The paradox of pink
Oh pink, how you vex me so!
One of my favorite running outfits consists of a hot-pink racer-back tank top, a black running skirt and a pair of fluorescent green-and-pink shoes. The outfit is so obnoxiously bright that if you sent me out to Tampa International Airport at night, I could probably help planes land safely on the runway just by standing out there.
I’ve been trying to figure out why I love to wear this outfit so much, especially as it is so much girlier than the clothes I normally wear. I almost never wear pink, and I wear skirts so rarely that people actually comment on them when I do. I realized that I feel extra-aggressive when I’m decked out like this, and that the aggressiveness is tinged with subversion, a combination of which I am always a fan. Pink disarms people. It makes them think of Bonne Bell lip gloss and lacy things and stuffed animals. The pink-and-skirt combo says, “Underestimate me at your own peril.” It says, “You may think I look cute but you can think that while eating my dust.”
So when I wear pink when I am competing, I find myself almost subconsciously pushing harder than I would have otherwise. It’s like there’s some part deep inside that just hasn’t managed to let go of the inferiority complex nurtured over years of hearing, in the words of the riot grrrl manifesto, that Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak, and so whenever I get the chance to flip that script on its head, I do not hesitate.
I’ve seen it happen more than a few times while racing in that outfit. A guy, almost always a younger one, sees me coming up from behind him, and he picks up his pace. Even if he is sucking wind and stumbling with fatigue, he can’t bear to let me – or any other woman – pass him. I’ve even seen it while out training, which is especially unfortunate when it happens on speedwork days.
And lest you think I’m just making this all up in the anti-feminist dystopia that exists only in my mind, let me just remind you that the word “chicked” does in fact exist, and that the entire point of its existence is to shame guys who find themselves losing to girls in physical activities where “normally a man should outperform the woman.” Yep, I’d say that wearing pink while kicking ass is a subversive act when we live in a world where men have to worry about being “chicked.”
But the problem with subversion and its relatives, irony and reclamation, is that not everyone is savvy enough to get what you are doing. I might have this whole idea constructed in my head about how I’m sticking it to The Man when I race in pink, but The Man may very well not see that. In fact, The Man looks at me and goes, “Yep, I knew it – the ladies loooove pink.” I’m no longer a warrior fighting against stupid gender stereotypes; I’m yet another embodiment of those stupid gender stereotypes.
This is especially problematic when you are dealing with consumer goods. First of all, how really rebellious can you be when your rebellion is all about the things you buy? And what kind of rebellion is built upon the backs of poor people in the Global South? I mean, it’s not like my Nikes or my sweat-wicking running top were built in Sheboygan (unless there’s a city called Sheboygan in Vietnam). That’s a fundamental issue right there, and one that always has to be kept in mind.
Secondly, large corporations that create products – in this case, sporting goods and apparel – simply don’t care what my motivations might be. All they know is that I’m just another female buying female-coded products (aka pink stuff), which just affirms the decision to act like they are catering to a female sports population by offering gear in pink. (And lord, do they offer a lot of it. I’ve found chin straps, receiving gloves, boxing gloves, hockey sticks…just about everything you could possibly think of comes in pink.) A lot of lady athletes have complained about this, specifically how it seems like the corporations think it’s enough to offer gear in pink without actually changing anything about the product to make it more woman-friendly.
Third, the pinkification of sports gear is part of a larger overall trend of pinkification that is pretty much everywhere. I mean, you cannot walk into a girl-oriented toy aisle without feeling like you are drowning in an ocean of flamingo puke. Products that are otherwise totally gender-neutral are designed for one gender or the other by using color – pink for women, black and chrome for men. The idea that something could be unisex – which is actually how I remember more of the world being when I was younger – seems to have evaporated from the world. (And hey, because it’s not enough to make all our junk pink, corporations evidently think it’s okay to charge us more for it, too.)
Now, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not one of those athletes who is reflexively anti-pink. I like pink. I also like red, purple, green, blue and yellow. (Sorry orange, I think you look like poop.) But what I don’t like is the idea that simply because I am a lady I must automatically want to have everything in pink. I mean, what if I want boxing gloves in light blue? What if a pair of weightlifting gloves in purple would really pump my ‘nads? Am I just shit out of luck? Do I have to console myself with black or pink, because those are the only colors Corporate Sports America thinks people want?
I think the thing that gets me most of all is how politicized this single color has become. I mean, pink is nothing more than light waves traveling at a specific frequency, and yet you’d think that frequency is a special one that causes penises to shrivel up and fall off upon coming into contact with it. The more pink becomes associated with women and girls, the faster boys and men scramble to get away from it.
I can’t pretend like I do have the answer, because I don’t. I don’t think women should burn piles of pink razors and footballs so they can stick it to The Man (and not just because that would make a huge ecological mess), because I recognize that a lot of women – myself included! – actually like the color. But I also can’t deny that I am troubled by the way that something as simple as a color has become yet another polarizing force in our culture.
What do you think?
Programming note: Fit and Feminist is now on Facebook!
This is just a quick post to let you all know that Fit and Feminist is now on Facebook! I’ve been using the account to share links to my posts as well as stories that catch my fancy throughout the day. I’m sure I’ll think of other reasons to use it, soon.
Also, there have been a couple of other changes in place here. First, I registered a domain for the blog – OMG it’s like I’m finally catching up to 2008 with this thing! – and so you can now reach me by visiting fitandfeminist.com.
And if you are one of the people who actually looks at the blog itself and not through an RSS reader or something, you’ve probably noticed that I have a lovely new layout and header. The header was designed and created by Erin Hawley of Things You Say Distro. I love what she did, and she was so easy to work with. If you ever find yourself in need of a web designer, hit her up. She’s great!
