My body, my muscles, my uterus, my choice

Forgive the radio silence between this post and last.  I’ve been dealing with a huge work project PLUS I have been trying to finish a zine in anticipation of next month’s Chicago Zine Fest, where I will be tabling as an exhibitor and also speaking on a panel.  If you live in Chicago, you should come by and say hi!

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This week has been quite the week when it comes to learning which famous women’s bodies are not acceptable in the eyes of the world.  Oh, who am I kidding - every week is quite the week when it comes to the wild world of famous-woman-body commentary.

Truthfully, there’s nothing particularly special about this week beyond that I have learned that high fashion thinks Sports Illustrated cover model Kate Upton is too fat, that Karl Lagerfeld thinks Adele is also too fat and that commenters all over the internet think Kelly Ripa is too skinny.  To which I can only pull a Seth and Amy* and ask, “Really, high fashion?  Really, Scary Karl Lagerfeld?  Really, world?  Really?“

But here’s the sad thing – I can’t even really get all that worked up about it anymore.  I am so used to seeing people use famous women’s bodies as fodder for conversation-sport that I would actually be more shocked if a day passed and I didn’t encounter that kind of talk.

And maybe at another time I’d pontificate about the stringent levels of policing faced by women who dare to exist in public, or maybe I’d feel like discussing the fact that it’s really sad that the word “fat” has become so loaded with negativity that it is automatically seen as an insult, but something else has been on my mind lately.

A couple of days ago I was reading “Female Trouble” by Elizabeth Gumport over at n+1, in which she reviews Chris Kraus’ latest collection of essays.  I know Kraus best as the author of “I Love Dick,” which I’ve been meaning to read for forever, but you know, stuff and things, and it’s Gumport’s discussion of that book that brings up this passage:

But privacy is a feminist issue, one that underlies so many others. As the labor movement made questions of “private” property and private time into public issues, women’s liberation swung open the door of the home to reveal the political dimensions of childcare and domestic labor.

The essay continues on in this vein, and if you are at all interested in that (or in post-structuralist theory or the gender politics of Semiotext(e) or experimental writing), then you might want to give the essay a skim.  But I quote it not necessarily for the content but because I read it just at the precise time that I was mulling the debate I’d seen unfold over whether or not Kelly Ripa was “ripped” on Hardbody.com’s Facebook page and also all of the tomfoolery** going on over birth control right now.  What it all comes down to is this persistent societal belief that women’s bodies do not belong to them.  They belong to society, government, husbands, dudes on the street, randos on the internet – everybody but the women themselves.  And because I’m really not all that keen on acting like our bodies are somehow divorced from ourselves, I’ll just come out and say it – in the eyes of many, we are simply not people.

Even though law and philosophy and much of the sciences both hard and social have come around to acknowledging the ground-breaking truth that, yes, we ladies are actually people, there is still a portion of society that would really love to go back to the good ole days when we were counted as wealth alongside heads of cattle and acres of farmland.  But because it’s no longer legal for us to be private property, we now get to be public domain.  Sweet!

I think I’ve always sensed this on some level, although maybe it wasn’t quite as clear as it was now (and honestly, if this is Feminism 101, I’m sorry, I really am, I feel like I should have figured this out before now). In a way I think that my pursuit of physical strength – not skinniness, not pornified hotness, but legitimate strength – is motivated by a need to reclaim my body for myself.  It’s fueled by the belief that what I want for my body is what counts above all things, and that if you have a problem with that, if you think I ought to be more focused on being “hot” or having a productive uterus, you can get bent.

It’s not the only way to fight this encroachment on our bodily integrity, obviously.  I don’t think spending time in the weight room is an adequate replacement for political engagement, nor do I want to even seem like I’m suggesting such a thing.  I mean, it’s not like a thousand women doing pull-ups on the Capitol lawn was what caused the state of Virginia to back off the idea of forced transvaginal ultrasounds, right?  (Although it would be pretty cool if that were the case!)

But it’s a multi-front war, one that is trying to invade the most personal, vulnerable parts of us.  There are a million ways to resist, and what I have found is that one of the most effective ways for me to fight against all kinds of patriarchal bullshit has been to redefine myself as a human being of strength and power.  I’ve found that’s particularly potent in a culture that insists on defining women as creatures of inherent weakness of body and mind.

Your means of resistance is most likely different from mine, and that’s okay, because what matters the most is that you have the right to choose for yourself.

*Amy Poehler is one of my personal heroes, not least of all for the perfect way in which she pounded her fist on the Weekend Update desk and screamed, “Don’t tell me what to do!”  RIGHT ON SISTER.  I am seriously considering making that my motto in life.

**I know I should probably use a different word to describe it, one that more accurately captures the seriousness of what’s going on, but honestly, to see these be-suited, be-duded human dial tones drone on and on about the ethics of birth control while like 95 percent of the country is watching and going “The fuck?  I thought this shit was settled already” is almost farcical in its absurdity.  I mean, even the church in which I was raised – the MORMON CHURCH, for those of you who do not know – has no issue with birth control.  When you are more conservative than Mormons, you know it’s time to check yourself.

Filed under: Uncategorized, birth control, celebrities, politics, strength

Dear Frank Shorter: Thank you

It’s not every day that I have the opportunity to hear a legendary athlete speak in person.  Nor is it exactly normal to realize that I have things in common with that athlete.  Yet when I heard you speak this past Saturday at an expo in St. Petersburg, I realized that was exactly the case.

Sure, I will never be an Olympic athlete, let alone a gold medalist, let alone a gold medalist in an event that has been dominated by East Africans, yet I understood exactly what you meant when you said that you run because you love it.  I also love to run, and I am not alone in this.  I would wager that fully three-quarters of the audience was right there with you and Steve Jones and John Bingham, when all three of you talked about how you ran simply because you loved it.

