Boxing, Stripping and Empowerment

Boxing, Stripping and Empowerment with Jill Morley

“When you get hit there’s this feeling of humiliation, a loss of control… I really thought boxing would help me overcome my demons. Instead, it pushed me to the edge.”

So starts Fight Light A Girl, an award-winning documentary by Jill Morley, a writer, filmmaker and boxing instructor in Los Angeles. The film takes viewers into the world of passionate female boxers as Jill trains for the Golden Gloves competition in New York — it’s narrated by her and was filmed over five years. An overview on IMDB reads:

“From world champions to amateurs training for local tournaments, Jill discovers they all have a lot in common. The real emotional history, and traumas bubble up fleshing out a compelling story about women overcoming adversity; suicide, abuse, sexism, depression, and racism.”

I first spoke with Jill about Fight Like a Girl in 2015. I watched it for a second time over the weekend and was again moved by how personal it is. Boxing did eventually play a role in Jill’s healing process, but not before, as she put it, pushing her to the edge.

Today I’m going to share highlights from our first conversation, where we covered everything from her motivation to make the film and her days as a stripper to a scene where she talks to her childhood abuser. Then I’ll share a “where are they now” catchup chat we recorded last week. Later in the show, Dr. Megan Fleming will weigh in for a listener who wants to feel more connected to her body and her boners. 

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So back in the studio in 2015, I asked Jill Morley why this particular film, Fight Like a Girl, and its story felt important to her to create and share with the world.

Jill Morley  

Well, it’s interesting. I think in the beginning, I was a little afraid to get it out because it’s so personal and I opened myself up. I mean, I basically open a vein, almost literally, you know, and so it was hard for me to show it to people, because they would know things about me. But now it happened so long ago, those events, that I see it more as a tool to help people and also I feel like I’m different person now. So to show that film to people, I feel very different…more like, I hope this can maybe encourage you in some way. 

August (narration):

Early on in Fight Like a Girl, Jill  talks about her fascination with boxers’ desire to fight. She’s not the only one with that curiosity, especially when it comes to women in the ring. When she asked Susan how people respond when she says she’s a fighter, she said people say: “Why? Oh, you’re such a cute girl – why would you want to get hit in the face?”

Another professional fighter named Kimberly, described boxing as viscerally satisfying. Then she talked about an experience that inspired her to step start training. She had been working as a stripper and one night a customer became aggressive with her. When she resisted, he got angry, she said, and punched her in the face. She knew she had to do something about that.

I can see how that would feel empowering, stepping into your own strength after someone else used theirs against you. And it makes sense that boxing seems to be healing for many women and femmes. That wasn’t why Jill made the film, though. Looking deeply at her own wounds because of it — sort of through it — came as a surprise.

Jill Morley

Well, originally – I’ve always loved doing athletics. It keeps me in shape and it keeps me you know, I have I guess I have a lot of testosterone or something because I played tennis. So I like hitting things.

August McLaughlin  

Really well, by the way. In the movie, I was like, “Oh my god, what doesn’t she do?” I’m so impressed.

Jill Morley  

Only tennis and boxing and actually the tennis has fallen way back…[laughs]. But it’s okay. Yeah, so I wanted to do something competitive and I wanted to do a combat sport. And at first I tried my hand at Taekwondo and I did it for like five years. I got my black belt, but it wasn’t satisfying….and then I met my husband and he was doing Muy Thai, which is a kickboxing style. So I did that for a while, but then I realized, you know, I just like the punching part. And also I get really, I want to use the word turned-on by boxing. I love the movement. I like the slickness. A fight can look beautiful in boxing, whereas in the others, they don’t look so beautiful.

August McLaughlin  

Interesting. I’ve never thought of that way. It’s almost a dance in a way.

Jill Morley  

Oh, for sure. Yeah. It’s physical chess. 

August McLaughlin  

Ah, physical chess. And everything you’re saying, it sounds like you really found your passion. 

Jill Morley  

Oh, yeah, I did. I mean, God, I wish I was so much better at it. But I just loved to do it. And I like figuring it out. I like the feeling when you’re improving or when you practice something and you’re able to use it in the ring, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, so I met these women, I met Susan and Kimberly, who were really cool women, and I thought well, I want to tell their stories and maybe what I can do is I can use my boxing as a timeline for the Golden Gloves in any year. I will train for the Golden Gloves, focus on them. And…however I do in the Golden Gloves, fine.

