Volley, Egonu: “A son of mine? He would experience the disgust that I experienced”

Racism, motherhood, the struggles of a professional sportswoman. In the stages of approaching Sanremo Paola Egonu confided in the Vanity Fair newsletter and is the protagonist of the new digital cover of the magazine, online from February 3rd. A long confession in which she addressed many topics of her professional and private life

Paola and racism

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“It happens that my mom asks for a coffee at the bar and they serve it cold, that the bank lets her white friend in but not her”. Or reactions at school: “In middle school, a little girl kept making fun of me because I was black. One day I grabbed her hair and yelled at her: ‘Say it one more time and I’ll put my hands on you, I’m not afraid of you”.

Motherhood

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The champion also spoke of her desire for motherhood and her fears: “I already know that, if my son has black skin, he will experience all the disgust that I experienced. If he were to have mixed skin, even worse: they will feel too black for whites and too white for blacks. Is it worth it, then, to give birth to a child and condemn him to unhappiness?” Or the concept of beauty: “I grew up in a context where the standard of beauty assumed that I was white. And, you know, kids can be very unpleasant. I was always the tallest, I was black, with these curls that I hated . At one point I shaved zero. Too bad that then I was made fun of because I didn’t have hair. Life sucked. I felt like disgusting”.

The sport

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She also spoke of the difficulty of practicing a sport that monopolizes her time: “They don’t know anything about me, about us athletes. They don’t know how much we struggle, how tired we are, how we don’t feel up to it, how sometimes we just want to take a break from everything, but we can’t. I don’t even have time to enjoy a victory when the next challenge arrives: after the Scudetto there is the Champions League, and the European Championship, the Super Cup, the Olympics. Then then it happens that someone tells me he says the wrong sentence and I ask myself: why on earth should I represent you? But then I think that I feel very beautiful emotions, I am an example for many children. And, above all, this job allows me to give my family a comfortable life. study my brothers and even spoil them a little.”