But as you spoke I realized that I knew something more about you, something more personal, something else that we had in common.  I didn’t say anything to you, because I am shy and easily flustered, but I really wanted to.

Instead, I went home and looked up the article I was thinking of.  It ran in “Runners World” last year, written by the brilliant John Brant, and I sat down with my laptop and I read the entire article, from start to finish, even though it hurt my heart to do so.  I then read through dozens of comments and letters sent in response to your brave story.

I knew then that my hunch was right, that we do in fact have more in common than simply our love of running.  We both know what it’s like to be abused by someone we are supposed to love.

I won’t pretend like what I went through is anything like what you and your family suffered. What you lived through is a horror show – no doubt about it. Yet I have to say that many things rang familiar to me – the unwavering vigilance for signs of the impending eruption, memories that should be beautiful but are instead marked by pain and fear, being at the mercy of someone who doesn’t hesitate to attack your vulnerabilities, the sense that you can never truly be safe in your own home.

And when you said that you found peace through running, I understood that, too.  Finally, we had something we were good at!  Something that could not be taken away from us!  Something that gave us strength and courage!  When we run, the tormentors in our heads give us peace.  As you said about winning that gold medal in Munich in 1972, running was your “utmost something that maybe he couldn’t touch and couldn’t beat out of me.”

As I read more of your story, I realized something about myself, that maybe the reason I have taken so well to running is because I have, in the words of Mr. Brant, learned to “ride the pain.”  When you have become accustomed to unpredictable pain inflicted by others, well, the finite, self-inflicted pain of distance running seems manageable.  I know the pain is confined to the space between the starting line and the finish line, and that I can withstand it.  What makes it even better is that when I finish, I feel alive and in touch with that most elemental part of myself, not awash in shame and confusion and fear.

While your athletic achievements are definitely a very admirable part of who you are – and by the way, your idea of “running to find out” was nothing short of a revelation for both myself and my husband – what I find most inspiring is your desire to tell your story in hopes of helping others.  I recently realized that I have a similar sense of what I like to call “radical honesty,” where I feel okay talking about my experiences if I know it’s going to help another person not feel so alone, or to maybe understand what others are going through.

I have often thought that if more of us could be open about the challenges and problems we’ve faced in our lives, it would help us to feel a little less alienated from one another.  After all, I imagine that the teenagers you’ve spoken to, the ones who said you were telling their stories, felt a little better, a little stronger when they knew that you, a person who once achieved something most of us could only dream of, had gone through similar hell and yet had found a way to prevail.

And prevail you did.  You didn’t let what your father did to you grind you into dust.  You didn’t become bitter and angry at the world.  You instead chose to protect your children.  You chose to speak out.  You chose to try to help others.  You chose to be the kind of person who talks to high school cross country runners for several minutes at inaugural race expos (and yes, I thought that was very cool of you).

So I wanted to thank you.  I sat down to hear you speak, thinking I was going to get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear Frank Shorter, Olympic Gold Medalist, speak.  Instead I came away with more self-awareness, more respect and a greater desire to do good in my own life.  That’s worth more than every story about distance running in the whole world combined.

Sincerely,
Caitlin

Filed under: Heart and Mind, Running, domestic violence, frank shorter, mental health, running

Queer running (guest post)

Shawna Held, a native Washingtonian, is slowly learning that the rain excuse isn’t working in California, where she moved to attend graduate school in Women’s Studies. She hopes to one day be that fun and wacky Women’s Studies Professor you wish you had or be a director of a Girls on the Run program. When she isn’t writing papers she is running, or at least thinking about running, which totally counts.

This post is about outing myself as a runner and as a queer lady. Let me explain. I get the same reaction from telling someone that I am a runner to telling someone that I am queer. From both non-runners and straight people I get the question “Why would you run a marathon/date a lady?” My answers range from “Because I like to” to snarky responses like “Why aren’t you?” These questions come from good places and I understand how confusing it can be to see me, who looks like I should date men, and at 6-foot looks like I should be dribbling and dunking a basketball, not lumbering over hills. I failed to do either of those things well – I was terrible at basketball and my last boyfriend is now a proud gay man. I also did not LIKE doing either of these things as much as I like what I am doing now.

However, running and being queer are both silenced parts of my identity. I am straddling these borders, one foot in a running world and the other one in a queer world; when all I want is to be comfortable in both of these worlds, never having to choose which identity I need to explain or silence.

In the running community I feel like I run too little and too slow to be a real runner. Although I have finished three marathons, one half-marathon and was captain of the cross-country team in high school, I never feel like I am a real runner. I was just a softball player (let the stereotypes begin) who joined the cross-country team because I had broken my finger and was unable to play volleyball. I was the girl on the team that people felt sorry for, as I usually ran amongst the injured girls with knee braces, but I always crossed the finish line as if I was the winner. I finished dead last in a marathon last year, so far last that they took down the race clock, but I was so proud of myself that I passed the finish line and the very, very bored volunteer, smiling with my arms up like I had won the Boston Marathon. Yet, I still struggle to admit to that I am a runner.

Much as I struggle to think of myself as a runner, I struggle to identify with my sexuality. In the queer community, my identity is constantly suspect and I feel like I have to literally drag my girlfriend with my hand stuck firmly in hers to tell them that, yes, I am ONE OF YOU. Being a proud queer woman has been a huge challenge to me. Nothing can prepare someone to come out to people, and as a straight looking lady, I feel that I have to come out to my dentist, the mail person and everyone else. Most of the time, though, I just avoid it all together and talk about something else, avoiding the “Do you have a boyfriend?” question. I hate how I feel I have to hide parts of myself to people, especially my extended family; for fear that, they may react poorly, think differently of me, and not love me as much as they did before.

