In books and popular culture, boxing has often been celebrated as an ode to masculinity. From iconic lines like “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, used by Muhammad Ali, to Martin Scorsese’s 1980 film Raging Bull and Mark Knopfler’s song, ‘Broken Bones’, boxing is considered a preserve of the male.
But women — Elizabeth Wilkinson was one of the best boxers of Victorian England in the 18th century — have fought in the ring for long, whether they are written about or not. In contemporary times, boxers like India’s Mary Kom have become well-known names.
One story, with a female boxer protagonist, which gained popularity thanks to a movie, is F.X. Toole’s ‘Million $$$ Baby’, from his collection, Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner (2000). In it, a seasoned trainer, Frankie Dunn, faces perhaps his life’s most difficult challenge when he decides to extend a hand to waitress Maggie Fitzgerald’s quest to become a champion boxer. More recently, Carmel Winters’ 2018 film, Float Like a Butterfly, struck a chord with its story of 15-year-old Frances who idolises Muhammad Ali and wants to be the queen of the boxing ring.
In author Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel, Headshot, longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, there are no inspiring trainers. But the eight feisty girls, finalists at the 12th annual Women’s 18 and Under, Daughters of America Cup, who converge on Reno in the middle of the American heartland from all across the United States, have the reader’s heart.
There’s Artemis Victor, from a family of boxers; her first-round opponent is Andi Taylor, a lifeguard at a community pool and struggling to stay afloat. In profiling the young boxers, Bullwinkel also holds a mirror to their social, economic and cultural backgrounds and why they fight the way they do.
The girls carry the scars of their lives into their bouts. Rachel Doricko, for instance, is from San Diego, and as a child, watched her home being burnt down in a wild fire. Besides boxing, she runs in the woods as a coping mechanism. The cousins, Izzy Lang and Iggy Lang, from Douglas, Michigan, have their personal battles, one trying to be more than her mother’s daughter, the other trying to get ahead in life with her purple-marked lip.
Rose Mueller and Tanya Maw, who hail from different places, are connected by the hand-clapping games they used to play while growing up. They don’t know they “share a clapping canon” and punch each other with “speed and precision”, without missing a beat, mirroring their childhood games. While Tanya will make a life as an actor, Rose, the eventual champion of the under-18 event, will own weight-loss marketed gyms with her husband.
Author Rita Bullwinkel
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images
Bullwinkel, 36, provides a glimpse of what lies ahead for the girls, which comes as a relief because the fights are such that there’s a fear the injuries will become “lifelong souvenirs”. Andi who crashes out to Artemis after brutal blows will go to college and become a pharmacist. Artemis will become a wine distributor; both have “broken bones”, and when Artemis is 60, she won’t be able to hold a cup of tea.
Another teenaged boxer, Kate Heffer, who during the course of the fight is hit in the eye which “puffs out to the size of a tennis ball” will become a successful wedding planner. Even though some of their lives will be quiet, their boxing days long forgotten, Bullwinkel, by mapping their past, present and future, ensures the girls do not lack “luminescence”.
If there’s a minor quibble, it’s her last chapter, titled ‘The Future’. In it, Bullwinkel holds out hope that though the eight girls will leave boxing once they age out, other girls will take their place. Her conclusion that since “girls are infinite backwards and forwards… it is impossible to say where the first female athlete began and where they will end”, doesn’t quite round up a story where not one character embraces the sport going forward.
sudipta.datta@thehindu.co.in
Headshot
Rita Bullwinkel
Pan Macmillan
₹499
Published – October 19, 2024 12:19 pm IST