I am envious of women who “bulk up” easily
The other day I was reading this post about competitive powerlifting over at xoJane – and by the way, I loved the author’s enthusiasm for lifting, but was not so enamored of her insistence that it is the key to weight loss – and I decided to delve into the comments, because I am a masochist and this is what I do.
Predictably, I was horrified within two mouse scrolls by the sheer number of women who said they don’t want to lift weights because they bulk up too quickly. If the commenters are to be believed, the lady half of the population is filled with latent she-hulks who need to do nothing more than walk into the free weights section of a given gym before their muscles pop out like a pair of cartoon eyeballs.
But as I read through the comments, my normal disbelief and, okay, I’ll admit it, my slight derision gave way to a sensation that was a lot more uncomfortable than the warm comfort of smug superiority, an emotion I later identified as “envy.” I read comment after comment about concerns over “bulking up” and by the time I’d read the 50th comment to that effect, I found myself wanting nothing more than to take those women by the shoulders and shake them while screaming, “DO YOU KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU ARE? DO YOU KNOW WHAT KINDS OF BODILY GIFTS THE MULTIVERSE HAS RAINED DOWN UPON YOUR HEAD? STOP COMPLAINING! BE GRATEFUL!”
See, I lift about three or four times a week. I don’t lift as heavy as I could because I don’t want to interfere with my marathon training, but I do not shy away from barbells and 25 lb. dumbbells. I embrace “man exercises” like push-ups and bench presses. I drink protein shakes after I lift. I carry hard-boiled eggs and protein powder in my purse. I read books about lifting. I develop programs and I change them regularly so I can challenge my body. I have deposited small oceans of sweat on weight benches. I have callouses on my hands from gripping metal bars.
And yet, my muscles are not that big. I’m strong but I am not built. I wish this were not the case. I want arms that can be called “guns” and thighs like striated tree trunks. For whatever reason, though, this has not yet happened. Maybe it’s because I run so much? Maybe it’s because the hormonal soup that flows through my body isn’t right for big muscles? Maybe it’s because my long limbs stretch out any muscles I do develop? Maybe I’m not doing something right? Who knows. All I know is that it’s not easy for me to “bulk up.” But man, how I wish it was.
When I hear women bemoan the way their bodies pack on muscle, I can’t help but feel a bit envious. To me, it’s like hearing someone say they hate running because they are just so fast, or they don’t like to write because they might accidentally win a Pulitzer Prize and wouldn’t that be awful. Their worst fear is one of my most fervent desires.
Listen, ladies who bulk up – your bodies are telling you something. Your bodies are saying, We want to be strong, we want to be muscular, we want to be ripped! If your body puts on muscle this easily, it’s because your body wants to be muscular. If your body thought muscle was a bad thing, it wouldn’t build it so easily.
But you know what does think a woman with muscle is a bad thing? Our culture. Our culture has a big, big problem with women who are physically strong. Our culture says women who are physically strong are manly and unattractive and ugly. Our culture says women ought to be in need of protection from husbands, fathers, boyfriends. Our culture says women ought to be vulnerable to harm at all times, because if we were not, why would we need male protection?
Remember this next time you hate on your body’s innate ability to easily pack on muscle. Your capability for physical strength is immense. Do not take it lightly. Do not dismiss it. Please recognize it for the gift that it is.
Women, civil disobedience and the Boston Marathon
The famous headline from the day after Bobbi Gibb became the first woman to run the entire Boston Marathon.
Earlier today, more than 22,000 runners lined up in Hopkinton, Mass., to run the Boston Marathon, and nearly half of those runners were women. So many women run Boston – as well as the hundreds of other marathons that take place each year – that it can be difficult to fathom that there was ever a time when women were essentially forbidden from racing distances longer than a half-mile.
Yet that was exactly the case, and it wasn’t that long ago that this was how things were. And while there’s a certain cultural mythology that likes to think of social progress as an impersonal force of existence, like time or gravity, something that is almost entirely divorced from the actions of human beings, something that can be counted on to happen whether we want it to or not, the truth is that every push towards a fairer, more just world has come about because of the concerted efforts of people who took deliberate steps to make this so.
The history of women’s distance running is full of acts like this, acts of defiance and civil disobedience. A handful of women were not content to sit and wait for the running establishment to evolve on its own. They pushed and they fought. They were not patient. They did not sit and wait. And without those risks, I would most likely be unable to participate in one of the things that brings me great joy in this life.
(Remember this the next time you hear someone talk about the great mens-only tradition of the Augusta Country Club. The Boston Athletic Association once had a great mens-only tradition as well, and how silly and outdated it all seems in retrospect, doesn’t it?)
The BAA brought back most of the eight women who officially ran the marathon for the first time in 1972 and honored them. Perhaps the best known is Kathrine Switzer, who signed up under the name K.V. Switzer in 1967, only to find herself having to dodge a full-body tackle by the race director when he realized a woman was running his race.
Another of the women honored today was Bobbi Gibb, who ran unofficially in 1966, making her the first woman to finish the marathon. She trained hard for the races, sometimes running as many as 40 miles a day, even though she had been told that women were not physiologically capable of running such distances. As she was not allowed to compete with the men, she stood in the bushes until half the pack has passed by, then she jumped out and ran with the men.
These acts of dignified rebellion were catnip for the news media, which, much like today, can’t get enough of man-bites-underdog stories, especially when they flip conventional wisdom on its head. What describes that more than the sight of a handful of young women defying one of the most venerated sports institutions in the country?