But as with running, it sometimes takes a few steps to start a process. I have taken small steps in coming out to my extended family but those have been training runs. It is time that I prepare myself for a run that may hurt more than all the other ones combined and start coming out to myself and my family.

Running has given me the strength to come out to people. After my first 20 mile run, the endorphins raging through my body, I decided that it would be the perfect time to come out to my sister. I called her up thinking “How could this be harder than running 20 miles?” and her reaction? “Oh, I knew that since you were 15. What else is new? You ran 20 miles? Cool.” Perfect reaction, if you ask me. With reactions like that, I really should just go through the family phone book after my next marathon, medal around my neck, banana in hand, and start calling my huge extended family and leaving hilarious messages like “Hey! It is Shawna and I just ran a marathon! Oh and by the way, I am gay, and that girl you have been randomly seeing in pictures is my girlfriend. I am going to probably sleep for the next 10 hours but hopefully I will talk to you soon!” Now that would be a great story that my poor parents would have deal with, while I iced my legs and slept for hours, hopefully they would be laughing as hard as me with the flood of potentially awkward (or accepting? who knows) phone calls.

Long runs have allowed me to come out to myself about various things, not just my sexual identity but as a survivor of sexual assault, as beautiful and worthy of love, and (my favorite on long, lonely runs) as a hilarious person who survives in this world by laughing. There are times when I run and I feel a sense of calm come over me reminding me that everything I am doing with my life is good, everything I am is fine and that whatever troubles I am running about have solutions. I do not run away from my problems, I run to overcome my problems. For the most part, I love running because I love myself when I am running.

I am not out necessarily as a runner or as a queer person, but I am working towards that daily. I am trying to incorporate my loves, whether that is running or my girlfriend, into all aspects of my life. It is a daily struggle as it is always easier to make an excuse not to – is it raining outside? Will they not like me if they find out? But running has taught me that I am stronger than I ever thought I was. Shit, if you can run a marathon, you can do anything right?

Running while queer is not easy, but then again both of these things are difficult. I am a runner even if I deny it; I am queer even if I do not want to admit it publicly. I run with pride in myself as a runner and queer lady every time I step out into the street and I am slowly learning that this pride goes beyond running and goes into my very core. I am learning that I do not need a medal to tell me that I am runner and I do not need a flag to tell me I am queer. I am both of those things and so much more.

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Want to guest blog for Fit and Feminist?  Hit me up at saltonmyskin at gmail dot com.

Filed under: Guest Posts, Running, queer issues, running, sexuality

I propose a moratorium on jokes about Madonna’s age

So I’m one of those people who can’t deal with watching Big National Media Events without social media.  Take awards shows.  I’m sure some people find them interesting, but I for one view them as little more than excuses for famous people to give each other glitter-encrusted reacharounds while we plebes watch and drool with envy.  But add some Twitter, a little Facebook, and bam!  I’m transfixed by the event, or more specifically, the witty commentary that unspools on my computer monitor.

But there are times when event-driven social media lets me down, and last night’s Super Bowl half-time was a perfect illustration of that.  Here we have Madonna, arguably one of the most successful pop artists of modern times, putting on a huge glorious spectacle of gladiators bouncing on their junk on tightropes and bringing out the magnificent duo of MIA and Nicki Minaj and recruiting Cee Lo Green to sing in what I consider to be one of the most sublimely perfect pop songs ever and just in general turning one of the most macho events in mainstream American culture into a total sparkle-fiesta of queered-out femmedom.  In case you couldn’t tell, I thought it was fabulous.

Yet to look at my Twitter stream, you’d think that Madonna had lurched on stage wearing a flowered muumuu, a pair of slippers and her hair in curlers, and that the only thing keeping her upright was a walker.  The old jokes went on and on and on and on.  (And as my friend Salome noted, not a single peep about Motley Crue, who despite all being in their 50s were rocking like it was 1987 on the Sunset Strip.)

The sadly ironic thing is that people were cracking these jokes while she was dancing her ass off.  I mean, the woman was doing cartwheels in a pair of boots with five-inch heels.  (I’m sure her podiatrist was wincing, but anyway.)  Do you know what happened the last time I tried to do a cartwheel?  I pulled a muscle in my back and couldn’t stand up properly for the rest of the day.  Did I mention that I did that when I was twenty-two?  And I was barefoot?

So I’m thinking that anyone who wants to talk about how Madonna is ready for the glue factory at the ripe old age of 53 should be forced to prove that they too can do a cartwheel in heels without killing themselves before they can crack their oh-so-hilarious and devastatingly clever jokes.

Listen, I understand that old jokes can be amusing for youngsters to make.  Just ask my husband.  He’s 50 and I tease him about that all the time.  (He also happens to be a super-foxy 50, so there’s that.)  But the jokes underlie a really sucky trend in our culture, which is that we fetishize youth to such an extreme that we end up with 25-year-olds questioning whether they’ve wasted their lives (short answer: you haven’t) while ridiculing older people for for pretty much daring to exist in public.

Krista over at Stumptuous wrote this most-excellent rant the other day, in which she sang the praises of older women:

Imagine, younguns, a world where you just don’t give a shit about looking stupid or what your friends think or falling down in public or impressing the Joneses or having to go along with the crowd to do things you hate. Imagine how awesome that would be. The liberation. The joyous freedom. The glorious sense of possibility. Well, if you’re lucky, that’s what getting older is.

I really wanted to excerpt the whole post, which is brilliant, but I won’t so I’ll just encourage you to go read it instead.

I’m not really that old – I’m only 32 – but I can relate to this.  See, when you are a woman and you turn 30, you are inundated with all of these messages that basically suggest that a woman who is no longer in her 20s will be a shriveled up, bitter old crone who hates the world and resents those girls who are younger and juicier than her and will never, ever be desired by another man because she is just that decrepit.  I mean, we ladies don’t freak out over turning 30 for nothing.

