Iowa State basketball player Audi Crooks is one of the best athletes in the country, and that’s no exaggeration. In the past week alone, she has been named second-team All-American by The Associated Press and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, and she’s a semifinalist for the Naismith Trophy Women’s College Player of the Year. They’re well-deserved accolades as Crooks — the second-leading scorer in college women’s basketball — is coming off a monster season: averaging 25.5 points per game while shooting nearly 65% from the floor, grabbing 7.8 rebounds and scoring double figures in 97 consecutive games. She also became the fastest in Big 12 women’s basketball history to score 2,000 points, solidifying herself as a generational talent. Today she leads her 8th-seeded Cyclones into the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
So why, given her remarkable collegiate career, is there such a cultural obsession over Crooks’ body?
So why, given her remarkable collegiate career, is there such a cultural obsession over Crooks’ body? Basketball is a sport dominated by size. When it comes to the 6-foot-3 Crooks, however, the criticism — mostly around the size of her body — is often as loud as the applause of her on-court performance. In a particularly troubling Reddit thread, Crooks is accused of being “out of shape,” of not taking her “conditioning” seriously and of being the reason Iowa State was bounced early from the Big 12 Tournament.
Such body-shaming insults are lobbed at athletes of all genders who defy narrow perceptions of how an athlete’s body should look. Just ask Serena Williams, who spent a record-breaking professional tennis career being accused of having a body that was “too masculine.” In 2009, Williams said she was called “fat” and “unfit” after she had surgery and fell to No. 200 in the women’s tennis rankings. “You have to enjoy what you look like,” she said at the time. “Sometimes I read things [that say] I’m too fit or my arms are too muscular, but that’s how I am.”
Before the 2024 Summer Olympics, rugby star Ilona Maher responded to a fat-shaming TikTok comment that said she had a BMI over 30, suggesting she was not an ideal athlete for Team USA. “BMI doesn’t really tell you what I can do,” she said. “It doesn’t tell you what I do on the field, how fit I am. … So yeah, I do have a BMI of 30. I am considered overweight. But alas, I’m going to the Olympics and you’re not.”
Even NBA player Zion Williamson has been navigating claims that he “overeats” since he came into the league six years ago.
When an athlete as powerful as Crooks comes on the scene, it is easier for some critics to lean into fatphobia to discredit her than to simply admit that what they’ve been taught about the relationship between body size and fitness is one-dimensional and outdated. Williams is one of the greatest players to ever grace the tennis court. Maher is an essential member of Team USA’s bronze-winning Olympics team. When Williamson isn’t navigating injury, he’s one of the most explosive players in the NBA. And, if her junior year is any indication, Crooks is destined to break more NCAA records her senior year.
Size hasn’t been a deterrent to those athletes’ greatness because size has nothing to do with athleticism. All bodies are capable of all things. Allie Kieffer, a professional runner who has placed fifth in the New York City marathon, is more proof of how illogical it is to associate size with fitness. As she notes in a 2018 essay for SELF, the stereotype of the “rail-thin elite” athlete can push larger athletes toward dire outcomes, including quitting sports altogether or developing eating disorders. “I’ve known and heard of many collegiate and elite female runners who suffer from eating disorders because their coaches tell them that they need to be as light as possible to win races,” she wrote. “The consequences of this messaging are severe, as I soon learned firsthand.” Pushing herself to “cut weight” to compete at an elite level led Kieffer to develop a stress fracture in her tibia that prevented her from competing in the 2012 Olympic trials. This body has gotten me so far in life, and it enables me to do what I do on the court. When we push athletes like Crooks to embody the “ideal” athletic body instead of simply accepting that their body is one of the reasons they’re able to excel, it unfairly detracts from their talent and their accomplishments. It’s something Crooks is seemingly aware of, and to her credit, refuses to submit to. “My family, we’ve always been bigger, stronger people,” she told ESPN. “Like tall, big humans. That’s just kind of who we are. That’s our identity. I’ve utilized that as more of a tool because this body has gotten me so far in life, and it enables me to do what I do on the court.” Being able to drown out the noise will benefit Crooks as she navigates today’s tournament game and a promising career, but she shouldn’t have to hear the noise at all. Accepting that athletic bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and that what we’ve been taught to believe about fatness is nonsense, will help set Crooks up for the basketball career she — and all plus-size athletes who come after her — deserve.