And then I also met Maureen Shea, who’s a pro-boxer who actually has a lot of similar issues as I do. So my plan to shoot in in a year and end the film did not happen it will end up taking five years and then I get another two years to edit. So it’s a total of seven years to really get the film out. And so during the course of the training and the sparring, when I started sparring, I started to hyperventilate sometimes or I’d get panic attacks in the ring. And I realized it was from abuse I had when I was a young, when I was a child. Now I had talked through this abuse…I thought I was totally over it. You know, I forgave the person. We were fine. But the thing is, your body remembers the abuse.

August McLaughlin  

The muscle memory.

Jill Morley  

Yeah. So when it was happening, it would bring me back. And it would be and I used to hyperventilate like that when I was getting hit.

August McLaughlin  

Oh my goodness. It was like PTSD. 

Jill Morley  

It was and then I got diagnosed with PTSD and I was like, really?

August McLaughlin  

Did you feel like it allowed you to further your healing? Like there was healing that remained or did it kind of just reopen those wounds that had healed?

Jill Morley  

Well, I don’t think the wounds had – I mean, it’s hard to say because mentally, I could process everything. But physically, I was still triggered. Right? So until you get triggered physically, you can’t you know, but I don’t know if I handled it the best way because I kept going in there and getting my head beat in by people who are very good who were being told by my coach, “Try to knock her out.”

August McLaughlin  

 Oh, wow. 

Jill Morley  

Yeah. “Try to beat her. Let’s try to make her quit.” And I wouldn’t quit, but I would never get better. 

August McLaughlin  

So you kept having these episodes of these panic attacks and all the PTSD coming and you kept on going into the ring.

Jill Morley  

Because I was so upset with myself. I’m like, “You are such a loser. You can’t do this. Like you should be able to do this.” My father was a boxer. I come from tough Irish, Italian [stock]. So I was just upset with myself. It was typical of one of my faults, just being way too hard on myself putting too much pressure on myself and making the whole boxing thing about that my self-esteem was that I couldn’t separate it. And… I’m not even a young person. I’m like a grown woman still doing that.

At a certain point, I had I suffered a breakdown of sorts, which you can see in the film. And then afterwards, I switched trainers and I started working with people who when I got in the ring, they would teach me really good technique. And they weren’t trying to kill me, you know, they let me – in boxing, we say, “Hey, do you want let’s work? Okay, let’s work.” And that means let’s not try to beat each other up. Let’s try to just tag each other and like do it for technique. And that was how I really learned is that once people were willing to work with me, and I didn’t have to suffer for the bad form and the bad doxxing I was doing. Then I was like, “Oh, now I can. I see. Okay. And I’m slowly a little bit of slow learner with that, but I mean, boxing, it’s just like no other. I mean, you’re getting in there and your fight and flight are in there. And…my freeze was going in and now my fight comes in. I might freeze a little bit, but I’m a little bit more relaxed when I’m doing it, and then I’ll be like, “Okay, I’m gonna wait for an opening and then I’m gonna fire back.” Whereas before it was just like, YAAAA!” 

August McLaughlin  

Wow. So once you realize that it was actually PTSD and emotional past issues that were resurfacing, did simply knowing that then change your experience? Or did you still have to kind of work through not having those reactions?

Jill Morley  

I thought it would help me and then it didn’t. I kept having those reactions. And I’m like, well, damn it. But then I started to…I was in therapy and I started learning more about breath and breathing. I started telling myself, “Don’t be hard on yourself. No matter what happens, don’t get upset with how bad you are.” And I would just let myself go and do sloppy, crappy things and I’d be like, “Okay…” until eventually those sloppy crappy things weren’t as sloppy or crappy. And I was starting to get some form and get in there and it was just a long road. People being patient with me and really showing me, “This is how you punch. This is how you block. This is how you step.”  And then I was able to get past it. And I don’t have that in the ring. I mean, even if I’m getting attacked in that way, I move like I know what to do. And I also have confidence now. I have good defense now. I know what to do when someone’s coming after me, you know?

August (narration)

She added that that helps her not freeze or breakdown crying the way she used to. As I mentioned in that interview, I thought there were so many great life lessons in what she shared: on the importance of having a support system, the difference between surrounding yourself with likeminded people who support your growth versus not and that, as Dr. Megan often points out, we all start out as a beginner in new pursuits. Like Kimberly, the pro fighter I mentioned earlier, Jill spent time working as a stripper—before her boxing path took form. In the film she said she was attracted to the subversiveness and grittiness involved. And it’s pretty cool to see her fiercely fighting in the ring and then seducing an audience as she works a poll. 