Certainly it took so much more than that to change things. It took lobbying and organizing and maneuvering and politicking and establishing alliances, not just with women who wanted to run but men who supported gender equity in the sport as well. It wasn’t as if K.V. Switzer crossed the finish line and the BAA said, “Aw, shucks, you showed us,” then rolled out the red carpet and bowls of Dinty Moore beef stew for the ladies.
I’m less than two weeks away from running my second marathon, which is a humbling experience in and of itself, but that humility is magnified when I think of the obstacles faced by the women who ran before me. There is no denying that a marathon is difficult – that’s part of what makes it so alluring to so many – but to do so while pushing back against an entire social order that says you can’t? That’s a challenge I’m not sure many of us would have been able to rise up to meet, and I’m so grateful to the women who ensured that we don’t have to.
Kellie Wells (left), Amanda Beard (center), Chrissie Wellington (right)
There’s a saying in recovery groups, that you are only as sick as your secrets. Some of those secrets are rather benign, like maybe we used to wet the bed when we were in junior high school or we have inappropriate crushes. But I think a lot of us – actually, most of us – have secrets that are dark and sad, the kind of secrets we’d rather not have and would prefer if they would just go away. There’s a sense that we are somehow shameful, defective or mortally flawed as human beings because have those secrets, like there is something terribly broken inside of us in ways that alienates us from the rest of the world.
At least this is how I have felt in the past, which is part of why I am so adamant about what I think of as “radical honesty.” I don’t mean radical honesty in terms of my interactions with other people – I actually think that practitioners of “brutal honesty” are more about the “brutal” and less about the “honesty” – but in terms of sharing information about myself. I write a lot about surviving abuse, for instance, because I hope that maybe in doing so I can help other people who have been abused or who are being abused to feel a little less alone and broken. I guess my hope is that as more of us feel comfortable sharing the darkest parts of our history with one another, it will help to bridge the gaps between us, and maybe ease that sense of alienation from one another that seems so prevalent in our society.
It’s this belief in the power of radical honesty that has me doing a three-part Girl Crush Chronicle. Each of these women would be deserving of an entry on their own merits, as each woman is a world-class athlete whose accomplishments just gobsmack me on a regular basis, but each of these women has another thing in common, and that is that they have chosen to be open about their secrets in hopes of helping others who are going through the same thing.
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Kellie Wells is one of the nation’s top hurdlers, with national titles in both the 100-meter hurdles and the 60-meter indoor hurdles. She’s got her eye on the 2012 London Olympics, which will hopefully end in a medal on the podium, unlike her time in Beijing in 2008, which ended when she tore a hamstring at the end of the semi-finals. She’s been a star at every level, starting with high school and going all the way to her pro career.
In 2010, she published a blog post that I imagine was very difficult for her to write. In it she revealed that her stepfather had sexually abused her for years, abuse that culminated when he raped her. She had told her mother what happened, only to be met with silence, and so Wells moved out of the house and in with a friend. Weeks later, her stepfather and mother died in a fatal car crash. Wells unknowingly drove past the scene of the car crash.
From an interview with the Telegraph:
Talking is good, says Wells. So good, in fact, that she wants to use her rising profile as an athlete to encourage other victims of sexual and physical abuse to share their stories.
She also plans to open a foundation for battered women and abused children, and has already appointed a business manager to put her ideas in motion. “I would love to have placement homes for families that need to get away from abusive situations, and have girls and boys being able to tell their stories and actually be listened to,” she said.
She says her goal is to show people in similar situations that it’s possible to heal and to even thrive:
“I know my story is very common to a lot of people, and it’s swept under the rug a lot,” she said. “If I can help at least one person and show you don’t have to be a product of your environment, you don’t have to keep secrets, and you don’t have to hide, that would be amazing.”
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Amanda Beard earned her first Olympic medal at an age when most of us were first trying to navigate the horrors of junior high. In all she has medaled seven times in three different Olympics. She once held the world record in the 200m breaststroke. She’s had a high-profile career outside of the pool, with anti-fur ads and Playboy centerfolds and appearances in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and even a few gigs as sports correspondents.
All of the shiny success and the huge smiles hid a mess of secrets, which she has written about now in her new memoir, entitled “In the Water They Can’t See You Cry.” (By the way, the title of that book is just…omg. So sad.) The memoir was accompanied by a blitz of media as people realized Beard had written candidly about cutting, depression, eating disorders, drug abuse and destructive relationships, a spiral of trauma that started with her parents’ divorce when she was 12 and no doubt compounded by the intense pressure on her as an elite athlete.
From an Associated Press article:
“It was definitely a snowball effect,” she said Thursday from New York where she was promoting the book. “It started with my parents’ divorce, the pressure I put on myself after the `96 Olympics, not dealing with puberty. All of those things I just constantly pushed down and tried not to deal with. Those things just kind of built off each other.”
Beard started drinking in high school, when she hated her looks and felt unlovable. Adding to her burden was a case of mild dyslexia that made her cry daily and led to grades of Cs and Ds.
Swimming was the only area in which Beard rarely wavered. Although she briefly quit five months after the Atlanta Games, she soon returned and earned an athletic scholarship to Arizona. That’s where her bulimia began, a problem five-time Olympian Dara Torres also dealt with as a college swimmer at Florida.
Like Wells, Beard hopes her book will encourage others to seek help and to understand that they aren’t alone:
“We can’t be ashamed of who we are or embarrassed of the things that we’re going through,” she said. “It makes me almost emotional in a way to hear people’s stories especially if they’re still struggling with overcoming things. It breaks my heart because it’s not a fun place to be and you feel so lonely.”
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Chrissie Wellington is kind of a superstar in the world of Ironman, as she won every single Ironman she has ever entered. That’s thirteen total Ironman competitions. She won the world championships in Kona even though she had torn her pectoral muscle two weeks earlier in a bike crash. She is a bad-ass of epic proportions.
