Thanks to our narrow standards of beauty, it’s not unusual for girls and women to look in the mirror and be unhappy with what they see. Falling into “your own worst critic” mode, it’s easy to pick out flaws where there aren’t any or feel disappointed with the number staring up at you from the scale. But record-breaking hammer thrower Amanda Bingson champions her body instead of devaluing it.

“I’ll be honest, I like everything about my body,” Bingson said in a recent interview that accompanies images of the athlete in the nude for ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue.

Bingson’s empowering statement is rare for women of all sizes. Up to 91 percent of American women report dissatisfaction with their bodies. Soccer star Ali Krieger, also featured in the Body Issue, talked about her own vulnerabilities, from disliking her large calves to never leaving the house without mascara. Tennis star Serena Williams recently revealed that she struggled to embrace her “thicker” figure.

The track and field champion—whose event involves spinning in a circle and catapulting a 8.8-pound ball as far as she can—refers to her body type as “dense.”

“Generally when you look at athletes, you see their muscles and all that stuff; I don’t have any of that,” Bingson said, referring to her lack of six-pack abs or bulging biceps. “I’m just dense. I think it’s important to show that athletes come in all shapes and sizes.”

Not everyone has been so appreciative of Bingson’s physique. Over the years the athlete has been on the receiving end of plenty of criticism. Preteen boys called her fat in middle school, and she was booted from her high school volleyball team when she couldn’t shed 30 pounds to fit into the uniform.

“There were other girls who were not as good as I was, but they fit into the uniforms,” she explained. “So that was [the coach’s] rationale.”

(Photo: ESPN Magazine/Twitter)

So, Why Should You Care? Bingson, 25, graduated from high school seven years ago, but her experience with weight-based criticism echoes current trends in bullying. More so than ethnicity, sexual orientation, or an obsession with Dungeons & Dragons, weight is the most common source for teen bullying, according to a recent study. When that criticism comes from an educator or a coach, it signifies that this type of body scrutiny is warranted and perpetuates a narrow image of an acceptable female figure.

In Bingson’s case, she was able to move past her coach’s disparaging remarks and see the value in bodies big and small.

“Whatever your body type is, just use it,” said Bingson. “There are definitely things that I can do that skinnier people can’t do. But then there are things that skinnier people do that I’ll never be able to do, like run a marathon.”

Bingson earned her first American title in 2013, setting a national record distance in hammer throwing. She didn’t make it past the qualifying rounds of the 2012 Olympics but will head back to Brazil to compete in the 2016 games. If she medals this time, she’ll celebrate by chugging a beer.