Sofie Fella: Taking Up Space and Playing Big

Sofie Fella was only 13 when she first tried to shrink herself. Sitting in her bedroom in Shanghai, she took a photo of herself in a ballet pose and opened Photoshop, driven by an overwhelming desire to erase the natural muscle she had inherited from her German-Chinese heritage.

"I Photoshopped it to be like what my ideal body would look like," Sofie recalls. "I basically stretched out my body…I just wanted to be like a toothpick." Growing up in Shanghai as the daughter of a German father and Chinese mother, Sofie grew up in a world where women were constantly told to take up less space. These days, she plays international rugby player for the German national team, runs a sportswear label called The 大 Collection, and is the co-founder of the global community Girls Lift Girls. Now, at TEDxTinHau Women 2026, she is taking her message back to Hong Kong, a city that has served as both her refuge and her launching pad.

From the Ballet Scale to the Rugby Pitch

Sofie's complex relationship with her body began in a Shanghai ballet studio. Teachers told her that her arms looked manly; thick legs were a problem. Even having a butt felt wrong at 13."That environment that I was surrounded with really celebrated slim, small, light. That's what beautiful is defined as."

Things began to shift in high school when Sofie began playing soccer. She wasn't particularly skilled - she hadn't played much growing up - but her speed, athleticism and aggressive style of play kept landing her in trouble with the referees. One coach finally said the obvious: try rugby.

Stepping onto the rugby field created a strange paradox: bigger legs meant speed; bigger shoulders meant better tackles. For the first time, the body she'd spent years trying to erase felt useful. "It was like they became my superpowers," she says. "But because I was still in the Shanghai environment, I was even more confused. Being strong was helping me be good at rugby, but there was still this other target in a completely other direction, which is being small is beautiful. You're just constantly looking in two directions."

That tension followed her to Harvard, where she was recruited to play rugby. Then COVID shut everything down in 2020 and she ended up in Hong Kong, where her parents had moved. The sudden displacement would end up transforming her relationship with her body completely as she began playing for the Hong Kong Football Club and started training at a CrossFit gym full of women who didn't care what anyone looked like.

"Being surrounded by so many strong women from different cultures who really were so focused on learning new skills…no one was focused on how your body looked," Sofie says. "That really helped me shift from caring about what my body looked like to, 'Okay, what can I do with it? How much weight can I lift over my head?' That Hong Kong chapter helped me a lot."

Reclaiming "大" and Bridging Two Worlds

Eventually she wanted something tangible that could hold both sides of her experience, a project that could bridge the gap between the Chinese beauty standards she grew up with and the strength she'd found through sport. The idea began with a concept for a sports bra, but logistics pushed her towards an oversized t-shirt featuring a single, powerful Chinese character: 大 (dà), meaning "big."

"I was thinking one day about using a trigger word that I've grown up with and maybe flipping the narrative on it," she says. "Naturally I thought of dà. On the front it has the character, and on the back an abstract design of a dragon and flowers. Dragon is strength and power; flowers is traditional beauty and femininity."

The first real test was her mother. In traditional Chinese culture, maternal advice about physical appearance is often passed down through generations. When Sofie handed her the T-shirt for Christmas, the reaction was immediate. "Why dà? I want small."

The narrative, however, did not end there. "Fast forward to now, she wears her 大 t-shirt every single day; she sends my project to her friends for them to support it," Sofie says. "If I can change her mind, we can change the world."

The Launchpad to TEDxTinHau Women 2026

When she's not playing for the German national team or visiting Asia, Sofie can be found in Dubai. There, she co-founded Girls Lift Girls - a multi-city movement spanning Dubai, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore, offering a space where women can move their bodies without judgment and speak openly about self-doubt, mental health, and societal pressures. Now, her journey is coming full circle as she prepares to move back to Hong Kong permanently, a transition that lines up directly with her upcoming appearance on the stage at TEDxTinHau Women 2026.

Under the theme of "Dare to Be Big", Sofie wants to the next generation of young girls in Asia to stop treating strength as something to apologize for. "My hope is that we're building a world where strong women with big, strong, muscular shoulders will walk around in Hong Kong and China in the streets, and no one will even bat an eyelid," Sofie reflects. "Because of course women are strong. Of course women play sports. I hope for young girls growing up that women's sports has become so big and popular that there's no need to point it out, whether positive or negative. We are just allowed to be big."