not what I was
aging, injury, and the athlete's body
[For context, I’m Ben Mercer, a former pro rugby player turned author and content creator]
Last week I fainted in the bathroom and split my chin.
It took 9 stitches, as well as a few internal ones, to repair and there should be a fetching scar down my face.
I’ve never been too bothered about scars. I got my first major one playing hockey as a ten year old, a backswinging stick catching me right between my eyebrows and leaving me with a Harry Potter-esque straight line scar, although given my age, this predated the boy wizard. I collected a few more playing rugby, mostly in and around my eyebrows, and felt like these were pretty minor, the cost of doing the business of weaponising your body.
Now, in a peculiar way, I still monetise my body or more accurately my face. I’ve probably become less vain with age, yet I rely on my looks now more than ever. Any skin complaints or lacerations suddenly become a problem. Perhaps I should insure my face like J-Lo did her legs.
Then there’s the demeaning nature of how I sustained this injury. I got up in the night to relieve myself and after doing so, pulled up my pants, turned around and collapsed. I woke up slightly concussed, looking at a mercifully small amount of blood and when I got to my feet and looked in the mirror, I thought ‘that looks bad’. Bad enough to need a ride to hospital and 12 hours later, after checking for broken bones and other traumas, the stitches.
Did you know that the modern mirror has only been a thing for a relatively short time in our history?
While the design was perfected in Venice in the early 1500s, using tin and mercury behind the glass as a backing, mirrors only became widely available in the 19th century when the silvering process, invented by German chemist Justus von Liebig in 1835, enabled cheaper, consistent manufacturing. From then on, mirrors made their way into the homes of the middle class and became common.
Narcissus got lost in his reflection during antiquity, wasting away by a pool of water in the forest, but that reflection was unclear, shifting and ephemeral. It’s said that the myth doesn’t only warn of the dangers of vanity but also of the dangers of the self. Narcissus becomes lost in his own depths, not merely with his beautiful image but with the idea there was some truth about himself beneath the surface.
The introduction of the mirror made the reflection crystal clear, the vanity accurate, the image incontestable. There is little need for introspection when there are no questions. Maybe the mirror created the modern self-image, the external view of ourselves, an image captured by the camera and now the phone. Now we live in a world of mirrors, seeing ourselves reflected all the time.
They say, this is what you look like, and we know that image is ending with each passing second. When I first looked in the mirror to see the side of my chin gaping open, I certainly felt like one image of me was over.
Lying on my back, looking at the ring of the CT scanner above me, I wondered if this was how I’d find out I had lingering effects from all those collisions during my rugby career.
I was never knocked out as a rugby player but it’s a misconception that these incidents are the only factors. CTE presents more commonly in those who have sustained multiple smaller shocks, micro-concussions, that add up over years of repetition into devastating conditions like dementia. The rugby authorities now offer free scans to former players for them to find out whether they’re going to be reduced versions of themselves in later life, whether the things they see in the mirror and in their mind will become rippled, muddier, unclear as who they are and what they’ve done are borne away from them.
Concussion used to be a nothing. You got up, shook it off and played on. You were tough, selfless, team-first. Luckily we now know more about it. When you’re young and fit and powerful, you feel like a warrior, like you can do anything, even fly. You can literally feel the physical potential in your body waiting to burst out.
But later in your career, you start to wonder. Am I slower than I used to be? Am I weaker? That’s my weaker shoulder, that’s the tight hip. Your scars accrue, each one stitching you closer to earth. Then once you stop competing, you know you’ll never have your potential back even if I do feel better. I don’t need to warm up to kick a football now. I can run right out the door without a stretch. I feel less pain.
Instead I feel old. There’s a small patch of softness on my stomach that never used to be there when I was 8% body fat. I have grey hairs that I joke are blonde. I eat much less and much more carefully. Training is about maintenance, about being able to throw my children around in future, about being able to function rather than excel.
Some of these things feel like noble aims, some feel less than that. They feel small.
An athlete’s body used to be purely about performance. About utility. About survival. Armies marched, messengers ran.
After the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, the messenger Pheidippides is said to have run from the battlefield to Athens, roughly 25 miles, to announce a Greek victory over the Persians before collapsing and dying. Centuries later, the first modern marathon was held at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens, explicitly created to mythologise modern sport and connect it to classical heroism. The race originally mirrored Pheidippides’ route, but in 1908 it was extended to 26.2 miles so it could begin at Windsor Castle and end in front of the royal box at the Olympic stadium.
What was once a necessity has become pure performance. Shows of skill, power and endurance, ritualised sacrifice, even a form of national identity.
Pheidippides’ body didn’t need to look good. It needed to be able to run a marathon. A professional athlete can still be like this but unlike Pheidippides, that body is now being watched. And in our social media hall of mirrors, now all our bodies are on display. In response to an audience, we manage our bodies, groom them, prepare them for visual performance, all part of a post-mirror phenomenon. And even if you are an athlete, regardless of how well you perform, it behoves you to look good if you want to reap all the rewards on offer to you while you compete, particularly if you’re a woman.
This is its own special trap.
Another looming reckoning to monitor: so many social media influencers, especially women, build their entire clout, income, and identity on physical attractiveness. Their lifestyle, status, and validation are all tethered to how they look. But we haven’t yet seen what happens when age sets in and that beauty fades.
Now that my looks are tied to my career, it feels like they’re more important to me than ever before, even as they’ve become more precarious. One content creator who advises others says as his opening advice, ‘Number One: look as hot as you can.’ He says this with a smile but unironically.
While I played rugby I was pretty reckless in all kinds of ways. Those environments encourage young men to dare and I was happy to enter the arena and attempt to prove myself, to who I’ve never been quite sure. Scars in that context are more of a badge of honour, the cost of doing business, even a bit of a rite of passage.
Getting a scar from falling over in the bathroom isn’t a badge of honour. It’s a sign of being old, frail, unable to deal with life’s rigours.
Even if it fades, as scars do, I’ll remember. I’ll remember that I’m not what I used to be.
On Thursday 17th July I’ll be going LIVE here on Substack with fellow bookish bloke
of fame. We’ll be chatting about books, sports, writing and content creating and it’s going to be really fun. Get a reminder and come along.