Jill Morley  

And that’s like my favorite thing to show people. I was an actress. I was a tomboy. I did not know how to do makeup, hair, nothing. I’m a little better now. And then I would go on auditions. I wear my black jeans, my black sweater and my cowboy boots. And then I had a gay man as my roommate and he helped me, and…I ran out of money. I’m like, I don’t know how to make money because I got fired every time I tried waitressing sometimes. I really suck at it.

I’d just get really overwhelmed by all this stuff and like, I can’t remember how hard I think oh, yeah, he’s a sucked at it. So then I would do catering and then after the winter that then like, there’s no time until the spring, there’s no money. And I asked a friend of mine, “Well, what do you do?” And she said, “Well, I go to New Jersey and I gogo dance. So you can keep your top on there, and you can make money… I went with her one time and it was at a sports bar in Hackensack. And these guys, like mechanics and truck drivers and whatever, are just like giving them dollars. And it’s an afternoon shift and there was nothing – like it didn’t look like anything…compared to like music videos that we have now…

So we were on the stage wearing our little gogo outfits. And then we’d come down and take a tip and go back up on stage. And I thought it was hilarious as well. And then too, I thought – I never saw myself that way as a girl that was attractive to men or to many men, like, unless they really knew me and thought I was funny or something, you know? So, between me and then having the gay roommate here, like he’s helping me with my outfits and teaching me how to walk in heels. And I started doing it and at the time I was writing and performing comedic monologues, I come from an improv background. And so I thought, well, this is the best material ever. So I wrote different characters based on the women I met. And I had a thru line and it was called “True Confessions of a Gogo Girl.“

August McLaughlin  

Critically acclaimed, I read.

Jill Morley  

Yeah. I wrote it when I was very young, and I was fortunate enough to Be able to do it on off off Broadway and like be able to feel the audience out and to change the material until it became something that I felt was tight and good. And, and we got a lot of I mean, I think it was a little ahead of its time because I don’t think people would. I mean, I basically did a play in like a thong bikini… So at that time, it was kind of like, if you wear a thong bikini, you can’t have a brain or if you have a thong bikini on, you can’t really have talent. You can’t write certainly or be a writer/actor. So it took a while. We would get seedy people coming in to see the show, not really knowing. And then finally… I was acting as my own publicist and I got Time Out to see it. I got Village Voice and we started getting great reviews. And then I acted as my own publicist and wrote a letter to the New York Times with these good reviews and they actually came and reviewed it. And we got a great review and we were on the front page in the theater section with a picture.

August McLaughlin  

Oh my gosh, that is incredible. 

Jill Morley  

I mean…we’re a teeny little upstairs, next-to-a bar theater. I couldn’t believe they even came. But luckily by then I had been doing the show for a year or two, so I had honed it. If they saw in the beginning, I wouldn’t have gotten the great review that I’d gotten.

August (narration)

That reminded me of what she shared about her healing process. Both took longer than she had hoped early on, and in both cases, that time, the effort she invested and even the timing, turned out to be well worth it. Jill an I also talked about body image challenges, which came up a few times in the film. I asked her how common those trials are in boxing and whether or not boxing can help.

Jill Morley  

I think it could help and hurt. I think it’s common in women. I think all women have freaking—I mean, very few that I know don’t have them… I also had an eating disorder when I was in high school and college. I was bulimic and anorexic… And it wasn’t until I started I started tennis and I started teaching tennis that I started to get fit again and eating well. And like I started to be like, “Oh, now I’m starting to like my body. I can accept the flaws.

August McLaughlin  

And you’re using your body, and feeling capable.

Jill Morley  

And for me it also gives me a little bit of a high and for me, too, because I suffer from depression, it’ll pop me out of the depression, even just for that time I’m exercising. I’m actually just coming out of a little bit of a depression now I was depressed the last four days. Yesterday I came out of it…a couple of events. Some of it’s just chemical, I don’t know. But I do know what to do now. And I know I just think to myself, “Okay, this is gonna pass.” Some people binge eat, I binge sleep. I need to go to bed. 

August McLaughlin  

And you let yourself get what you need. 

Jill Morley  

Yeah, I do. I mean, sometimes I’ll try to fight it and I’ll have coffee and but I’ll be like, “You know what, this is not working. Just let yourself sleep…this is gonna pass and you can be really productive again,” because I’m all about being productive, you know? But the exercise I would make myself do and when I do it, it gives me that little bit of a buffer for the day, you know? Yeah, it’s very important. And I mean, actually  I had a fight a week ago, I’m going to be doing another fight and about a week and a half. And then after that, I’m going to be working like, nonstop on a production on another film. And I’m a little bit nervous about not having the the boxing in my life or not having that amount of exercise that I currently do, you know, sure and more for my head than for my body, because now I know how to eat and all that stuff. 

