Sri Lanka’s First Female Competitive Bodybuilder Conquers Cultural Norms

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA — In taking the stage to flex her muscles as Sri Lanka’s first female competitive bodybuilder, Dulanjali Subasinghe demonstrated her strength twice: once to show hours of muscle-defining power-lifting, and second to show her victory in overcoming family objections as well as her own inhibitions about appearing in a bikini, the mandatory competition attire.

Exposing so much of her body in a culture that values modesty for women nearly dissuaded her from competing altogether, Subasinghe says.

“My coach told me time and again that it was only something I had to wear to display talent and not for any other reason,” she says. “Thus encouraged, I decided to compete.”

Subasinghe, 32, says she became interested in bodybuilding in 2015, after her coach suggested that she begin training professionally. He saw how rigorously she had worked to become fit, and how, without formal training, she was already better at certain exercises than some men who were competitive bodybuilders.

Although she had won district-level competitions in shot put and discus throw events as a teenager, Subasinghe says she had put a full stop to her sports activities when she married in 2008. She became a mother a year later, and by 2013, she says, the lack of concerted physical exercise had led her to gain weight. At her heaviest, she says, she weighed 90 kilograms (about 198 pounds).

On her father’s birthday that year, she and her sister made a pact to become fit. They went to a trainer, but when the trainer left the country after a month, Subasinghe browsed the internet and designed a training program for herself.

“My knowledge of exercises began to grow without me even realizing it,” she says, shedding 20 kilograms [about 40 pounds] within six months.

In 2015, she enrolled in an exercise course at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, near her home in Panadura, about 23 kilometers (about 14 miles) from Sri Lanka’s economic capital, Colombo. There she met her coach, Dharmasiri Nihal Weeratunga, who was then the vice president of the Sri Lanka Body Building & Fitness Federation, and who became the general secretary of the group in 2016.

“This was a turning point in my life,” she says. Even without formal training, she found that in some exercises she was ahead of experienced male bodybuilders.

“I was surprised to hear this,” says Subasinghe. She began training in March 2015 at Weerantunga’s gym in the Bambalapitiya neighborhood of Colombo. Within a month, she went from squat-lifting 10 kilograms (22 pounds) to 100 kilograms (220 pounds). By competition time, she could lift 120 kilograms (265 pounds).

Though she was making a great effort and was committed to the sport, she ran into objections at home.

“Although my husband was himself a bodybuilder, he was quite traditional in his views,” Subasinghe says. “He wasn’t too keen on me taking up this sport. He was not one to discourage me in anything, but in this instance, he opposed me on the basis of cultural norms. The culture of the country did not encourage women to become bodybuilders.”

She also discussed it with family. “Before making this decision, I spoke with my parents, my sisters and others who are close to me,” she says. “Many in my family opposed me. It was their view that being a mother, this was not suitable for me.”

Though ready to support her, Subasinghe’s mother had reservations about the sport.

“There’s an accepted way in our society with respect to bringing up a female child,” Hembathanthrige Swarna Latha says. “No mother would like her daughter to step out of this frame. We were also quite perturbed by the attire of women bodybuilders. So, at the beginning, I objected to her taking up this sport.”

After discussing it further, her mother supported her decision to compete.

“I drew strength from the belief that at least my mother was on my side,” Subasinghe says. “So, one fine day in the year 2015, I decided that I would do it regardless of who objected.”

Because she was the first Sri Lankan woman to enter a bodybuilding competition, her coach braced her for potential cultural trouble. “He told me right at the beginning that when I step on to the stage I might get booed and advised me to steel my mind against such things,” she says.

But her first competition, the June 2016 National Novice Bodybuilding Championship, went well. And the next one — the Ms. Sri Lanka Female Bodybuilding Competition, held in December — went well too. As the sole competitor in the female category, she won both competitions. Now she is training others to weight lift, and she hopes to compete internationally as well as to encourage other women in Sri Lanka to compete this year.

Dhanushka Kasunjith, an exercise trainer and bodybuilding instructor at Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo, says Subasinghe’s participation has “dealt an effective blow to certain meaningless traditions in our culture” and shows that “bodybuilding is not the preserve of men.”

Weeratunga is grateful to Subasinghe for overcoming cultural norms.

He had tried to persuade many of his female students to take up the sport, and says several trained and filled out forms to compete in the novice event last year. But the others, including Subasinghe’s sister, backed out at the last minute.

“In the end, it was just Dulanjali who came onstage,” he says. “The only request I made of her was to develop other strong women like her who could take women’s bodybuilding forward. We don’t want to stop now.”

 

Malinda Seneviratne, GPJ, translated this article from Sinhala.