But because aging is one of those things we don’t really have much of a choice about, I went ahead and turned 30 anyway, and guess what?  My 30s have been fantastic. I feel better looking, more interesting, more confident, more of everything.  I have more experience in life, which means I am more likely to recognize bullshit when I see it and less likely to be afraid to call it out.  If a dude doesn’t find me attractive, it doesn’t send me into a spiral of self-doubt and self-hate.  I actually – and hold on to your butts, because it’s a doozy – I actually just. don’t. care.

Can I tell you what I think?  I think that our culture, in its  malevolent, person-hating way, recognizes that we ladies become more powerful and more confident and more awesome as we get older, and it freaks out and says, NO THAT CANNOT HAPPEN, WE CAN’T HAVE WOMEN BEING AWESOME, THAT WILL RUIN EVERYTHING.   I mean, what could possibly be more threatening to patriarchy than a woman who recognizes bullshit when she sees it and calls it out?

So it looks for ways to undermine us.  What better way to do that than by glorifying adolescence and making the rest of feel like we might as well go hide  in a cave where we can eat crickets and wear capes made of lichens and not horrify people with our worthless, grotesque selves? (I find the sexualization of adolescence baffling.  I think about myself as a teenager and I was so not at all sexy and just this gawky, sloppy mess in every possible way.  The idea that those years were the years at which I was at my peak is just…really? Really?)

When we glorify adolescence, we are holding up people who are still at the mercy of not-quite-developed brains and whipsawing hormones as the apex of humanity.   Teenagers have a lot of things going for them and I know a lot of fabulous teenagers, so I’m not trying to tear them down to make my not-teenage self feel better.  I’m just trying to put this shit into perspective.

My point – and I do have one – is that with age comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes power. When you shred on older women who refuse to tuck themselves out of sight like good little old women are supposed to do, you reinforce all of the bullshit ideas out there that say to be a woman is to be weak, to be submissive and to be stupid and you become complicit in a culture that seeks to deny women a very real source of power.

You can be critical of Madonna all you want.  Lord knows she gives us reason enough to do so, with the way she treats the world like her own cultural buffet and fancies herself an expert on anything she dabbles in.  But please, let’s lay off the woman’s age.

Filed under: Fascist Beauty Standards, ageism, madonna

Weekend Randomness – Super Bowl edition

I should probably consider changing this to Weekend Randomness, as Friday Randomness seems a bit ambitious for me these days.  Anyway, I wanted to give a quick wave to all of the new (and damn, there are a lot of you!) readers who made their way here over the past week.  Hi, and welcome!

Before I get started, I wanted to point out this discussion at Metafilter that started   after someone shared a link to my post about six-pack abs and “real girl bellies.”  A link to a link to a link – how meta!  Anyway, while the conversation devolved into a bit of the standard fat-shaming (now flavored with Science-y “Proof”!) I did think the majority of the comments were great, so I wanted to share the link with you.

So, let’s begin:

There’s a petition at Change.org to show support for women who wish to wear hijab while playing soccer.  FIFA’s ban on hijab – even hijab that has been modified so as to not cause a safety hazard – has resulted in many teams simply opting not to play.

Anna at the Pursuit of Harpyness parses reactions to a photo of motorcross racer LeClan McMillan breastfeeding her kid, while in motorcross gear, sitting astride her motorcycle.  Debate aside (because if there is anything I know about breastfeeding, it’s that people love to debate it), I thought it was a really cool, sweet photo.

Erin at Fit Bottomed Girls wants us to all stop talking about clothing sizes already.  YES. COSIGN.

Sad news: the Women’s Professional Soccer league has suspended its 2012 season due to legal issues it’s facing over the termination of the magicJack franchise.  Ken at After Atalanta doesn’t think it’s terrible news, though.

Not only has the “Shit ______s Say” meme been run into the ground by now, but maggots are already feasting on its corpse.  That didn’t keep me from finding a “Shit Runners Say” video to be quite amusing.

Here’s another really sad and scary story:  a Montana woman, Sherry Arnold, was apparently abducted while running last month, and one of the two men arrested in her disappearance has confessed to killing her.  Her cousin, Beth of the awesome running blog Shut Up and Run, has organized a virtual run in Arnold’s memory.  The run is to take place Feb. 11.  Consider taking part if you can, and also, please stay safe while you are out there on the roads.

There’s so much interesting news coming out ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, and the possibility of Afghan women competing as boxers is just the latest thing I’ve heard.

Here’s another article on Olympic women’s boxing, but this one talks about the unexpected problems that have come up due to the fact that there are only three weight classes and the weight classes are so far apart.

And because everyone is all hot on the women’s boxing tip, here are two more pieces: one from NPR and one from the New York Times.  Everyone seems to love the juxtaposition of femme-y ladies who climb into rings to pummel the crap out of each other.

Veronica at xoJane would really like it if you stopped complimenting her on her weight loss.

Sally at Already Pretty asks if you think of your body as your friend.  I think this is a point that cannot be emphasized enough, that we shouldn’t view our bodies as enemies against which we have to wage war, but to accept and appreciate them as an integral part of who we are.  Honestly, I’d like to get away from the idea that who we are is somehow separate from our bodies.  No body, no “me.”  No “me,” no body.  It’s all one and the same.

Tomorrow, if you watch the Super Bowl, the people at SPARK and Miss Representation want you to keep a few things in mind during the commercials.  If the trends of recent years are anything to go by, we critically-minded feminist folks are going to have a lot to squall about on Monday morning.

The deadlift is one weightlifting move I really want to jump into doing, but I haven’t been because I’m so focused on my running and cycling (and seriously, the balance between training legs and training for a sport is something I have been desperately searching to find for a few years now).  Reading Nia Shanks’ “Ode to Deadlifts” and watching all of the videos has me all anxious to try it anyway.

