If you came across this post because the words “PE trauma” caused something to twitch in your brain, you are in extraordinarily good company. Specifically, you are in the company of around four million other British women who Age UK has just confirmed are still being put off exercise, in midlife, by what their school PE teachers did to them three or four decades ago.
This is not an exaggeration. The numbers are from new research released alongside Age UK’s Act Now, Age Better campaign, launched on 21 April 2026, and they are quite something.
The numbers that should stop you in your tracks
Age UK surveyed UK adults aged 50 to 65, and found:
- If you’re sitting there thinking “yes, but mine was particularly bad,” I am sorry to tell you that mine was particularly bad, and so was your friend Janet’s, and so was the woman on the bus. PE was not just bad for a few unlucky girls. It was bad for most of us. The Age UK research is the first time anyone has properly counted.
What PE was actually doing to girls
Before periods got mentioned in any official sense, before bras were issued, before any sex education worth the name, PE was the first institutional space where girls’ bodies were made public, judged, and ranked. Communal changing rooms with no privacy. Kit that didn’t fit. Being picked last in front of everyone. Cross-country in November with no period products in your bag. The whistle. The shouty teacher. The PE knickers.
This wasn’t a side effect of PE. It was a structural feature. Sport for boys was framed as character-building. Sport for girls was framed as a problem to manage: get them into the pool, get them out, get them quiet, get them changed.
Age UK’s numbers are showing us, decades later, what that did to us. We are the PE trauma generation.
Why none of this has actually changed for girls today
You might be hoping this is now a historical problem. Reader, it is not.
A 2025 Bristol University study found that teenage girls in England today still describe their PE kit as “made for boys.” The Youth Sports Trust’s most recent Active Girls survey found that only 21% of girls in England are satisfied with their PE uniform, and only 47% feel comfortable wearing it.
The Mental Health Foundation has found that 36% of girls in the UK avoid PE because of how they look, compared to 24% of boys. Girls are nearly twice as likely as boys to say body image makes them worry “often” or “always.”
At schools right now, girls are being told they cannot wear leggings to PE without shorts over the top of them, in case anyone notices they have a bottom. There are detention systems for kit infractions. There are changing rooms with no privacy and barely enough time to get changed before the next lesson.
The cycle is not broken. It has just got better lighting.
How the wellness industry sells the same injury back to us
By the time we’re 15, we’ve all internalised that we are not “sporty,” that PE was something to be survived rather than enjoyed, that movement is something we are bad at. Then the wellness industry spends our entire adult lives selling movement back to us as a personal failing we need to fix.
You should be lifting heavy. You should be hitting your protein target. You should be optimising your VO2 max. You should be protecting your bones. You should not just be walking, you should be rucking. You should not just be running, you should be running fasted. You should be doing reformer pilates and using the right supplements and following the right longevity-coded routine.
Almost none of this messaging acknowledges that the women being asked to do this were systematically taught, between the ages of 11 and 16, to fear movement. The wellness industry’s framing is always individual: you have let yourself go, here is the supplement. The Age UK data quietly proves that this was never an individual failing. It is a generational injury.
What an actually good campaign looks like
The most surprising thing about Act Now, Age Better is that Age UK genuinely gets the assignment.
The campaign is partnered with 40+ sporting organisations including Pickleball England, Badminton England, the Ramblers and WALX. Throughout summer 2026 they are running free beginner sessions, age-specific groups, and inclusive activities designed for people who would otherwise feel they had no business turning up.
The framing is community, not competition. Joy, not duty. Strength so you can keep doing what you love, not so you can look a particular way.
Dame Kelly Holmes, one of the campaign’s ambassadors, puts it like this:
“It’s about self-care, making new connections, feeling team spirit, supporting mental health, getting outside and feeling strong and capable for as long as possible.”
You can find activities near you at ageuk.org.uk/actnow.
What to do with all of this
If you have spent most of your adult life believing you are “not sporty,” consider the possibility that this was done to you. By people in tracksuits with whistles. In a building that wouldn’t let you take a period off swimming without putting a P in the register.
It is not too late to find something you enjoy. It does not need to be running. It does not need to be the gym. Walking is movement. Dancing is movement. Pickleball is, apparently, movement. The whole point of the Age UK campaign is that you can start where you are, in a beginner’s group, with people who understand.
And next time the algorithm tries to tell you that you should be lifting heavy at 6am: feel free to remember who originally trained you to hate this. It wasn’t you.
This week’s full episode of Friday I’m in Bed, “It’s Friday I’m Still in Trauma from P.E.”, is out now wherever you get your podcasts. We get into our own PE knicker horror stories, the Age UK campaign in full, and Olivia Rodrigo’s baby doll dress era.
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