This piece spotlights Shetty Karthik’s ‘WEAR YOUR SCARS’ photoseries on the Indian Women’s Hockey Team, showing their injuries, training and locker-room bonds, reframing their bodies as instruments of endurance, teamwork and record-breaking ambition rather than tokens for the male gaze.
I have spent this whole weekend being furious.
As soon as I saw Sydney Sweeney's sports betting ad, I was aghast. What struck me was the sheer hyper-sexualisation of women in sport — reducing their bodies to something to be looked at, as if they weren't vehicles for feats that can seem effortless, almost otherworldly. Because contrary to what Sweeney portrays, women in sport have always sat on a spectrum. Women in sport is Naomi Osaka wearing the most striking, referential outfits on the US Open court, and women in sport is also Serena Williams smashing her racket in frustration.
Every single day, women fight to be respected and taken seriously on every court they walk onto. It is an ongoing battle they have to fight — one they unknowingly, and unfortunately, signed up for.
And it is a literal battle too. Sport can be ruthless and brutal, and when you put your body through that fight day after day, month after month, testing it to its very limits, it is bound to accumulate scars, signs of everything it has been through and survived..
Shetty Karthik's photoseries 'WEAR YOUR SCARS' captures the real women of sports, in the magnitudes they encompass. Commissioned by The Sports Women India Initiative, it documents the Indian Women's Hockey Team at its most vulnerable, but also at its strongest. The crepe bandage that is supporting your muscles together as you sprint across the field trying to score a goal. Scars and scrapes on your knees and legs because of the tumbles and falls you’ve taken trying to perfect your craft with discipline and tenacity. From every scar to every wound, the series shows the work that goes into performing feats that can seem effortless, almost otherworldly.
While portraying the painful work that goes behind a sport as daunting as hockey, it also brings to light the team that makes it all possible. The community and sisterhood that is formed in the locker rooms that is integral to any team sport. That camaraderie is what ties the team together in a joint mission to do their all on that field, scars, sweat and sometimes blood and all. The series brings the joy and drive behind the moments before they set foot onto their arena.
The second half of the series captures them on the field. Running drills, competing and striving everyday to be the best they can, and the best their body can. Not as a token or something glamourised for the male gaze, but a vehicle to win championships, set records and break thousands of years of stereotypes.
These are the real women in sports. They are bruised and battered, and a marvel to watch perform. So, I would urge everyone to divert their attentions to them and not to some product of capitalism whose only goal and purpose is to polarise people and set women back about a bajillion years.
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