Joan Benoit Samuelson topped a recent list of the top 10 U.S. women marathoners.  I’d love to see one of the world’s top 10 women marathoners.  The marathon is such an interesting sport, in that you can practically track geopolitical trends based on trends within the elite marathoning community.

Here’s a powerful piece at xoJane about fat-shaming.  It’s a great piece and Lesley really breaks it down in a clear, effective way.

Finally, check out this great slideshow from Sports Illustrated of U.S. Olympians of the past and the future. You guys, I am SO EXCITED about the Olympics, I cannot even say.  I used to act all blase whenever it came around, like, “oh, the Olympics, I hate those,” but then by day nine I’d be glued to my set watching curling or biathlon or freestyle medley swimming or whatever.  So now I’ve just chosen to embrace my Olympic fever, and why not?  The Olympics are freaking awesome.

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On a personal note, I’m all excited because I’m going to take part in my first duathlon this weekend!  The duathlon is down at Fort De Soto, which is like the most beautiful place in all of Pinellas County, and it involves a 5K run, a 10-mile bike ride and another 5K run.  I’ve really grown to adore cycling over the past few months, and so I look forward at having the opportunity to put it together with two of my other passions: running and competition.  Wish me luck!

Filed under: Friday Randomness

The Girl Crush Chronicles: Anna Watson, America’s buffest cheerleader

Anna wants to introduce you to "Thunder" and "Lightning."

Earlier today I had plans to go to the gym to lift weights, but when the time came, I kicked the ground a bit and “meh”ed and thought maybe I’d just go home.

But then I watched this clip of University of Georgia cheerleader Anna Watson on Good Morning America and all that reluctance vaporized.  After all, there’s no way I’ll ever be able to develop biceps that look even half that awesome just by sitting on my ass, right?  So I got my butt to the gym and hit the free weights super-hard and felt fantastic when I was done (which I always do).

Watson, who studies exercise and sport science (holla!), has been the focus of a lot of news coverage in recent days due to her impressive build and her strength.  She can bench press 155 pounds, squat 255 pounds and deadlift 230 pounds.  Last year she turned down a fitness-modeling contract after she was advised to use a legal steroid to help her gain an additional fifty pounds.  Her move was motivated by her religious faith (which you can hear all about in the GMA clip), as she said she believes in treating her body like a temple.

Like a lot of women, Watson started out as a cardio junkie, but she soon realized that wasn’t working out for her:

On a visit home during Christmas break, her family noticed that she seemed stressed. She had actually lost about 35 pounds. She said she was in the gym six days a week, but she only did cardio. When she realized that she couldn’t perform her cheer skills anymore, because she had burned off her muscle, she knew it was time to change. Her family suggested that she try weightlifting. She began to soak up all the knowledge she could about how to properly lift weights. She started to feel strong again, look better and feel more confident.

The media frenzy over Watson is interesting because she, as a pretty girl with long blonde hair and the kind of muscle definition that is normally considered “masculine,” occupies a space that is pretty far outside the constraints of conventional femininity.  When you throw in the fact that she’s a cheerleader, which is considered the girliest of sports (and yes, I continue to maintain that cheerleading IS a sport), well, you can see how producers and editors all over the Western world practically broke their own backs trying to get interviews with this lady.  She screws with gender in ways that many people find baffling, and she’s not even trying.  She’s just doing what she does!  It’s just who she is!

I mean, there are a lot of women out there who lift like bosses – take Nia Shanks, who once deadlifted 300 pounds – but they don’t get as much attention because they are not wrapped up in a traditionally feminine milieu.  My point isn’t that women like Shanks or CrossFit champion Annie Thorisdottir aren’t feminine – I don’t want to presume to dictate another’s gender expression but both ladies strike me as pretty feminine – but rather that by being a cheerleader who likes to lift heavy, she’s sticking her finger in the eye of everyone who says women compromise their femininity by pursuing physical strength and muscles.

Sadly, the reaction to Watson hasn’t been entirely favorable.  I’ve seen my share of jokes about her non-existent Adam’s apple and how she’s probably really a dude and blah blah blah.  You can use your imagination.  Clearly she has struck a nerve among people who are obsessed with policing the line between “male” and “female.”  Maybe one day those people will learn that the line between “male” and “female” is so porous as to be actually non-existent, that we can’t all be easily categorized, that there are as many ways to be a human being as there are stars in the sky.

Until then I say, shine on, Anna Watson.  You make me and all of the other ladies who lift proud.

Filed under: Women and Muscles, anna watson, cheerleading, weightlifting

Dear Komen, I’m standing with Planned Parenthood – again

You’ve probably heard by now the news that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has decided to pull hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for Planned Parenthood, if only because the yowls of outrage emanating from the internet were loud enough to wake dead aliens on Neptune.

I was among those yowling last night, for many, many reasons.  Rather than trying to compile them into a coherent, journalist style piece, I’m going to just write up a quick listicle (listicle?  Is that still a thing?) of things that I think suck about this whole thing.

• The move comes a few months after Komen hired Karen Handel as a senior vice president.  Handel spent much of 2010 campaigning for election as the governor of Georgia on a platform that included defunding Planned Parenthood.  Coincidence?  I think not!
• Komen has been the target of boycotts by anti-choice groups for a while, based on its support of Planned Parenthood.
• This, despite the fact that Komen has only parted with a few hundred thousand of its hundreds of millions of dollars worth of revenue collected each year.
• The CEO of Komen makes $459,406 a year.  Komen generated $421 million in gross revenue in 2010. The amount given to Planned Parenthood in 2011?  $680,000.
• Komen has been sketch in my book for a while, ever since my ex-husband’s aunt opted to stop taking part in the 3-Day Walk for the Cure.  Her research found that a lot of the money she and other participants raised went to overhead (like, say, CEO salaries) and that a lot of the money never actually made it to charities.  She switched her allegiance to the Avon Breast Cancer Walk, who gave checks to charities at the closing ceremonies of their walks.
• Komen is also one of the worst offenders when it comes to “pinkwashing.”  Pinkwashing is problematic for many reasons, not least of all that it dresses up plain old consumerism as activism.  If you want to really make a difference in a cause, save the money you would have spent on a pink tchotchke and donate it directly to an organization that supports your cause.
• But maybe the worst aspect of Komen’s pinkwashing is that many of their pink products contain carcinogens.  I guess that’s one way to keep your organization in business, huh?