Wellington recently published a memoir in which she wrote about her experiences with anorexia and bulimia, which were fueled by her insecurities with her body, coupled with the perfectionism and the drive that has made her so successful at such a challenging endurance events:
“The victims of such illnesses are often very ambitious, outwardly successful young women who pursue these ideas of control and achievement,” she says. “We’re driven, compulsive, obsessive, competitive, persistent and seek perfection. That can be channelled incredibly negatively.”
Wellington said she often hears from other female athletes, and she recognizes herself and her life all over their messages:
“There is still a stigma and so I swing between wanting to talk about it and being ashamed because to me it’s still tantamount to weakness. But every week I receive letters from women and young girls. They don’t know I’ve suffered from eating disorders but they explain how they’re suffering from these same afflictions. I’ve got a message in my inbox now from an American girl saying: ‘I don’t know where to turn, can you help me?’ She’s a triathlete.”
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When I think about my own life and the things I’ve gone through, I think of two things that have helped me to heal: talking about my own stories, and hearing the stories of other people. When I listened to other people, people who seemed so smart and tough and accomplished, as they shared stories that resonated with me on a deep, almost subconscious level, it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t as weak and damaged as I thought. I might have felt that way, but feeling something doesn’t make it true.
I tremendously admire all of these women, not just as athletes, but as survivors. I know how scary it can be to speak honestly about your vulnerabilities, how terrifying it can be to stand up and expose your soft parts in such a public way, and I admire them for being able to rise above that in hopes that they could be of service to others.
Good fitspo is hard to find
A lot of pixels have been lit up over the phenomenon of “thinspo,” which if you don’t know by now is a cutesy abbreviation for “thinspiration.” Thinspo usually consists of photos of very thin women and text meant to motivate you to stick to a diet plan by thinking about the “gap between your thighs.”
Of course, that’s the more benign style of thinspo. A lot of it consists of little more than pro-ana glorification. Here’s a quick example of things I saw just in a thirty-second skim of tumblr’s thinspo tag:
- Someone saying she splurged by eating a little over 500 calories today
- Someone panicking because she drank milk right after taking Ex-Lax
- Someone who says she’s on her eighth day of fasting
- Someone who says she refuses to chew gum because it means you swallow air which makes you bloat
All this, mingled between photos of women with visible ribs and jutting out hipbones.
I, as you can imagine, hate this stuff. I hate it for a lot of reasons, none of which I need to enumerate for you, because if you are reading my blog, odds are good that you and I are in the same emotional universe when it comes to this kind of thing.
But even putting aside the completely depressing nature of all of this, can I just tell you how completely unmotivated I feel by any of this? All I feel like doing when I see this junk is closing my browser tab and moving on. The sad thing is that fitspo, which is supposed to be inspiration for more fitness-minded people like myself, is often not that much better!
Virginia Sole-Smith wrote about this last month:
Fitspiration is thinspiration, even when it’s dissing skinny girls. It’s not about health — it’s about using “health” and “fit” as code words for beauty standards.
And in February, Charlotte Anderson at the Great Fitness Experiment wrote:
Looking at rock-hard body after rock-hard body it occurred to me that fitspo may be thinspo in a sports bra. After all, the problem with thinspo is that the images represent a mostly unattainable ideal that requires great sacrifices (both physical and mental) to achieve and I daresay that most of those “perfect” female bodies, albeit muscular instead of bony, are equally as problematic.
Now, considering that my Pinterest is full of images that could easily be categorized as fitspo and that I regularly reblog fitspo on Tumblr, it might be construed as hypocritical when I say that I agree with both Charlotte and Virginia.
But this is the thing – the fitspo that I like? Is often not what shows up as fitspo on Tumblr or Pinterest. I do not care for photos of oiled-up women in bikinis, nor am I interested in looking at the photos sports bra-clad women take of their abs while looking in the mirror. I don’t like photos where the women are posed, standing still or otherwise looking passive. I don’t want to read detailed menu plans or slogans that rip on fat people. And I really don’t like the unwavering laser-like on abs. Abs are neat, yes, and they look cool, but enough already.
The fitspo that I love shows women lifting heavy weights. It shows them in mid-run, or mid-jump, or mid-layup, or mid-something, mid-anything but standing around in a bikini. Good fitspo makes me want to train harder than before. It makes me want to try to lift heavier, to try to run farther, to pedal faster. It makes me feel strong and excited and ready to take on the whole world with one hand tied behind my back.
Here’s an example: Crossfit Babes. (h/t to Ramsey of Everyday Pants for hooking me up with this!) I spent some time looking through photos of women doing things like this:
And more women doing things like this:
And then I went to the gym and did full push-ups until I collapsed, then begged my internal drill sergeant for more. The entire time I was making my way through sets of twists and curls and presses, I thought about these incredibly strong women and how I want to be like them and how the only way that was going to happen was if I put in the sweat equity in the gym. When I finished my workout, I felt like a beast. It was exactly what I wanted.
This is how I think fitspo is supposed to work. No shame, no loathing of one’s thighs, no barely sublimated self-hate – just pure, unadulterated fierceness.
Do you know how hard it is to find images like that on the internet? I won’t say it’s impossible, but damn if it doesn’t seem like they aren’t outnumbered a dozen to one by Instamatic photos of thighs that don’t touch. I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising as it’s still a fairly accurate reflection of idealized femininity, which is well-groomed, compact and passive while still exuding an available sexuality. Idealized femininity is not sweaty and grimacing with ripped delts and solid quads. The kind of imagery that appeals to me is still somewhat outside of the mainstream, much to my everlasting sadness.
