Tilly Kearns on addressing periods in sports: ‘It’s not taboo’
Outside the pool, her bond with water polo is just as strong.
Over 630,000 followers across various social media platforms tune in to watch the Australian give regular updates on the life and times of a water polo athlete. And it’s easy to see why.
Just like her online presence, Kearns is affable, charmingly funny and above all honest, and it’s the latter quality she believes is why people have gravitated towards her content.
“I just like to capture little moments. And that’s why it is really authentic and organic and nothing’s really curated too much,” she says of her online profile.
Even its origin story has a certain genuineness to it, with Kearns confessing she first started a dedicated Instagram page in high school.
“The girls of my school convinced me to make it, but I made a page called ‘Official Tilly Kearns’ and it was just like a joke with me and my friends but it got such a good reception and I was like, ‘Hang on, maybe I actually do have a bit a knack for this!’”
It came as a surprise to Kearns that the page would flourish with interest.
“I thought it would start and stop there at the Olympics, but it just kept going. And then I thought it was quite beautiful that I could share the whole journey from the end of the Tokyo Olympics right until Paris, and everyone who was with me from the beginning, got to share the whole journey instead of just tuning in for the two weeks of the Olympics and then tuning out and saying, see you in another four years.”
Life on a college campus, an American Football-playing boyfriend, Justin Dedich, who would eventually join the NFL, a look at the realities of water polo training – so much of Kearns’ experience as an athlete is available to view through her channels.
And while the energy is mostly fun, Kearns has also found herself unexpectedly addressing more serious topics, including the subject of losing periods in elite sports and diet.
“To me, that is like every day, and it’s insane that other girls don’t talk about that. Because me and my teammates are just so open, almost disturbingly so. We know everything about each other, we’ve seen everything, there are no boundaries between me and my teammates,” Kearns says, talking about the subject of periods. “It wasn’t until I just posted something that I didn’t think twice about, and it got a great response. And people were asking to hear more, and I was kind of shocked that I was like, ‘Oh, does not everyone talk like this? Am I, are we the weird ones?’”
Calmy and casually, Kearns collected questions and began addressing them. Revealing how she had lost her period at the age of 17, and thinking it was a good thing. It wasn’t until she overheard conversations with older teammates that she recognised what had happened wasn’t healthy.
“It’s the sisterhood,” she says. “They become your sisters, and everything’s so open. And the older girls in my team, when I was young and coming through, helped me grow up, and they helped me see a lot about the world and understand a lot of things that I realised that I was actually so lucky to have that, and not everyone has that.
“So I guess on the internet, if people want to turn to me to be that person, that’s great. But it is so important because it’s not taboo. It’s just the way life is, as it should be. Absolutely no shame around it.”