There’s lots I could share about the impact the death of Gloria Steinem on September 2 has had on me, but today, I want to focus on two lessons I learned from following Steinem’s writing, advocacy and philosophy and how they are connected with the work we share on the Fit is a Feminist Issue blog.

The first was use your voice. Steinem wrote and spoke a lot about women’s agency, even if she didn’t use those words in the second wave of feminism. It’s hard to imagine but back in the 50s and 60s, women couldn’t get their own bank account, a credit card, or a loan without their husband’s signature. Steinem along with other feminists of her generation, spoke up and out about the egregious policies in existence that treated women like chattel.

Speaking up in the US led to the implementation of Title IX, in which sex discrimination could not be used to bar women and girls from physical education or access to federal funding for the same. There were women’s baseball teams during the war, and they all but disappeared after WWII when the men came back and real baseball could be played again. It wasn’t only women in tennis who got a boost when Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in 1973, it was the whole idea of sports-minded women getting their due on the playing fields and the locker rooms.

The second lesson I took from Steinem was to take up space. In sports, we see discrepancies regarding the prize money, sponsorships, and salaries for women athletes, who have not been kept pace with what men have enjoyed for the last 40-plus years, even though women’s hockey and football (soccer), to name two sports, have been taking off, with growing audiences, followers, and secondary school programming.

In 2021, the NCAA faced a media storm during March Madness, after men were given state-of-the-art training spaces complete with equipment, and women got a few yoga mats and a single dumbbell tree. In case you thought there were fewer women’s teams compared to men competing for the space, there were 64 teams each.

Using your voice and taking up space are often considered being too loud or too much. In the fitness world, it can mean seeking pay equity, and challenging sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia in sport policy and programming. It can mean taking apart the patriarchal beliefs that deny women full access to global playing fields. It can mean not letting things slide one more time because the system says no.

It can be seen as looking for more than we deserve. And yet, we have just as much right to be in the gyms, lifting those weights; in the pool, swimming those lengths; or on the court, landing those shots with tennis balls, soccer balls, or basketballs.

MarthaFitat55 still has her Why Not? poster from 1975 but lost all her copies of MS Magazine in a flood in 2001.

Gloria Steinem has died. I am much personally sadder than I would have thought I would be. She fought for and shaped so much for me and so many other women, and took so much shit for it with grace and courage.

If any young ‘uns want to understand why she was important, I suggest watching the excellent miniseries Mrs America, which is a brilliant portrait of the dynamics of second wave feminism and the roots of what became “women eating their own faces” family-values MAGA.

Those women were more than a generation ahead of me, but as a teenager with a lot of angst about my gender, sexuality and the shame brushed over women for violating the norms, I devoured Steinem, Friedan and other contemporaries. Their pre-intersectionality lenses (esp. Friedan’s) don’t stand up to scrutiny now, but we can’t miss how unbelievably radical they were.

I lived in a world where I was literally not given a school award because my principal thought it would be inappropriate to honour a kid being raised by a single mother because it would legitimize that situation. I lived in a world where my grandparents consistently tried to school me in how to be a “lady,” and where my mother navigated shame and castigation for my appearance six months after her wedding, and for her divorce. I lived in a world where, of course, there were no visible queer women.

Reading Gloria Steinem and discovering Ms magazine were the first lifeline into a different way to be for me as a 15 year old in 1980 windsor. Their words led me to the first wave french feminists, and to every book about women claiming their sexuality and desire and agency I could find (some better than others, lol), and to every piece of queer theory I ever read. I read Ms. fiercely for two decades, and a vintage mug from the magazine holds the pens on my desk now. That mug symbolizes the container that Steinem and her contemporaries created so I can use my voice the way I want to today.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who lives in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded and ancestral land of the Mi’kmaq Nation.

How many posts? Thirty-one posts this month, through a stretch of open-water swims, cross-border cycling, and at least one summer that didn’t go the way anyone planned.

Who blogged? Sam, Christine, Diane, Nat, Catherine, Nicole, Martha, Mina, Tracy, Cate and guest blogger Winnie.

Bodies in the news: menopause and sport politics. Menopause had a real moment on the blog this month. Nicole asked what it means to be pitched as a “Menopause Ambassador”, and Catherine followed with a sharp look at the menopause “gold rush” — a telehealth boom for some, still a bust for most. On the sport-politics side, Diane asked what actually happens when we try to keep trans people out of sport, and Sam covered the Tour de France Femmes’ newest way of policing women’s bodies: “bra doping”.

On the road and in the water. This was a big travel-and-adventure month. Catherine and Diane chased open water in Boston, with mixed cooperation from the water itself, while Diane also scouted new open-water swim spots around Ottawa-Gatineau. Cate took us riding in northern France, Mina wrote about spending time with her selves in Paris, and Nicole went walking up (and down) hill in Quebec City. Closer to home, Sam and two others went canoeing in Algonquin, and Catherine shared the wonderfully improbable sight of Danny MacAskill biking over water.

Cycling: distance, doubt, and fresh air. Cycling was its own theme this month, mostly about the gap between the goal and the ride you actually have. Sam wrote about still struggling with cycling distance goals and about fresh air and fresh thoughts as fall riding approaches, while Nat reflected on her own reasons for riding after her planned 100 km didn’t go as planned.

Recovery, pain, and hard stretches. Christine had two posts on the body’s slow timeline: her stubborn arms, and going from back pain to back at it. Tracy launched a quality-runs plan toward a first 5K, and Sam wrote candidly about a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer — the kind of post that’s a good reminder of why we do this at all.

Reflection, gratitude, and giving back. Christine kicked off the month with Altruistic August and returned later with a gentle reminder to give yourself what you need. Nat was thankful for Canadian universal healthcare and took her fitness “friend homework” very seriously. Diane wrote about the physical, mental, and financial all tangled together, Sam asked for help to kick cancer’s butt, and Winnie joined us as a guest blogger with 50 States!

Everything else. Nicole reminded everyone that it’s a holiday Monday — RELAX. Catherine rounded up the latest research, from thigh-brain connections to why variety is the spice of a long life, and closed out the month with late summer’s local produce. And Martha kept an eye on the bigger picture, already dreaming of the next World Cup.

See you in September!

Month-in-review posts are assembled by Claude with prompts from Sam and edited by Sam. If you spot any errors, let us know.