What do you think? Do you like fitspo or do you find it problematic? If you like it, what do you like about it? Where do you find good fitspo at? (And why do I feel like a teenager asking for tips on the best free porn downloads right now?)
Friday Randomness – April 6
Pretty much every runner – and even some non-runners! – I know was buzzing about this New York Times article about masters champion Kathy Martin. Martin took up running seriously when she was in her 40s, and now she holds several national records, in distances that range from 800m to 50K. I mean, it’s astonishing enough that she’s running such incredibly fast times at the age of 60, but to be able to maintain such supremacy throughout such a wide range of distances is pretty incredible. I love reading about ladies like Martin, who are redefining what it means to be an older woman in our society. Here’s hoping that we see a lot more women like her in coming years.
Some recent research has found that cycling may not be a lady(flower)’s best friend. A study found that women who cycle more than 10 miles a week are more likely to experience diminished sensation. To which I say – NO DUH. Glad it took a Yale study to figure out what everyone who has ever gone on a long-distance bike ride already knows.
I love this new blog called I Am a Pole Dancer, which features photos of ladies who do pole. I remember a few years ago, how it seemed like everyone was all POLE DANCING = PORNIFICATION OF SOCIETY ZOMG, but fortunately it seems like that has died down a bit, which is good, because pole is really cool and beautiful, and the people who do it are impressive athletes who deserve respect, not derision. I’ll probably be writing more about pole soon as my best friend is a pole dance instructor and I plan to take some classes from her after I complete my marathon!
Speaking of pole, the Atlantic ran an article about the winner of this year’s International Pole Championship, a 28-year-old woman who pulls off elite-level inversions and layouts and oh, by the way, only has one arm. Total BAMF.
Pinterest is the latest social-networking platform to announce plans to crack down on pro-anorexia imagery. I have written before about the disturbing stuff that shows up under the guise of thinspo, a lot of which I have come across while searching for images to help motivate me in my own pursuit of fitness and sports goals, and it never fails to disturb me. I’m glad to see that social-networking platforms are taking it seriously.
Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard has written a memoir, and most of the media around it focuses on the fact that she discloses her history of self-injury. This excerpt from the New York Daily News is really intense and sad, and so please be warned before you read it.
Sad news: Micah True, also known to fans of Christopher McDougall’s “Born to Run,” was found dead in the Gila Wilderness area of New Mexico last weekend. He had gone for what was supposed to be a routine run but he never returned home. The cause of his death has not been released yet.
Check out this completely fascinating story of a murdered Russian businessman (and former KGB spy) and the effect his death had on the women’s basketball team he financially supported.
Erika Kendall shared this very personal piece of writing about the politics of women’s safety over at A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss: “When you see all of this, experience and encounter all of this on a regular and consistent basis, it promotes fear. It compels women to react not out of their own choice, but out of fear.” The whole thing is worth reading, as she writes honestly and frankly about her experiences with feeling unsafe as a black woman in public.
From “Thin Ice” to “Whip It,” Anna Clark breaks down the history of women-in-sports movies over at Grantland. She not only talks about the movies themselves but gives the reader some wider context for the movie’s subject matter. (And also it reminds me that I really want to see “Personal Best,” not least of all because it inspired the title and cover of one of the best punk albums ever, “Personal Best” by Team Dresch.)
ESPNW published an in-depth report about the lack of opportunity for female coaches. It’s a sad juxtaposition to read the stories of female coaches who were systematically shut out of coaching jobs and to contrast that with the sight of Muffet McGraw and Kim Mulkey on the sidelines of the NCAA women’s championship earlier this week (and also a recent New Yorker article about Nancy Lieberman, the only woman to coach a men’s professional basketball team and also a full-blown baller in her own right). Women are obviously capable as coaches, and yet the opportunities – even to head women’s teams – are increasingly going to men.
Adios Barbie posted an interview with professional dancer/fat activist/all-around bad-ass Ragen Chastain about a recent movement she helped organize to pay for body-positive billboards with the goal of counteracting a anti-obesity ad campaign in Georgia that relied heavily on shaming kids to get its point across.
It’s that time of year again – the time when we all point fingers at Augusta and ask why they are being such dodos with regards to their failure to admit women into their He Man Woman Haters Club. The debate takes on an extra dimension this year because, as Sara at Bloomer Girls points out, one of the CEOs who is traditionally offered a membership to the club is, OMG!, a woman! Whatever shall they do? Here’s an idea – how about they dispense with the fetishization of the past and join the rest of us in the 21st century? I know, I know, this might be a lot to ask of a group that only deigned to allow black men to join in 1990. Yes, 1990.
Oh, Saudi Arabia. Speaking of the failure to join the 21st century….Saudi officials have announced that the 2012 Olympics will come and go without a woman as part of the official Saudi delegation. Human Rights Watch has been agitating hard for the International Olympic Committee to lean on Saudi Arabia, saying their ban on women and girls in sport is a violation of the Olympic charter. (P.S. If you are looking for some heavy, sad reading, check out HRW’s report on women and girls in sport in Saudi Arabia.)
The misgendering of Brittney Griner
You’d think I’d have learned by now, but alas, I have not. I go onto Twitter for just about every major national event, and every time I am astonished by the things I read and see. Why should the NCAA women’s tournament be any different?
I’m not going to repeat the things I saw about Brittney Griner; I’ll leave that to your imagination. I will say that I find our culture’s ongoing obsession with policing gender completely baffling, and the misgendering of Griner is no exception.
In case you are not familiar with Griner, she’s the totally sensational junior who plays for the Baylor Bears. She’s 6’8″, has a wingspan that is wider than most people are tall, she dunks hard and blocks like a wall, and has been noted for her androgynous looks. She also happens to have a pretty deep voice.