RH Reality Check has a very extensive post about the politics and ideology of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  Check it out – it’s fascinating, albeit depressing, reading.

The withdrawal of support by Komen is just the latest in a barrage of attacks flung at Planned Parenthood in recent years.  I am so fucking sick and tired of it, especially considering that I do not hear the critics of Planned Parenthood discussing any plans they have to replace the health care services that Planned Parenthood provides to millions of uninsured and underinsured women.

The same people who are working so hard to put Planned Parenthood out of business are the same ones who are attacking the recent federal health care law and who complain about welfare queens and food stamp presidents.  They say it’s because they are pro-life, that they care about unborn children, but they make it apparent every single day that they don’t care about life that already exists, especially if that life belongs to a grown woman.  That goes double if you are a grown woman who doesn’t have money.

The focus on abortion services – which I vehemently support, in case I haven’t made that crystal clear – obfuscates the fact that the vast majority of women who go to Planned Parenthood are not doing so to get an abortion.  They do so because Planned Parenthood is the only place that will provide them with basic health care services that are affordable.

Do you want to know how many times I’ve been to Planned Parenthood in my life?  At least twenty, if not more.

Guess how many abortions I’ve had?  Zero.

I’ve gone there for Pap smears, for birth control, for breast exams.  When I was without health insurance – which has been the vast majority of my adult life – I went to Planned Parenthood. I went to Planned Parenthood because I had no other choice.  I will always be grateful to Planned Parenthood for providing me with the kind of compassionate, quality care I could have otherwise never afforded on my own.

If I seem angry in this post, it’s because I am.  But it’s not enough to be angry.  We’ve got to back our anger up with action.

Let’s make sure Komen and all other enemies of Planned Parenthood know that we are not going to take this, and that we are willing to fight just as hard as they are.

P.S.  If you need some suggestions, you can start with this list.

P.S.S. By the way, allow me to congratulation Komen on their newfound alliance with the “let’s annoy liberals!” demographic.  You can now count yourselves with “fast food” and “Newt Gingrich” as things supported by conservatives whose guiding principle in life is to be as twerpy as possible. Well played, Komen.  Well played.

Filed under: Uncategorized, abortion, birth control, komen, planned parenthood

Thinking about Title IX on National Girls and Women in Sports Day

Today is February 1, which marks the 26th annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day.  (Jeez, that is a mouthful!)  The day was organized by the National Association for Women and Girls in Sport in an attempt to celebrate women and girls who play sports.

The day takes on a bit of an extra meaning this year, as 2012 is the fortieth anniversary of the passage of Title IX.  Now, lest you think that Title IX was only good for killing boys’ wrestling programs and replacing them with girls’ Bulgarian dart-throwing, it’s worth remembering that Title IX governs all educational activities and programs that get federal money.

Keep that in mind the next time someone goes off about Title IX and how it needs to be repealed or changed or otherwise dismantled.   It’s not just about sports.

But you also can’t deny the impact Title IX had on the athletic landscape in schools all across the country.  For years, huge amounts of money and focus were poured into boys’ sports, the assumption being that girls weren’t interested or that they weren’t suited for sports.  And if you did manage to buck the overwhelming social pressure to express interest in sports, you were pretty much on your own.

Take Shalane Flanagan’s mom, Cheryl Treworgy (formerly Cheryl Bridges, when she held the record in the women’s marathon).  When Treworgy ran cross-country in college, she was the entire women’s team.  There were no facilities for her, so after meets, she changed in bathrooms and “showered” in sinks.   That’s what pre-Title IX life was like for the few women who pursued athletics.  No teams, no facilities, no institutional support.  Fortunately for Treworgy, her male teammates were supportive of her.  Can you imagine how much more difficult it would have been if she’d had to fight against them, too?

When I started playing team sports in school, it was about twenty-five years after the passage of Title IX.  We had teams, uniforms, coaches, locker rooms.  The idea of a high school without a single girls’ athletic team was just unthinkable.  Girls’ athletics were an integral part of my suburban childhood.  We played soccer and softball in city-sponsored leagues, every junior high and high school had a choice of teams, and club sports were becoming more and more popular.

This is how completely non-controversial girls’ sports were – my church organized intramural sports seasons for teenage girls.  I was raised Mormon in Utah, and we played sports.

Sports may not have been for everyone – plenty of kids were into drama or FFA or the math team or smoking cigarettes behind the Hutchins Memorial Auditorium – but it was sure nice to have it as an option.

Even so, I still remember seeing a few things that struck me as less-than-fair, things that told me we had a little ways to go before girls sports were taken as seriously as boys sports.  When I moved to Oklahoma and started playing high school volleyball, I noticed that we were put in the older of the two field houses – the one without air conditioning.  That doesn’t sound so bad right now, but go spend three hours running around a swampy building in Oklahoma in August and once you catch your breath and mop your body off, tell me how you feel.  There were reasons for this, I was told – the new air-conditioned field house wasn’t equipped to handle volleyball nets.  I supposed I could see this, but it didn’t mean I liked it.