August McLaughlin  

Yeah, I remember the shift from exercising, to try to change or fight my body versus for emotional and mental strength. It’s very, very different. You know, and I feel like we get in a much better shape in all ways when we start doing that.

August (narration)

At that point in our conversation, I talked about my one experience with boxing. I was part of a documentary-style reality TV show that ended up getting canceled. And I was training to fight. Half of us were actors who’d never boxed before, and the other half were pro-boxers—all women. I told Jill how difficult it was for me and others in the ring early on, to punch other women. Yet Jill much she seemed to love and embrace the act of punching in the context of boxing –  to really get something meaningful out of it. That led us to talk about one of the bravest parts of her film.

Jill Morley  

It feels like with each punch and letting something go. And then with hitting people hitting girls or hitting other women, I’m still a little like – if I have a new sparring partner, I go very light. I will stop sometimes and say “sorry,” or “are you okay?” Especially if it’s a new sparring person, if it’s someone who’s a professional boxer who’s does this, I might just stop and look if I catch them, and I see they’re usually almost always okay. But other than that, we’re both making the choice to go in the ring and to do that, and I know, still, after nine years, “sorry” will come out of my mouth sometimes if I feel like I caught some with too much of a clean, hard shot and maybe they’re not very experienced. 

August McLaughlin  

Something you said reminded me of this really powerful scene early in your film, where you’re talking to your mother. And it seems that your relationship with her was was quite complicated. And that conversation I thought was so brave. Do you want to tell us about what that experience was like? She was recalling your childhood, more of the happy times, and you recall abuse. What was that like for you?

Jill Morley  

Well, the thing is my mother was my abuser. But I also just had like, you just look at everything half empty. I also think I just was depressed as a kid. I mean, it could be just because I was being abused. But it could also be just because I’m just wired in this dark way. I don’t know. Sso there’s a little bit of both to it, of why I am the way I am or why I look at life the way I do.

August McLaughlin  

Sure, interesting. I thought was really brave of her, too.

Jill Morley  

It was very brave of her and I’m very grateful to her for for being in the film and for doing it. I know she chose to be in shadow. I don’t blame her. It’s fine. But also it’s helpful in healing because I know so many people can’t even talk to their abusers or their abusers won’t admit what happened, and it makes them feel crazy, you know? Whereas I know it happened. I forgive her. I want to move past it and then, thank god, the boxing helped me even more move past.

August McLaughlin  

Amazing. And what is your relationship like with her now? 

Jill Morley  

It’s okay. It’s pretty good. I mean…whenever I go to New York, which is often, I go and visit her in New Jersey. Same with my dad. We’re not like really close, but I kind of like to keep people at bay sometimes. But the other thing is like, I don’t want to throw my mom under the bus, I really don’t. That’s not the whole purpose of this. And so yeah, I would avoid it in past works, for sure. Also, I didn’t see it as something that defines me, so that also was a reason.

August McLaughlin  

It didn’t feel gratuitous. It didn’t feel like you were trying to slam somebody or anything. It seemed to me that you were exploring in front of all of us. you were challenging these thoughts and these feelings and and trying to gain understanding and I thought it was so respectfully done. 

Jill Morley

Thanks. That means a lot to me, because I was really worried about that when that when it came out, because I’m like, God, I don’t want to feel like I threw my mother my mom under the bus, because she also suffered from abuse—worse than what I suffered, and also has mental illness. So I get it, you know. It happened and now it’s over. And, you know, we move on. I learned a lot from it. That’s what we have to take, you know?

August (narration)

Toward the end of our conversation, Jill spoke about the one thing she feels really skilled at. Something she seems to have more assuredness around than boxing or any sport, really.

Jill Morley  

I have always been pretty open with my emotions and my feelings like in my play with “True Confessions” like people are like, “Wow, that’s so raw and honest.” Not to pat myself on the back, but it’s the one thing I do well… 

Part of it is just because it makes me feel less alone. It makes other people feel less alone… I just heard Amy Schumer on on a podcast of some sort and she was just saying how that’s what she’s interested in is like the grossest, most awful, you-don’t-talk-about-it-stuff. And I was laughing. I’m like, me too!

*****

Hear the full episode, including our catchup chat and Dr. Megan Fleming‘s thoughts for a listener who’s eager to reconnect with her body – and her boners! – up above or on most any major podcast app. To receive remaining transcripts by email, drop me a note.