Thus, her detractors say, she must be a man!
Of course, you don’t have to have a long memory to recall just how many times a similar criticism – that a woman is a man, is a lesbian or is a doper or is just a plain freak – has been leveled at a woman who dominates her sport. As Everett at I Fry Mine in Butter notes, it’s also been said about Caster Semenya, Dara Torres, the Williams sisters and Martina Navratilova.
Everett goes on to write:
The female body in sport is a contradiction for a culture used to plopping gender into neat, tight boxes. It is sweating and contorting in the way that any body does when exposed to physical stress. Looking at muscles up close—and these women have them some muscles—one wouldn’t know what kind of body is doing what action.
Our culture expects women’s – and men’s – bodies to be a certain way. People are very invested in the idea that Men Look Like This and Women Look Like That and Never the Twain Shall Meet.
Well, guess what? Nature doesn’t give a fuck about your sexual binary. Nature puts us together in a million different ways – actually, about seven billion, give or take a few hundred thousand – and a lot of us are going to walk that imaginary line. There are going to be short, hairless men with high voices and tall women with deep voices and people who are intersexed in a bunch of different ways, and here’s the great thing – it’s all okay. Every single one of us. There’s not a thing wrong with any of us.
Yet so many disagree, and they are not shy about making it known. In the particular case of Griner, I’ve seen people say they worry about her potential “unfair advantage.” I say that if we are suddenly in the business of weeding out people with biological advantages, then we need to get rid of Lance Armstrong and his preternatural VO2 capacity, we ought to not allow seven-footers to play in the NBA and we we should start testing to make sure all athletes have a similar ratio of slow twitch to fast twitch muscle fibers. I mean, since we are so concerned about people having biological advantages and all.
Not all of her haters even bother with the facade of concern trolling. Some of the things I read were just downright revolting. I don’t just mean they misgendered her, but they totally dehumanized her. And according to her coach, people actually say things like this to her face.
Griner knows what people say about her and she doesn’t care. “I know things they say aren’t true,” she said. “They are trying to get into my head and try to stop me. It’s not going to work.”
Griner is as classy as they come. Too bad we can’t say the same about her haters.
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Here’s a really excellent article I came across while reading up for this post. I couldn’t work it in but I wanted to share it anyway: Not Entertained: Brittney Griner continues to challenge expectations” by David L. Leonard at SLAM. Leonard drops some seriously excellent analysis not just from a sex/gender perspective but also a racial one, and in the context of the sex-drenched marketing of women’s sports. SO GOOD. And by the way, can I cosign his call for a touch of Britsanity? I am so on board with that.
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Edited to add that I am moderating every comment that goes through from now on and I will not hesitate to trash comments that either attack me or are hateful/transphobic/crude (and there have been several of those). Disagreement and dissent is fine and welcome but I will NOT tolerate anything that does not meet that standard. Consider yourself warned.
Women’s basketball is boring? Says who?
(AP/Eric Gay) Notre Dame guard Skylar Diggins (l.) and Connecticut forward Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis dive for a loose ball.
I write a lot about women’s sports on this blog, but I have a confession to make – I haven’t always put my money where my mouth is. I mean, I’ll watch the sports I take part in, marathons and track and field and triathlon, but I don’t watch much in the way of team sports, men’s or women’s.
I actually used to be a hardcore basketball fan, but then Michael Jordan single-handedly destroyed my beloved Utah Jazz in the 1997 NBA Finals (while he had the flu, no less), killing the only shot that team would ever have at a championship. That event represented a demarcation in my basketball fandom, the line between Before and After. Before was when five people, all with their strengths and weaknesses, stepped on the court and came together to create something bigger themselves on their way to victory. After was when four people and a superstar stepped on the court, and the four people dished the ball to the superstar, then got out of the way.
(By the way, I know this isn’t an original criticism. A lot of people share this perspective on men’s basketball. So many share this perspective that the NBA has been struggling to retain a fan base.)
My no-basketball streak would have continued through its 15th year were it not for Brian. Brian, like a lot of guys, likes to watch sports, but unlike a lot of guys, he really likes women’s basketball. He had tuned in to watch UConn a couple of times during the NCAA women’s tournament, and so last night when he grabbed the remote and asked if I minded if he watched the game, I thought I’d settle in and watch it with him. You know, seeing as though I blog about women and athletics and all.
Going into the game I was a bit put off by ESPN’s segment on Baylor Coach Kim Mulkey and her courtside wardrobe – and it seemed like she was, too, the way she kept insisting that she didn’t care about what she wore and that she actually would prefer to dress like Bill Belichick if she could – but I quickly forgot as I watched the game between the Lady Huskies and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
The game was solid, good defense, good passing, solid outside shooting, lots of agility heading toward the net. I developed a bit of a girl crush on Stephanie Dolson, the way she dominated the post position so thoroughly, and I loved how Skylar Diggins made her jump shots seem so effortlessly cool. (Brian, on the other hand, was all about Kelly Faris. “She just looks so tough,” he said.) Sometimes the play was sloppy, with UConn making quite a few turnovers, and sometimes the players came way too close to running out the shot clock for my liking, but for the most part they were fun to watch.
And then came the last two minutes of the game (which, as any basketball watcher can tell you, is really the only two minutes you ever need to watch). The last minute passed in a flurry of fast-breaks and turnovers before the game went to overtime. And what an intense overtime it was! Brian and I were practically leaping off of the couch with each shot, and when Notre Dame’s Brittany Mallory sank not one but two three-pointers to seal the deal, we were both deflated. It was exactly the kind of thing you tune into a sporting event to watch, the kind of ending that should only ever unfold in a screenwriter’s mind and yet somehow, against all odds, actually takes place in real, unpredictable, glorious life.