But then my senior year, the team qualified for the state championships.  I had assumed this might merit getting to take the football team’s cushy charter bus, but no.  We drove to Oklahoma City and back in a rattle-trap school bus with windows that whistled the entire two-hours drive on the highway. I’ll confess, I found it odd that the boys’ football team – which by the way, wasn’t exactly burning up the scoreboard – had a charter bus and that we were not allowed to use it, even for a trip to the state championships.

It’s all minor stuff, really, and none of it prevented us from actually playing, but it shows you where we sat on the totem pole in terms of high-school sports.  And after all, this was small-town Oklahoma, where high-school football is rivaled only by Jesus in terms of sheer devotion inspired by its followers.  This is true even if the high-school football team in question is terrible.  In this context, girls volleyball usually occupies the same rung of esteem as Zoroastrianism.

My point is not to complain about less-than-spectacular accommodations, but rather to show that the need for some sort of leveling-out of opportunities has not vanished over four decades.  We can argue over the exact ways in which that leveling-out is implemented, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it is still needed.  I’m sorry to say that there are still a lot of people in this country who would happily give every cent of a school’s athletic budget to football teams while leaving sports like girls’ soccer and volleyball to scrabble for leftovers.  It’s just that now they have the good sense not to talk about it in terms of dudely supremacy and instead dress it up as if it is purely a matter of economics.

So if you are looking for a way to support women and girls in sport, here are a few ideas:

• Sign a petition asking Congress to support the High School Athletics Accountability Act
• Attend a girls or women’s sporting event.  I know the WPS is suspending its 2012 season, but there are loads of other professional, semi-pro and collegiate women’s leagues out there, too!
• Watch women’s sporting events on television.  My husband digs watching women’s college basketball, and we both really enjoy women’s college volleyball.
• Support local leagues and teams.  If you ever wanted to play soccer or get involved with a running club, there’s no time like now to get involved.
• Write a blog post like this and post it on Twitter with the hashtag #NGWSD.

You can also stay up on the latest legal challenges faced by Title IX at Title IX Blog.

Edited to add: I wanted to bring attention to this beautiful post by Lize Brittin at Training on Empty.  In it she writes:

In the end, when asked why sports are important to women or young girls, I have to answer in a way that points out the movement forward in women’s rights. That has always been a part of the reason why I run and partly why my dedication to the sport is so strong. Long before I became a successful athlete, running gave me a voice against the people in my life who had taken advantage, put me down or abused me in some way. Running was my way out of feeling helpless. It gave me the backbone to stand up for myself, and I believe that any sport has the potential to do this.

YES.

Filed under: Gender and Sports, high school sports, legislation, title ix

Has the scale replaced the glass ceiling?

Are women obsessed with their bodies at the expense of wider social power?  That’s the argument made in a recent New York Times op-ed by Katrin Bennhold.  In the piece, entitled “New Goal for Women? Rising Above Having It All,” Bennhold writes that most of her girlfriends in London – herself included – have listed losing weight as their top goal for the year.  She goes on to ask, “Are women bad at setting goals for themselves — or setting themselves the wrong goals?”

I read this piece a couple of days ago, and since then I have gone back and forth between thinking the essay is bullshit and thinking Bennhold has a point, then going back to thinking the essay is bullshit.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the essay is both bullshit and that she has a point.

Let me first tell you why I think she has a point.

Sometimes I think about everything that is expected of women in order for us to be considered respectable, and I get very tired.  The make-up, the hair, the clothes, the skin care, the jewelry, the shoes, the figure…it’s a lot of work.  But it’s work that’s supposed to be invisible – we are supposed to seem natural and effortless in all of these things – and that effortlessness paradoxically requires even more effort.  As a result, we ladies are operating at an effort deficit when compared to our gentlemen counterparts.

Now, I’m not going to mount some campaign to liberate ladies from the oppression of lip gloss and leg-shaving.  Hardly!  I like lip gloss and I tend to be fanatical about shaving my legs.  I just think it’s worth pointing out that beauty standards expect a hell of a lot more out of me than they do, say, my husband, and that all of this extra effort adds up over time and ultimately leaves us with less effort to dedicate to other things.  I mean, it would be nice if time-space would expand to give us an extra hour per day to deal with our hair, but it doesn’t.  We’ve got the same twenty-four hours a day as everyone else, and we ladies have a tendency to spend more of that time on our bodies and appearances than men do.

Now.  Here’s why this op-ed bothered me.

First, I’m going to assume that Bennhold’s friends are considering losing weight by exercising and eating healthier food, in which case I have a hard time thinking that’s some kind of superficial waste of one’s life.  In fact, I think caring for your body – and that doesn’t necessarily mean losing weight! – is one of the most important things you can do.  Proper self-care allows me to perform well at my job, to be a better friend and wife, to retain more of what I learn, to handle stress in ways that are not self-destructive.

These things become even more important when dealing with the kind of high-powered careers Bennhold wants women to become more invested in pursuing.  Power careers are rampant with stress, and the people who hold those careers can either deal with that stress by drinking and smoking, or they can run and swim laps.  Guess what I think is a better choice?

Of course all of this assumes that Bennhold’s friends want to try to lose weight by eating healthier and exercising more (and I recognize that conflating the two is problematic, so hold your fire, please).  If they are thinking about losing weight by doing a master cleanse or eating 800 calories a day or doing the grapefruit diet or whatever, then forget this point, because that shit’s just ridiculous and hardly qualifies as “self-care.”

My second issue is that, while Bennhold pays some lip service to some socially embedded inequalities, like lack of access to child care, impenetrable old-boys clubs and work cultures that assume we are all robots, she completely overlooks the fact that we live in a culture that expects women to adhere to specific standards in order to be taken seriously.  Think about the recent study that found women who wear make-up are considered more competent than women who do not.  Or the beauty editors who said black women who wore their hair in natural styles were being “political.”  Or all of the research that has found thin women are the beneficiaries of all kinds of privileges denied to heavier women.

