years were damaging to her understanding of her physicality and abilities, and that if she had felt a sense of belonging in those arenas, she may not have felt so disconnected and estranged from her body.
She writes about the lack of education she was provided with about the physical and mental benefits of moving one’s body and said that most of her cohort exited education forgetting that physical activity was meant to be fun.
We were not taught about moving our bodies in a way that felt joyous in an environment that felt safe.
Power is a key image throughout the book, which Bell uses to describe the transcendent change she felt within herself when she started powerlifting. She writes about the deep sense of authority she gained back over her body, and explains the value of carrying this with her into every space she enters. She describes it as feeling .invincible’. This contrasts with the lack of power she felt in her experience of PE at school.
Education Should Give Girls Confidence in Their Bodies
Where does this sense of embarrassment, disappointment or shame attached to the female body come from? As Bell explains, because girls are not sufficiently educated in school about puberty, they are left without the skills and support needed to navigate it.
Being left without the correct knowledge (such as how to use tampons or how to manage period pain effectively) can lead to them avoiding PE due to fears of leaking or other embarrassing situations.
Another statistic from Youth Trust Sport’s surveys supports this. They found that periods remain the biggest barrier to girls’ participation, affecting 47% of girls aged 11–13, a figure which rises to 52% between ages 14–15.
This lack of education also leaves them unequipped to deal with the big physical transformations which occur (such as breast growth and growth of body hair) and the mental impacts puberty can have (such hormone cycles affecting mood/sleep, etc.).
The Role of PE Kit in Encouraging Participation
Another contributing factor was the PE kit they were forced to wear while their bodies were changing. Bell points out that the gym clothes displayed their bodies and left nothing to the imagination, writing, “When you are already embarrassed by your body, being made to wear a garment that amplifies that embarrassment is bad enough, but also creates a deeply unsavoury connection with exercise.”
The statistics in the Girls Active National Reports 2024 certainly back this up. They found that 58% of girls want more PE kit options compared to just 29% of boys, and that only one in four girls aged 11–13 feel confident in their PE kit, a drop from 65% when aged 7–8.
Feeling Confident in the Sports Environment
Some of the women Bell studied also mentioned discomfort in changing rooms while growing up. This was a place where signs of puberty could be observed, singling out those who were ahead and those who were behind, providing the perfect context for bullying. One thing often cited was being picked on for one’s weight. This led to them stopping exercise altogether because they felt too self-conscious.
We desperately need to see change in the narrative around female body image. Bell writes, “I think the belief that looking slim was more important than being strong acted as chloroform, knocking out my connection with my own body.” I too can distinctly remember when I was in Year Six and I was really conscious about what I was eating because I was worried about putting on weight. I was 11 years old, so where had I learnt this?
As Bell shows, ideas about women’s weight and body image are deeply encoded in society – if you look closely, it is everywhere. Throughout the book, Bell shows that there needs to be a shift from focusing on what women’s bodies look like to celebrating what women’s bodies can do. This should start with teaching girls that what a body can do and make you feel like should always be more important than what it looks like.
Tackling Change and Building Confidence
There is, however, some good news – influential groups are beginning to tackle change. For example, StreetGames helps people from disadvantaged backgrounds engage with sport. This is incredibly important because, as explained by their CEO Jane Ashworth, “The gap widens when gender and low income are taken into account.”
The Youth Sport Trust’s survey (2025) found that girls with two or more characteristics of inequality are 1.6 times more likely to not like taking part in physical activity compared to girls with no characteristics of inequality (other than their gender). They also found that girls with two or more characteristics of inequality are 1.3 times more likely to not feel confident when doing physical activity.
Ashworth explains how important sport is to build confidence and teach skills such as leadership, which are crucial for helping people forge successful careers. StreetGames has a programme called ‘Us Girls’, which is designed for girls who aren’t naturally sporty. Their focus falls under three Fs – Fitness, Friendship and Fun. As Ashworth says, “It’s about providing an active outlet for their social life.”
StreetGames are providing a safe space where girls are encouraged to be active in a way which is enjoyable to them, in turn giving them the confidence and skills necessary to transition into womanhood in the most positive way possible.
For me, the overarching message of this book is about power. It is about regaining power for girls through education, teaching them about the importance of being active, and in doing so, giving them the confidence that they need to be active. It is about giving them the power to embrace and love their bodies and understand the transformations that they will undergo. Bell explores how being active is a way to take back this control over our bodies, to harness the power they give us and to unlock their full potential.
Nurturing Confidence and Positive Body Image in Girls
Society has developed in a way which restricts us, demands from us, criticises us and does not provide the resources needed for us to understand our bodies and how they work, but hopefully things are changing. As a personal trainer at the start of my career, my aim is to help as many girls and women as possible to reach a place where they can celebrate what their body can do, rather than being consumed by what their body looks like. For me, this reconnection and reclamation of one’s body is by far the most important gift that being physically active can give us.
This all links back to educating girls – if we provide a better understanding of the female body and the transformation it undergoes during puberty, then hopefully fewer negative comments will be made and girls can be more supportive of one another. If we can create positive relationships with exercise from an early age, it will hopefully set girls up for life.