It had been a long time since I’d gotten that excited about watching a sporting event, maybe since watching a Rays playoff game at Tropicana Field or the Women’s World Cup last summer. It’s been a while since I felt like I could lose myself in the drama of those few minutes. If you are a sports fan, you know what I’m talking about. Fans will endure whole hours, even entire games of boring, uninspired play for those few sublime moments.
Afterward, I went on Twitter, where I saw this:
@bjyork I wish all people who say they can’t stand women’s basketball were watching ESPN right now. #NCAAW
I had a similar thought. This was the sport that so many men have taken such great pains to deride as boring? Really? This preconceived notion, clung to so tightly by so many, meant none of those sports fans would have gotten to see some really great basketball. But isn’t that always the way with preconceived notions, with prejudices, with ideas formed with only the barest of facts to give them shape? When you hold on too tightly to them and you never manage to look beyond their limits, you lose out on so much. When you think you already know everything there is to know about the world, you are rendered blind to the amazing things that happen right in front of your face, simply because they didn’t fit into your narrow little framework.
It seems like it will take a lot more than a few exciting games of basketball – and even the dynamic two-handed dunks of Brittney Griner – to change the minds of many. Brian told me that today as he drove to work, he heard a DJ scoff about women’s basketball. ”Why would you want to watch mediocre athletes play?” he said, just before he quickly reassured his audience that he’s not sexist. (Uh, yeah, you kinda are.) Brian said he wondered the same thing, why he’d want to listen to a mediocre DJ, and he clicked the radio off. Ha!
I’m sure that women’s basketball – or women’s team sports, really – will have to face guys like Mr. Mediocre Morning Zoo for as long as we live in a sexist society. But you know what? Fuck ‘em. There’s enough of us out here who know that there’s more to a good game of basketball than just being able to dunk.
As women’s basketball continues to develop, as more and more girls grow up to be like Diana, like Maya, like Brittney, that game is only going to get better and better. If the bros of the world don’t want to watch because of ew girls, then they are the ones who are going to lose out. They can continue to act like dunks-above-all-else is the only way to play but the truth is, fewer and fewer people are interested in that kind of play and the bratty man-child behavior it fosters, while more and more people want to see mature, skilled teams take the court. And more and more people recognize that the best place to see that kind of play is in the women’s leagues.
You can count me among the converted.
Pedaling in the rain: The story of my first Olympic duathlon
When I signed up for the Gator Olympic Duathlon a few months ago, I have to confess – I didn’t have the clearest grasp on what it was I was exactly doing. I just knew that I’d watched Brian cross the finish line for a handful of sprint triathlons and that it looks really fun and I had a road bike and so hey, why not try it? (This life philosophy has gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past, mind you. I may want to consider changing it some day.)
After I did my first (and only) sprint duathlon in February and enjoyed tremendously, I thought it seemed like a natural next step, to add some distance to the event. My introduction to the world of multi-sport athletics was a really positive experience. It was a sprint, so we ran a 5K, biked 10 miles and then ran a final 5K. I was exhausted at the end of it but not terribly sore, not the way I would have been had I run for an hour and twenty minutes. Plus I liked the logistics of it, the almost military precision required to organize the event and to take part in it.
Multi-sport athletes usually have a whole mess of equipment, things like shoelaces that you just pull tight and single-piece spandex suits that zip up the front, and all of which is meant to reduce the amount of time spent “in transition,” which is the area where athletes move from event to event within a race. All their junk goes into these huge backpacks that they wheel around with their super-expensive carbon-frame bicycles that cost more than some people’s cars and their pointy-headed helmets and their electrolyte replacement tablets and lord knows what else.
As you can imagine, it’s all completely foreign to runners like me, because we’re used to showing up to races with just our shoes and maybe a watch. The morning of my first duathlon, we scrambled around at the last minute because I had forgotten that, hey, I have to take a bike with me! Yeah, not so smart of me, huh?
This time I actually planned ahead and so none of these things were factors. What was a factor, however, were the hellacious allergies that had been having their way with my face for the last week and a half. I don’t know what kind of climate-change clusterfuckery was responsible for the Pollenmageddon that was unleashed upon our collective nostrils last month but I don’t like it and I’d like the universe to take it back, please.
Anyway, I was pretty much out of commission for several days as my body tried to purge itself of what felt like gallons of mucus, which meant – no training! My last workout before the ocean of pollen flatted me was a 15-mile bike ride followed by a three-mile run. Yeah, totally prepared.
But because I am dumb and stubborn and I had already missed a half-marathon due to the allergies, I went ahead with the duathlon. I dosed myself up with some cold medicine and some nasal sprays and we headed down to Lake Manatee State Park with our bikes and all of gear in the wee hours of Sunday morning. A rain system had moved ashore a few hours earlier and so everything was wet and shiny in the darkness. We were hopeful that that would be it, but as we made our way south on I-275 we drove right into some heavy rain, and that rain did not let up until we arrived at the race location.
The state park is situated in a kind of rural part of Florida, just outside Bradenton on State Road 64. Lake Manatee is a big freshwater lake, which all of the triathletes (both Olympic and half-Ironman distance) would have to swim around in. If there is anything that is less appealing to me than ocean water swimming, it’s lake swimming. I did not envy them at all. The running segments of the race were through the park, which is bordered by saw palmetto and pine, and along a back road through a nearby neighborhood. The biking segment was along State Road 64, which is a two-lane highway that is heavily traveled and bordered by farms.
We got all set up and ready, then I headed up to the start with the duathletes. We gathered at the starting line, and as we realized that maybe there were about a dozen of us competing at the Olympic distance, we all burst out into laughter. ”Age group awards all around,” I said. Later, when the results were in, I found out that more like three dozen people competed but I still have no idea where they were.