It’s not like we women do these things because we are vapid little giggle-bots who can’t be bothered with anything more challenging than a flat-iron. We do these things because we are rewarded for doing so. We can opt out of the beauty game, but society will extract a price for our rebellion.  Sure, the trappings of femininity can be very fun and enjoyable (see: lip gloss), but you can’t untangle the “fun” part of it from the “privilege” part of it.

Finally, I’ve got to admit that I am experiencing a degree of fatigue inspired by all of these well-meaning feminist ladies who want the rest of us feminist ladies to aim our laser sights on presidencies and corporate boards and such.  While I understand the need for gender parity among the power brokers of society, I also can’t blame anyone who looks at the sacrifices demanded to occupy those echelons and says “fuck it.”  I mean, you tell me I have to put my career first always?  And skip kids and relationships and not have any hobbies and just eat-breathe-sleep my career?  A career in a field that is most likely something I will find soul-destroying and ethics-corroding?  Gee.  Where do I sign up.

Listen, I get that this is very appealing to certain women (and men – let’s not act like every man in the world is clamoring for the chance to spend 14 hours a day in the office while his family slowly forgets what he looks like), and if this is what they want, by all means, more power to them.  They’ve got my support.  But my ambitions in the world lie elsewhere, and I can’t deny that I feel a bit of resentment every time I hear feminists say things like this, as if focusing my efforts on, say, training for a marathon as opposed to climbing the ranks at my profession is somehow undermining the cause of women every where.  You’ll have to forgive me if I want more out of my life than to be the best little economic production unit I can possibly be.

So these are my thoughts on the matter.  What do you think?  Do you think Bennhold’s essay is full of shit?  Do you think I’m full of shit?  I’d like to know.

Filed under: Fascist Beauty Standards, feminism, weight loss

Skirting the issue: women’s boxing and enforced femininity

(AFP/Getty Images) Italian boxer Marzia Davide (red) and Indian boxer Usha Nagisetty (blue) fight during their exibition match at the Assago Forum in Milan on Sept. 12, 2009.

This summer will mark a major milestone for women’s boxing, which will be officially represented at the Summer Olympics for the first time since the first woman laced up her gloves and climbed in the ring.  (Which probably happened a lot earlier than you think.)   And yet, because it seems like nothing can ever be easy, female boxers are facing yet another struggle – this time against their sport’s own governing body.

In 2010, representatives from the International Amateur Boxing Association handed out skirts to boxers who were competing in the Women’s Boxing World Championships.  The suggestion has surfaced again and again, with the AIBA’s president saying the skirts would be useful in helping audiences differentiate the female boxers from the male boxers.

The outrage has been considerable, from boxers and non-boxers alike.  More than 54,000 people have signed an online petition demanding the AIBA lay off the skirt obsession.  It reminds me of the outcry that followed the decision to put badminton players in dresses, and also about the controversy and scoffing that seems to follow every conversation about running skirts.  I saw it again not a few days ago, when Nike Women posted a photo of a running dress on its Facebook page and commenters responded with horror.

I wanted to explore this some more, because it’s fascinating to me that a piece of fabric can inspire such anger.  Obviously it’s not just the skirt that causes such controversy – it’s the motivation behind the skirt.  I can’t speak for all lady athletes but I know that even after three-plus decades of Title IX and the WNBA and the Women’s World Cup, there’s still a considerable element of society that finds something distasteful about women who are muscular, intense and competitive.  This seems to go double for women who engage in combat sports.  (By the way, the Slate article includes a photo gallery that, as the author notes, makes it apparent just how little skirts, glitter and halter tops do to disguise the fact that these women are taking part in a violent, brutal sport.)

So when women are told they should wear skirts while playing sports so they can seem more “elegant” and less like men, it’s just an affirmation of those messages all over again.  It’s like they are being reminded that, by virtue of daring to compete in sports, they are exhibiting a deficiency of femininity that must be corrected by any means possible, be it through photo shoots featuring evening gowns and lipstick or pink-sequined skirts to be worn during a boxing match.

But then this is the thing – the skirt is not just a symbol, but a very real way to enforce behavioral norms that are considered ladylike.   I know that when I’m wearing a skirt, I become more aware of how I sit – if my legs are crossed, and if they aren’t, how far apart they are.  I feel less able to move freely because I worry about giving unanticipated shows to strangers and coworkers alike.  I pull myself in a bit tighter, make my movements a little less smaller.  It’s almost as if the skirt demands it.

When you are an athlete in a sport that requires wide range of motion and aggressive physicality, wearing something that makes you feel self-conscious about your body can only cause problems, can only hurt your performance.  Athleticism requires the suspension of self-consciousness, requires almost a transcendence that supersedes mere categories of body and mind.  Once self-consciousness seeps its way back inside your mind, though, the beautiful performance you have constructed of sweat and desire and focus comes crashing to the ground.

This isn’t to say that I don’t wear skirts, or that I don’t enjoy them.  On the contrary, I do, especially during the summer.  I like wearing my black running skirt sometimes, too.  It makes me feel tough in a aggressively girly way.  But here’s the thing – I have the choice to wear it.  Here’s another thing – I don’t always wear it.  I often like to wear shorts.  Here’s the most important thing – I don’t have governing officials urging me to wear it under the guise of making sure audiences can tell I’m actually a woman.

If a female boxer wants to wear a skirt, if she feels tough and free in one, then by all means, let her.  But enough with pressuring athletes to do so.  The fretting about the femininity of female athletes really feels quite passe at this point, and I can’t believe it’s still happening.  Female athletes should not have to prove their femininity to be taken seriously.  We should not have to overcompensate for deficiencies that exist only in the minds of others.  After all, it’s the 21st century, is it not?  It’s time to leave the attitudes of earlier generations behind.

Filed under: Gender and Sports, femininity, skirts, women's boxing