How long do you think you will be doing this for?” my dad asked me last week. He was referring to my amateur competitive powerlifting, which involves lifting squat, bench and deadlift at the heaviest weight you can handle. “Until I die, or sustain an injury which means that I can’t lift again,” I replied. His arched eyebrows spoke volumes.

My parents have always been glad that I keep myself fit – my dad has been lifting weights most of his life, and is an avid cyclist. But they have no idea how to process why I’ve decided to take up what seems to them like a dangerous, overly masculine sport at the age of 38. On the one hand they are proud, but on the other hand their brains can’t compute that I can handle a 125kg deadlift or a 100kg squat, and my back hasn’t snapped in two yet. They’re also struggling – if they’re being honest – with the fact that my body has changed and become more muscular, and that I don’t seem to care or show no sign of stopping. Other people have commented on my physique: “You look great but don’t get any bigger” or “Wah! It’s the wrestler!” (Wrong sport, but I understood the sentiment).

It’s not just South Asian women who face incomprehension as to why they would take up powerlifting. But being female and South Asian definitely makes things harder and lonelier. South Asian women are subject to all the same conditioning as other women when it comes to our bodies: the pursuit of slimness over strength. But we often have added layers to contend with: the sustained stereotype of South Asian women depicted in western TV and film as oppressed by their men: demure, obedient and soft. While we have the likes of actor and director Mindy Kaling breaking this mould, it currently doesn’t come close to representing the actual spectrum of South Asian women I know. And the expectation from our families – even liberal, educated and feminist ones such as mine – that your destiny includes settling down with a man, and shaping yourself to be as attractive as possible.

The lack of visibility and encouragement in our communities has some very real, detrimental outcomes

Role-modelling outside of these narrow paradigms matters. So when I learned this week that the first Indian to win a world title in motorsports – a notoriously male-dominated sport – was a 24-year-old woman named Aishwarya Pissay in August, my heart soared. Visibility like this is important, because it helps girls who look like her think beyond the narrative already laid out for them.

“As a pioneer, you’ve got to deal with a lot of people saying you can’t do it and you can’t get there and that’s also been a big challenge for me to overcome but I did,” she said about her win at the FIM Bajas World Cup in Hungary.

Pissay’s win is impressive for several reasons – the first being that motorsports training is expensive and she funded it entirely herself. But the second is that she comes from a conservative family in which doing an irregular job is taboo. “When I wanted to take up racing professionally, there were a lot of questions asked around, like, if this was normal,” she said.

Pissay says that a big driver for her is to prove people wrong. And, as a South Asian woman in the sport that she does, suffice to say she won’t run out of motivation. But her win is a reminder that any South Asian woman who does competitive sport, amateur or professional, is doing so against the odds. The lack of visibility and encouragement in our communities has some very real, detrimental outcomes: South Asian women are one of the least likely groups to be physically active in England and Scotland. It’s not out of laziness, but a complex set of reasons that range from being self-conscious in gym changing rooms and wearing fitness clothing, to a lack of visibility in mainstream fitness, and a glass barrier around physique and exertion within our own communities.

A good example of how positive motivation can work is the 23-year-old powerlifter Karenjeet Kaur Bains, who is the 2019 Commonwealth women’s junior under-63kg champion, and was the first British Sikh female to represent Great Britain at the IPF world championships. Her dad – a powerlifter himself – is her coach, and has helped her to get to where she is.

I’ve been inspired by many South Asian women who have risen above their circumstances, despite the strong rhetoric telling them they can’t. But it strikes me that if we were supported in our success, rather than fighting for it despite the overwhelming odds, there would be many, many more.

• Poorna Bell is the author of Chase the Rainbow