The start was disorganized, with the race director running up and telling us to go. So we all looked at each other and started running. The first half-mile was great…and then it started to rain again. I didn’t mind at first, because it was better than being assaulted by heat and sunlight, but the rain kept pouring and within two minutes my Asics Racers were soaked. My feet made a sploshing noise with each step, and all I could think was that I was going to now have wet socks for the next three hours (which was what I had targeted as my finishing time). Alas, I had no choice as I was not going to stop so soon over something as silly as wet socks, so I kept running and finished my first 5K in an easy 25 minutes.
It was still raining as I ran into the transition area. I turned my helmet upside down to dump out all of the water, put it on my head and strapped it in place, then sucked down a Gu. You can’t mount your bike inside the transition area, so I had to run with it out of the area to the “mount” line, which was when I was free to get on my bike.
Thus begins the most epic bike ride of my entire life. I knew it was going to be long, and I had psychologically prepared myself for that. What I was not prepared for was all of the rain. The rain made puddles that splashed up dirt and muck when I rode through them, it soaked my tri suit through to my base layer and then soaked that as well, and it covered both sides of my sunglasses with droplets of rain. I took them off, but then I couldn’t see because rain was in my face, so I put them back on and smeared my fingers on the lenses. Safe, I know.
And then there was all the traffic! What kind of crazy people are out driving at 8:30 on a rainy Sunday morning? Every time a car blew past me at sixty miles per hour, I silently screamed at them for being weirdos who weren’t in bed sleeping on a morning like this. (Uh, pot? Kettle?) Sometimes a big truck went past and covered me in god knows what kind of toxic road runoff, so if my future children have three eyes, you know what’s responsible for that. A couple of times I was even nailed by flying rocks.
All of this while trying to navigate the debris and busted tires and roadkill on the side of the road. I passed so many people with flat tires that day, I don’t know how I escaped a similar fate. I would have been totally screwed had my tire blown, as I didn’t have a repair kit with me either. (Lesson learned.)
When I hit the turnaround, I was relieved that I was halfway through this brutal ride, but my relief lasted about fourteen seconds, which is about how long it took me to realize I was riding directly into the rain storm. I kept pedaling, even though by this time my shit was so wet that my gears were slipping, and I tried to keep a good attitude about all of it, like “oh golly, what an adventure I’m having, won’t this make a great story, ha ha ha.”
That lasted about two miles, at which point I ran out of fucks to give. In fact, I was so out of fucks to give that I started demanding the universe give me fucks. I freaked out as I rode, screaming obscenities I knew no one would hear because, hey, most people were not demented masochists who were out riding their bikes for 25 miles in the rain alongside busy highways. I was mad.
Ny "GET OUT OF MY FACE OR I WILL RUN YOU OVER" look.
At some point, though, I thought about the absurdity of it all, of all of us in our little spandex outfits pedaling like crazy in the rain, bedraggled race numbers flapping in the wind, and I started laughing maniacally. Shortly afterward, one of my fellow duathletes passed me, and I focused on staying up with her. The hypnotic sight of her rear wheel calmed me down and after a few miles, I felt okay enough to speed up and pass her.
I rolled to a stop at the dismount line after riding for an hour and thirty-three minutes, then got off my bike. Rather, I should say that I flopped off my bike and onto the ground. My muscles were so pulverized that I felt like I was trying to run on legs made of string cheese, and my swimsuit area? There is no way to put this delicately so I’ll just say that it felt like my junk had been pressed like a Cuban sandwich. Trying to run in that situation was so ridiculous that again I burst out laughing.
Yet that’s what I did. I ditched my bike and helmet and grabbed my hand-held water bottle, sucked down another Gu and then took off for my last 10K. I knew from experience that my legs would come back to me after about a mile so I trusted and kept moving forward. Besides, what was I going to do, quit? Pshaw. Especially now that the rain had subsided.
I won’t say it was the most difficult 10K I’ve ever run – that honor goes to the one in which I stopped and puked at the three-mile mark – but it was super challenging. I ended up taking short 30-second walk breaks every few minutes, but hey, no shame in that, right? I was actually kind of stoked because even though I was totally tired, my body was still strong and capable and I never felt for a single second like I couldn’t finish. Sure, during the bike ride, I had a moment where I was like, what the fuck is the point of all of this?! but that passed quickly.
There was some screwiness with the mile markers – note to the race directors: it’s cruel to put mile marker #6 nearly a mile away from the finish line – but I had a Garmin so I was like whatevs, and I kept moving forward. I turned into the park and kept running until I saw Brian. He had finished about twenty-five minutes ahead of me and was already out of his running shoes. I took a quick walk break while he showed me his medal and also the oozing blisters on his feet (ick). Then he looked at his watch and said, “If you go now, you’ll break three hours.”
So I started running again. I hit the last intersection in the park, rounded a curve and saw the finish line. The sight of that little blue arch triggered my inner cheetah, and I sprinted the last 100 yards of the race – right across the finish line.
I was elated when I finished, not just because I was done but because it was so hard and yet I had done it! And not only that, I did it well enough to earn second female overall:
I mean, sure, it was a small race and the field was smaller than most kindergarten classes, but you know what? I don’t care. I was super pumped to get my plaque and I still am. I’m also very happy with my final time. When you consider that I have been sick, that it was raining, that my training was interrupted, that I’m actually a runner first and foremost, I am beyond pleased to have finished my first Olympic duathlon in less than three hours.
My next adventure in multi-sport isn’t until after next month’s Big Sur International Marathon, and I can’t wait. I’ve been bitten by the multi-sport bug and it’s awesome.
