TORONTO — Marissa Papaconstantinou is a world-class athlete but even she has suffered from body-image issues.

That's why the 26-year-old Paralympian from Toronto is striving to be a role model for women, hoping to help them confront their own misconceptions about their bodies. Papaconstantinou said that earlier in her career she had a reckoning with her own body image.

"I always used to think that I had to be the leanest, to be the fastest, and I had to have a cut, six-pack abs, and that would equate to my success in sport, and that was very much tied to body image and femininity and how I viewed myself," she said in a video call with The Canadian Press. "But now I've realized over the years that strong and powerful is what makes me fast, and so that means fuelling my body and giving it

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