The Feminine Experience
in Martial Arts
December 2025
NOTE:
This body of work is pulled from its corresponding photobook, which holds many more images, interviews, and poems.
We feel
We flow
We fight
PREFACE
I used to hide my femininity on the martial arts mats.
I was embarrassed by it. I didn’t let myself cry, wear makeup, or even fix my hair before sparring. From the ages of 6 to 16 when I trained Tae Kwon Do, I was often the only girl on the mats—and later, the highest-ranking girl in my school. I never had a female role model to guide me or advise me through the nuances of being a woman in martial arts.
There were many rounds when my sparring partners–teenage boys going through puberty, growing stronger and taller with each class– wouldn’t know how to control their new found strength. Quickly, I learned to take it. Yet sometimes, the overwhelming pain of being kicked in the thigh or uppercutted in the gut would bring me to near-collapse. Each time, I swallowed my tears, refusing to let anyone see me as “just another crying girl”. With my tears, I swallowed my femininity.
In the years leading up to my black belt, I began embracing my femininity. This acceptance empowered me, allowing me to truly flourish. I found myself most in the beautiful technique of Tae Kwon Do’s poomsae (the traditional combat forms). The poomsae revealed the harmony between my inner masculine and feminine energies I struggled so long to balance. The masculine gave me sharpness, power, and geometry. The feminine gave me breath, grace, and precision. In poomsae, they met. And they danced. I found this yin and yang once again in Brazilian Jiujitsu.
In fall 2020, around the peak of this time, I created a short series about being a young woman in martial arts. It consisted of 5 studio portraits of the girls I trained with.
February 2025, exactly four years after I got my black belt, I (19 and 120lbs) sparred a 230lb man, both of us BJJ white belts. In our round, he flipped me with the improper technique resulting in me landing horribly on my neck. I laid on the ground in shocked stillness, the sound of my neck cracking echoed in my ears. Tears streamed down my cheeks. No longer was I judging myself or thinking of how I would be perceived.
So, I cried.
Although it was an accident, he was only able to maneuver me like that because I was so light. It wouldn’t have worked against someone his own size. That was the first time I deeply felt my relatively small size and weight. The frustration and shocking reality check from this incident reignited my exploration of the complex reality of being a woman in martial arts.
A month later, I was in the locker room after class with Jay, one of the women I train with. When she was telling me about one of her spars in the class before, she started crying. In the match, the guy she fought was able to hold her off because of his size, weight, and height, despite years of training. I remember her being embarrassed to cry, assuring me she “never lets it get to her.”
“It happens,” I told her.
That is when I realized: this is what I wish to tell all women who feel embarrassed to cry after a round. It’s what I wish someone had told me all those years ago–it’s okay to cry. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you less of a martial artist. It’s release.
____
INTRODUCTION
What if martial arts was more feminine than we were told?
This body of work portrays the feminine experience in martial arts.
I wish to spotlight martial arts’s overlooked inherent feminine qualities,
flow, patience, creativity, resilience, intuition,
to reframe the dated narrative that martial arts is a violent, masculine sport.
I wish to create powerful female role models and an approachable space for viewers to imagine themselves in.
HERE
live the stories
of the powerful female martial artists
I train with in New York City.
HERE
are the “older sisters” I wish I had,
and the advice I wish I received,
when I began my beautiful journey.
____
A FLOW
between two koi fish
one of water
one of fire
A SPAR
of eternal
swirling and
reversing and
inversing
A DANCE
of
P U L S I N G
E L E C T R I C
grace
____
we bring the arts
to the martial
thorns don’t exist without flowers
MY STORY
I became a martial artist because of my dad. He put me in Tae Kwon Do when I was 6. He kept taking me, and I just didn’t say no. I would train and he would always watch and coach me about my sparring matches on the ride back home. It became something we deeply shared.
Growing up, I didn’t openly share that I practiced martial arts. I remember when I was in 3rd grade, I had recently begun training. One day after school, I ran into some of my schoolmates in the community center wearing their karate white belts. I excitedly shared with them that I also practiced martial arts, and was a few ranks higher. Expecting to share exciting sparring stories, I was surprised when I was instead met with condescending laughter and disbelief. That story continued to repeat within different peers. Even my ex-boyfriend wanted to prove that he could beat me in a fight, so, one day with padded gear, we sparred.
For me, it was never about fighting. I can be good at it, but the reason I got my black belt in Tae Kwon Do was for my discipline, my resilience, and sharp technique. But no one really understood that. The more that happened, the more I shared my passion for martial arts with a whisper.
While I felt I had to hide my “masculine hobby” from my school peers, on the mats, I felt I had to dim my femininity from the sea of boys I was surrounded by. I would deny myself the femininity of putting my long hair up in a ponytail in between sparring matches, or communicating to my sparring partners to ease up with the power. In those sparring matches, I would bite back my tears. Now, I wish I could tell 13-year-old-me that it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be feminine in a space that feels so masculine. It’s okay because it’s fucking hard.
It wasn’t until a year before I got my black belt that I finally accepted who I was in both spaces, no longer dimming any part of myself. It took a while to realize how cool and truly badass it is to do martial arts, especially as a woman. The day I got my black belt (February 2021), the Tae Kwon Do school I grew up in closed due to COVID. When I moved to New York in 2023, I began training in Brazilian Jiujitsu, excited to be a white belt once again. A year later, I earned my blue belt, which is now what I proudly train as.
It took 14 years to realize how beautifully martial arts harmonizes my internal feminine and masculine energies–my yin and yang. It’s perfect. Because of this, I don’t train for a belt. I train to live. I train to be me.
