Friday Randomness – Nov. 18

The holiday season is about to begin and guess how we are celebrating?  By taking paddleboard lessons.  That’s just how we row down here.  Get it?  How we row?  *crickets*

Okay, enough of my dumb attempts at humor.  Here’s a bunch of links I gleaned from around the interwebs this past week.  Enjoy!

A former high school football coach in Wyoming has caught a bunch of crap for basically living up to every horrible stereotype about jocks ever.  The coach distributed a survey in which he asked players if they are “pussies” or “queer” or “little bitches” or have “woman like hormones.”  I guess it was supposed to be funny, but it just makes him look rather dim and obvious, don’t you think?

Adriana Lima is defending her diet after she caught a bunch of flak for swearing off solid food for nine days before the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.  Lima said she doesn’t want teenage girls to start following in her footsteps, but if I know anything about teenage girls I bet more than a few read that article and thought it sounded like a great idea.  P.S. I still think we need to address the fact that we live in a culture that says a woman like Lima, who is stunning, is still not sufficiently beautiful enough for the fashion world.

Speaking of a fashion culture that hates women – Charlotte at the Great Fitness Experiment has been threatened with lawsuits for using photos of models in a post that is critical of high fashion’s extreme standards of thinness.  Go read the whole post.  It’s good and also pretty sad.

Sketchers is preparing to become the second company to be slapped by the Federal Trade Commission for false and deceptive advertising in connection with “toning” shoes. You know, the shoes that promise wearers will develop the glutes of Marisa Miller without even so much as stepping foot in a weight room.  Ladies, I beseech, you save the money and invest in a gym membership.  Your butt will be so much happier, as will your heart, your arms, your calves, your lungs, your core…

So Congress can’t get their shit together when it comes to things like job and the economy, but the House GOP managed to pull themselves together long enough to scale back on the USDA’s attempt to make school lunches healthier.  Now House Republicans want to classify pizza as a vegetable.  Yes, pizza.  A vegetable.  Pizza.

But wait!  Herman Cain says real men don’t eat vegetables on their pizza!  I’m so confused.  If pizza is a vegetable, but real men don’t eat vegetables, then how can they eat pizza?  Ow, ow, my head…it’s hurting.  Anyway, Cain says real men eat sausage and that vegetables make for a “sissy” pizza.  (I didn’t make that up.)  It’s a pretty textbook example of the way food is gendered, don’t you think?

The December issue of Runners World features a story that explores the question any halfway observant runner has ever asked themselves:  why is distance running so white?  It’s a good read, and hopefully it will encourage people to be a little more critical of the cultural attitudes that surround distance running, and really sport of all kinds.

Black Girls RUN!, which was one of the groups contacted for the RW story, posted this reaction to the article.  Their verdict?  They “couldn’t be happier.”

Bottled water is such a weird, touchy subject, don’t you think?  I prefer to re-use a big jug that I carry around with me, because I cringe whenever I think about all of those bottles going into the trash stream, but I know a lot of people don’t see things my way, and not just because they don’t care about the environment. S.E. Smith looks at the racial, class and environmental politics that make bottled water such a complicated issue.

Blogger Courtney Szlo, who is also a master’s student in the sociology of sport and health, posted this eye-opening rant about sexist logos and team names in beer league hockey.  In her post she connects “mindless” sexism of logos like a woman with a thong around her ankles (!!!) with a culture that blames women for the sexual violence that is inflicted upon them.

The blogger at Lovely Bicycle (sorry, I don’t know her name) wrote a post about the attitudes of drivers toward bicyclists, and how bicyclists shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that “drivers” are somehow different from their friends who drive. Considering that I live in an area that is deadly for pedestrians, runners and cyclists, I find the attitudes of many drivers toward anyone who is not in an car to be troubling and dangerous.  I have much more to say on this matter, so stay tuned.

Erin Taylor-Talcott will have the honor of participating in the men’s Olympic trials for 50K racewalking, but there’s a catch – if she qualifies, she can’t compete.  Taylor-Talcott said her goal is simply to raise awareness of the sport so women’s racewalking will be part of future Olympics.  I get what she’s trying to do and I respect that, but I still think it sucks that the national governing body even asked her to sign such a waiver in the first place.

I loved this post by Amy Moritz, in which she writes about learning to celebrate her awesomeness.

Title IX blog examines whether Penn State will be held liable under Title IX for the sexual abuse allegedly committed by Jerry Sandusky.

At Persphone Magazine, Cassandra decided to take a 30 -day Bikram yoga challenge in an attempt to battle the post-break-up blues.  Her two-part series about her experience has me thinking I need to up my yoga practice from once a week to…well, not every day for a month but more than once a week.